The Times has wholly owned the IHT since 2003 and merged the websites of the two publications in 2009. The IHT is distributed in print around the world and contains large selections of New York Times content (including the crossword) as well as content from affiliates like Spain’s El Pais.

From a branding perspective, the decision to rename the IHT is consistent with the Times’ larger strategy of finding growth in international markets. Part of this strategy involves divesting regional and non-core properties; the New York Times Company has already sold its chain of southern newspapers as well as About.com and, last week, it put the Boston Globe up for sale.

In this new global newspaper paradigm, the Times is primarily competing with two other publications — the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times — for an international audience.

“Our goal is to capitalize on the great journalistic traditions of both newspapers, further invest in our international journalism and expand our global base while continuing to serve the many loyal readers of the IHT,” explained New York Times Company CEO Mark Thomspon in a news release.

In regard to digital growth — an area of critical importance for the Times — it’s difficult to evaluate the IHT’s performance since the company includes digital subscriptions to the IHT with those to the NYT. At the end of 2012, combined total subscriptions to both publications was around 640,000 (it’s a safe bet the vast majority of those are to the NYT).

In its release on Monday, the company said the International New York Times will be tailored and edited specifically for global audiences.

All Things Digital first reported the news. The NYT’s Media Decoder blog notes:

Last month, the Times Company took a $194.7 million write-down of About.com. The company purchased the Web site in 2005 for just over $400 million. In its latest earnings news release, the company said that About Group’s revenues declined 8.7 percent to $25.4 million, largely because of a drop in display and cost-per-click advertising.

At AdExchanger, David Kaplan notes that ”Answers.com’s president and COO is none other than Peter Horan, the former About.com head who helped engineer the sale of the About to the NYTCo in the first place.”

Earlier this year, the New York Times sold off its last shares in the Fenway Sports Group, and in December 2011 the NYT sold its regional papers to Halifax Media Group for $143 million. The company still owns the Boston Globe and International Herald Tribune.

Update, 1:34 PM: The New York Times confirmed this afternoon that “it is engaged in discussions regarding the potential sale of its About Group. No definitive agreement has been reached. The negotiations are ongoing and there can be no assurances that an agreement will be reached or that a transaction will be completed.”

– IHT.com disappears: IHT.com users from today are redirected to global.nytimes.com, which is branded with the IHT masthead but which also serves as a new homepage to NYTimes.com for visitors outside the US. Non-US visitors to NYTimes.com are now automatically shuffled along to global.nytimes.com, but can pick which version they want in much the same way WSJ.com users can pick the European, Chinese and other editions. NYTimes.com will get to add IHT.com’s existing 2.3 million non-US monthly uniques to its own 25 million worldwide users as it tries to build audience for advertisers. IHT has had some problems redirecting archive articles, however.

– Dead-tree makeover: A redesigned paper edition looks like The New York Times in all but masthead logo, which itself has a slightly new typeface and more emphasis on the word “international”. There are more web links than before, pointing to global.nytimes.com.

The press release was issued from IHT’s Paris HQ and stresses the IHT will “is edited from New York, Paris and Hong Kong to provide users with a 24/7 flow” – but some native-European IHT fans are shedding tears at what IHT publisher Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, in that release, says is “closer integration with New York”. The paper was founded in 1887 and was only bought in part by NYTCo 80 years later; it’s sold in 180 countries. IHT’s fantastic international coverage is so barely rivaled by indigenous papers that many European intelligentsia buy IHT without regard for the New York connection – Europeans don’t often identify national and international news with metropolitan titles (eg. there’s no London Times), so NYTCo would do well do retain the IHT brand.

After NYTCo a deal inked in 2007. IHT escaped NYTCo cuts that axed 100 business-side staff and introduced pay cuts last week. More in Dunbar-Johnson’s note to readers…

Photo, illustrating new edition on left, old edition on right, courtesy Graham Holliday

This has been under consideration for a while now, and some previous details came out in June. The IHT site is already accessible through http://iht.nytimes.com/. Recently, IHT changed its logo and added a tagline: The Global Edition of New York Times.

As Forbes puts it, “The IHT site has long been an anachronism in an age where the flagship NYTimes.com was available anywhere in the world“. NYTimes.com general manager Vivian Schiller told Forbes that “it’s absolutely, positively not about cost savings” and would give the Times more opportunities to monetize its foreign web traffic, which makes up between 18 and 20 percent of its total audience, as well as increasing inventory.

– IHT.com has experimented with content syndication deals to increase its audience and in December last year hooked up with Reuters to create the Business With Reuters section in the a print and web partnership. This and other schemes clearly did not generate enough traffic and revenue to justify a standalone site. Just last month NYTimes.com and IHT.com announced a syndication deal with financial analysis site BreakingViews.

