Bad News is No News

Unless I've missed something, yesterday's reported 82% drop in quarterly profits at the NYT didn't make the pages of today's IHT, nor www.iht.com.

The appointment of Bill Schmidt did.

The piece ran in the IHT was basically the IHT's/NYT's press release. On www.iht.com it was given billing as the 8th most important business story in the business section. In the IHT it was given prominent play in the front of the book, not even held for the business pages.

I think this does raise a question of how the IHT covers itself.

Perhaps best left to Reuters for example.

This type of corporate churnalism is a) against the journalistic ethics of the NYT and b) does their reputation for not churning corporate press releases no favours.

Top editor named at IHT
PARIS: William Schmidt, an assistant managing editor at The New York Times, has been appointed to take over as the top editor at the International Herald Tribune, The New York Times and the IHT announced Wednesday.
Schmidt, a veteran foreign correspondent and newsroom administrator at The Times, has been named editor, global editions. He will move to Paris, where the newspaper is based, by the end of the year, taking over from Martin Gottlieb, who has been serving in that capacity on an interim basis. Gottlieb will return to New York to continue the work of integrating the two newspapers.
"Bill's career is rich in both journalistic and management experience," Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, said in a statement. "He has reported from a variety of foreign and domestic bureaus - Moscow, Cairo and London, Chicago, Miami, Denver and Atlanta.
"As a member of The Times's masthead, Bill has participated in most of the major decisions about our newsroom," Keller added. "One of his key achievements has been the significant improvements he has made to the management, fiscal discipline and training of The Times's newsroom."
Schmidt has been at The Times since 1981. In 1995, he became deputy national editor at The Times, and he has been a member of the senior management in the newsroom since 1997.
In 1987, Schmidt was part of a team of reporters that shared the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for articles about the causes of the space shuttle Challenger disaster. In 1977 he shared an award from the Overseas Press Club for his reporting on the war in Lebanon.
Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, publisher of the IHT, said in the statement that Schmidt would "set the strategic direction and maintain our high standards of news coverage."
"His appointment reaffirms The New York Times's commitment to the IHT as a critical part of its global strategy," Dunbar-Johnson said.
The IHT, the global edition of The New York Times, is printed at 35 sites throughout the world, and is sold in more than 180 countries. It has been based in Paris since 1887.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/23/europe/iht.php



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