A lot of emails have been flying around this week, most of them landing in my inbox here at Think!
I haven't run with any of it, because the picture is messy and confused, but my guess is that whoever the email tipster to Gawker is has been busy this week. Why this week? I don't know.
My sources are telling me that most of what follows below from Gawker, is, and I quote, "a pile of crap" and that the rumour that by year's end, op-ed will be folded into NY (under the new jargon) is "simply not true".
What is being said, therefore, that by years end op-ed will be New York generated is being denied at a senior level.
As to the fate of Op-ed editor Serge Schmemann, the rumour (emphasis on rumour) is that he has fallen to the same fate as Michael Oreskes - he has been given the fig leaf 'resign once found a new job or you'll be given a buy out.'
(The Oreskes story was also a rumour, just to be clear, so to say Schmemann's fate is identical to Oreskes - accusations of disloyalty to Bill Keller - I really can't say.)
The line goes like this, if you buy it, and I have no idea: Oreskes and Schmemann temporarily enjoyed protective patronage of Michael Golden. Schmemann however was spotted by Keller in a Manhattan eatery enjoying afternoon tea with Golden only hours after a make or break IHT meeting late November.
Seen by who? I don't know, nor does Gawker's source most likely. Classic NYT rumour mill.
What remains to be seen is just how complicated and messy Mr. Schmemann's situation is because there are a lot of accusations running around that I am not going to repeat. I'll leave that to Gawker, but I'm an IHT fan, and try and work on a two-source principle.
Anyway, here's Gawker. Make up your own minds. Perhaps more on this later, but I'm not sure whose benefit it would serve.
Rumormonger, international herald tribune, new york times, new york times company...
, william schmidt, serger schemann, michael oreskes, jobs, layoffs, newspapers, media, gossip
Is Bill Keller Purging The IHT?
Times editor Bill Keller's hand was suspected in the May departure of Michael Oreskes from the Times-owned International Herald Tribune. "Fiercely ambitious" Oreskes once vied for editorship of the Times itself, the Post's Keith Kelly reported at the time, and may have been made to pay for a "long history of animosity" with Keller. Now another IHT hand, Serge Schemann is being nudged out the door after accusations of disloyalty to Keller, an email tipster claims. His supposed crime: A meeting with former IHT publisher Michael Golden, the rival and cousin to Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, just hours after a "make or break" November IHT meeting in Manhattan, a meeting that presumably involved Sulzberger underling Keller.
Golden had a close relationship with not just Schemann but Oreskes as well, having hired him to the IHT and having, according to our tipster, enjoyed with Schemann his temporary "protective patronage."
Oreskes officially left IHT of his own accord to become the first managing editor for U.S. news at the Associated Press. Schemann is said to now be under pressure to likewise find his own landing place — or else be forced to accept a buyout.
With his departure, the IHT op-ed section would then be folded into the Times operations in New York, much as iht.com is being folded into nytimes.com.
Given the extent to which the Times appears to be gutting the IHT, one wonders why the company bothers to keep it as a separate brand rather than simply identifying it as the European edition of the Times.
http://gawker.com:80/5049827/is-bill-keller-purging-the-iht
And here are some comments about it all on Gawker:
Comments
SarahHeartburn at 06:13 AM on 09/15/08
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I think you're right. I still buy the IHT from time to time, more out of nostalgia, or if I'm traveling* and want the puzzle. More and more, however, it's filled with NYT stories that I've already read that morning on the web, and it's frankly a waste of time. Years ago, when a lot of English language schools subscribed to the IHT (pre-internet dark times)a saleswoman for the paper in Spain told me that the Times deliberately didn't market the NYT in Europe so people would buy the IHT. Now it doesn't seem to matter.
*though it's oversized pages do not make one a welcome traveling companion. Will they ever offer a tabloid size option, like The Independent?
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Swordfish at 08:50 AM on 09/15/08
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They wanted to call it the New York Times International Edition when they bullied the Washington Post out its co-ownership. But marketing testing told them that NYTs didn't carry the same weight overseas as IHT, so they reluctantly kept it, with New York Times smaller underneath the title. One of these days we know IHT is gonna disappear. And I suspect it's going to happen overnight, without any warning.Then Cathy Horyn will get Suzy Menkes "retired" and take over that space, and everyone at NYTs HQ will be happy.
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cosmiclove at 09:32 AM on 09/15/08
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I bet the brilliant Oreskes can rattle off the history of Spuyten Duyvil. I'm certain Keller, as smart as he is, doesn't know where it is. Schemann is an old school Lelyveld, Frankel, Rosenthal hold over, so I'm surprised Keller is messing with him. It must be blind ambition.
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HK_Guy at 10:59 AM on 09/15/08
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At one time, the IHT was so iconic that Godard could infer a universe of meaning just by having Jean Seberg hawk the damned thing on the streets of Paris in "Breathless." But it may be breathing its last in this age of ... what?
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forever at 11:31 AM on 09/15/08
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Lelyveld never trusted Schemann as far as he could see him. Frankel protected and schooled him, not Lelyveld; Not surprised Schemann is out his reign was clouded in allegations of nepotism and sexism.
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drunkexpatwriter at 12:10 PM on 09/15/08
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The already call it in giant letters "The International Edition Of The New York Times."
I live in Europe and it's the newspaper I read every day. Over the past three years it's gone way fucking downhill. They've gutted the Opt Ed section in order to put ads on those pages, cut the number of comics in favor of suduko puzzles, for some reason gotten rid of Frank Rich but kept the always awful Thomas Friedman, cut the length of their stories and often places sections randomly.
Beyond that, their practice of rotating staff in from the Times on 90 day stints (to avoid French labor laws) they often have a copy editing staff that is not used to the paper. This means that roughly every three months we get a week of stories posted two or even three times in the same edition (often they'll have a small version of the story in the national section and then the same story with an addition two or three paragraphs in the business section) or posted on multiple days.
Several times they've included an entire four page section from the previous day's paper in the current edition.
And they've raised their price to 2.5 euros which is insane.
It used to be the best newspaper in the world, but now it's quickly becoming a piece of shit.
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drunkexpatwriter at 12:11 PM on 09/15/08
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This is a copy of a letter I sent to the IHT a couple of months ago that I never got a reply to:
[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]
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SarahHeartburn at 01:30 PM on 09/15/08
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@drunkexpatwriter: I did not realize that about the copy staff and the resultant errors. Thank you for explaining it, because a few times in the recent past I've read it daily (because a student wanted to) and I thought I was losing it because I would see a story repeated, and assumed it was MY creaky brain imagining things. I would never have supposed that it could be due to the Time's sloppiness.
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drunkexpatwriter at 07:56 AM on 09/16/08
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@SarahHeartburn: Yeah, the deal is if they have them working on site in Paris for more than 90 days then they become subject to French employment law, which the Times clearly wants to avoid.
I discovered this a few years ago when one of the women they had sent to Paris contacted me on a dating site (she was looking for dudes in France who spoke English) and I eventually asked her what was up with the repeated stories and the cycle of errors.
That said, at the end of the 90 day cycle the paper often looks really good. But that's when you know it's going to suddenly go down the crapper.
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cosmiclove at 09:17 PM on 09/16/08
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@forever: Interesting. My mistake. I always thought Lelyveld protected Schmemann long after Frankel left. Serge certainly got good assignments under his watch, though he was called into headquarters later. Not sure if they clerked together. Maybe one was behind the other. Keller's about four years younger. They may be competitive, especially over the Soviet coverage.
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A PLACE IN THE AUVERGNE
International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT
Vacation /Business Trip Furnished Apartment in Paris
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