Memo from IHT Publisher Stephen Dunbar-Johnson and NYTimes.com SVP/GM Vivian Schiller

To Our Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce that our vision to become a global powerhouse news Web site is soon to become a reality. Next spring, NYTimes.com and IHT.com will combine forces to form a joint international presence that can deliver the scale, the user engagement and the resources we need to compete for readers and advertisers. The advantages are manifest: the digital expertise and resources of NYTimes.com, the international experience and voice of the IHT and the joint power of both newsrooms.

So what does this mean? Come launch, NYTimes.com will feature a Dynamic new co-branded global edition home page that will feature stories selected for international users. Regular NYTimes.com users will be able to opt-in to that new home page; the IHT.com url will also redirect there. We will also feature six new global section fronts, again chosen for international readers: business, travel, culture, sports, style and opinion. Those will be found alongside the standard NYTimes.com section fronts and also featured on the global edition homepage. All IHT content will now be published on the integrated site as well as archived and searchable on NYTimes.com

There is much work to be done in the coming days and weeks. Members of the IHT-NYT Web project team — Victoria Shannon, Charlotte Gordon, Jen Hanks, Hayley Nelson and Dominique Piteux, and Jim Roberts — will be in contact with many of you in the newsroom, in advertising sales, in marketing and in finance and IT for your help in shaping, finalizing and delivering this creative and innovative new global edition to the online marketplace. We want and need our best minds grappling with the issues and refining the
details as the project moves from the planning stage into development and implementation.

There is no doubt that this integration project is a large and complex endeavour and it has forced some hard decisions about jobs at the IHT. IHT HR and others are working closely with New York colleagues to reassign and in some instances relocate individuals in Paris and Hong Kong whose positions will be affected next year. Good progress is being made.

When this project is completed, we will have an amazing international news site that showcases the IHT

This has been under consideration for a while now, and some previous details came out in June. The IHT site is already accessible through http://iht.nytimes.com/. Recently, IHT changed its logo and added a tagline: The Global Edition of New York Times.

As Forbes puts it, “The IHT site has long been an anachronism in an age where the flagship NYTimes.com was available anywhere in the world“. NYTimes.com general manager Vivian Schiller told Forbes that “it’s absolutely, positively not about cost savings” and would give the Times more opportunities to monetize its foreign web traffic, which makes up between 18 and 20 percent of its total audience, as well as increasing inventory.

– IHT.com has experimented with content syndication deals to increase its audience and in December last year hooked up with Reuters to create the Business With Reuters section in the a print and web partnership. This and other schemes clearly did not generate enough traffic and revenue to justify a standalone site. Just last month NYTimes.com and IHT.com announced a syndication deal with financial analysis site BreakingViews.

From the memo, about the website integration: “The global landscape for online news is highly competitive, making scale, speed and resources essential to success. Therefore we have determined that the best future online for the IHT and the NYT globally is through a joint international presence. We are proposing that this be achieved through a new co-branded international homepage and internationally focused section fronts for business, culture, sports, luxury and travel through the merger of the Web sites and operations of the IHT and NYT. This ‘international edition’ on NYTimes.com would carry both IHT and NYT branding and users could arrive at these pages directly either via the IHT.com URL or via NYTimes.com….Such a co-branded approach would also ensure that the IHT has an online “home” that does not compete for advertising with NYTimes.com but instead leverages its greater audience reach and more sophisticated technology.”

On the digital side, it has appointed Vicki Shannon as Editor, Digital News: “In her new role as editor, digital news, she will be responsible for working with the NYT in forging closer digital integration and also for overseeing content that gets the right international perspective on the Web as the NYT Co pursues its global strategy.”

NYT bought the rest of IHT from WaPo in 2003.

Updated: From IHT’s own story: Dunbar-Johnson and Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, cast the merger as a proposal at this stage, until the Paris-based IHT’s works council was consulted, in accordance with French law. But discussions on a merger have been under way for months, along with work on a new design for the print version of the Herald Tribune…One possibility, executives said, is that the international edition of nytimes.com will carry both the Herald Tribune and New York Times brands, with readers arriving there by clicking on addresses for either iht.com or nytimes.com.

This also means and end to IHT’s deal with Bloomberg, which has provided the paper with several pages of business articles a day since 2002 in Asia and since 2005 in Europe (the deal is ending this month). IHT will rename the section Business with Reuters in Europe and Business Asia with Reuters in Asia.

Reuters also will provide video reports to the IHT Web site, and IHT articles will be made available to Reuters’s corporate clients. IHT will still be allowed to use content from third-party news providers.

IHT: Monique Villa, a managing director of Reuters Media, said that Reuters would eventually like to extend its alliance beyond the IHT to NYT newspaper and its website.