The World’s Daily Newspaper Goes Local

By Edmund B. Lambeth & Shelly Rodgers


During the 1950s, young American journalists weaned on the ethic of objectivity satirized what they saw as the pretense of Col. Robert R. McCormick’s mid-20th century Chicago Tribune logo, "The World’s Greatest Newspaper." Today, on the doorstep of the 21st century, a slightly more modest, but still ambitious, logo graces another and very different "Tribune."

The International Herald Tribune, with the logo "The World’s Daily Newspaper," is not resting on its pre-1997 laurels of having reached a half million readers with a circulation of 200,000 in 180 countries. In the past two years, it has added significantly to its circulation by publishing partnerships with dailies overseas. The IHT, jointly owned by the New York Times and the Washington Post, is distributed on the same day of publication with new English language editions of local newspapers in Israel, Greece, Italy, and, more recently, Lebanon.

Such partnering has not received widespread attention in the media world. But, for one, veteran Middle Eastern correspondent Jerrold Kessel of CNN, stationed in Jerusalem, is impressed. "That’s new. It’s one of the few new things in [international] journalism. The Tribune as the ‘world’s newspaper’ allied to a local. That’s a fantastic idea."

Major targets of IHT’s global/local newspapers are English-speaking-and-reading expatriates, diplomats, overseas business executives and professionals, and tourists. Not least, there are the foreign correspondents, especially those who do not read Hebrew, Greek, Italian, or Arabic.

In Israel, where about half of the correspondents don’t read Hebrew, Kessel and Walter Rodgers, CNN’s Jerusalem bureau chief, have seen the concept at work up close. Israel’s Ha’aretz, often called the New York Times of Israel even though it is the smallest of the country’s three dailies, became the first IHT partner on September 1, 1997.

Of Ha’aretz, Rodgers says: "When the Jerusalem Post was the only English language daily around, I was much more dependent on them than I am now. But now with the new Ha’aretz, that’s prime. That’s my best source of Israeli intellectuals’ thinking." Of the overall customers, Kessel adds: "There are people who buy that paper for the [International Herald] Tribune and people who buy it for Ha’aretz in English. You can’t get a better world than that."Innovation is not the only factor at work in English-language journalism in Israel. History, commercial agendas, professional competition, religion, and ideology are influences, too. In 1989, Conrad Black’s Hollinger International, Inc. bought the then Labor-oriented Jerusalem Post, turning the paper sharply to the right in its editorials as well as some of its news coverage.

About 30 members of its talented staff departed in protest. One of the them, David Landau, once the Post’s managing editor, later became the founding editor of English-language Ha’aretz. A number of alumni of the Post formed the nucleus of the magazine Jerusalem Report, started in 1990 by five wealthy Jewish businessmen, including Canadian entrepreneur and Seagrams owner Charles R. Bronfman. The Report’s features, columns and explanatory articles now reach some 10,000 Israelis and a Diaspora audience of about 51,000 in 74 countries.

Eventually, questions arose over the health of the Report’s bottom line. Although Bronfman and his colleagues hesitated for months, they sold 49% of the magazine to Hollinger, Inc. in June 1998. Its widely respected founding editor, Hirsh Goodman, then became a board member and editorial director of the 66 year-old Post. He had previously served for 16 years as the Post’s defense correspondent before leaving to spend two years at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy Studies.

Since taking the Post’s editorial helm, Goodman hired Dana Harman, a double history major from Harvard and Cambridge, as diplomatic correspondent; doubled parliamentary coverage; installed Vicky Blackburn in Tel Aviv to cover economics and high technology; made a number of personnel changes, "heightened staff awareness of accountability" and redesigned the Post’s international weekly, emphasizing features rather than news. Much of this has been with the cooperation of a local staff two-thirds of which is unionized, Goodman reported. However, he said that "to get even more fundamental," he has had to become involved in a "huge fight" with the union to gain the flexibility needed to make needed improvements.

A shift of the political focus of the Post from right toward the center, already evident in 1997, has accelerated under Goodman’s leadership. He depicts Ha’aretz as a liberal and secular paper serving the general Israeli community, unlike the Post, a paper that focuses on the English-speaking reader and whose public includes many conservative Israelis. Said Goodman: "Ha’aretz, in terms of its commentary, is in a very left-wing slot. It’s a liberal paper, which I am personally; I agree with their positions. But our paper will give all positions. We’re not in a slot. We’re about informing our public and a lot of our public are religious and right-wing. We would run much more right-wing opinion than they would."

Goodman said the Post circulates about 20,000 daily and 50,000 on weekends. Landau, editor of Ha’aretz’s English edition, said his newspaper sells 10,000 weekdays and about 16,000 on weekends.

The Post averages 24 pages weekdays and, on weekends, two 16-page regular sections, plus a 48-page magazine with 16 pages of entertainment listings. Ha’aretz runs eight pages weekdays, 16 pages on the weekend, plus a 48-page magazine.

Subscription pricing by Ha’aretz, according to Goodman, has cut significantly into the Post’s income from circulation. Landau says neither of the two newspapers do well enough with advertising. Interestingly, however, both Goodman and Landau say they think it is likely that the markets in Israel and the Diaspora are capable of sustaining both newspapers.

A mailed survey of 200 members of the Foreign Correspondents Association of Israel in 1998 generated 64 responses rating the three English-language dailies. On five features---generating story ideas; staying abreast of policy issues; keeping tabs on Israeli public opinion; gauging the thinking of elites; and discovering new sources---correspondents ranked Ha’aretz first, the Report second, and the Post third. However, for in-depth knowledge the Report ranked first, ahead of Ha’aretz, second, and the Post, third. The ratings and their degree of statistical significance are indicated in Table 1. [The survey was completed before the 1998 ownership and management changes at the Report and Post.]

The International Herald Tribune’s other partners and their estimated circulations are Italy Daily in Milan (13,000), with the Rizzoli-Corriere della Sera group; Kathimerini-English, with Kathimerini S.A., in Athens, Greece (5,000), and most recently, the Daily Star in Beirut, Lebanon, with Jamil K. Mroue, publisher and editor-in-chief of the newspaper. Beirut is the sixteenth of the IHT’s remote printing site locations.

The International Herald Tribune and the Star also will pick a site in the Gulf region where the IHT and the Daily Star’s Middle East news section will be printed "for distribution throughout the Middle East." Said IHT’s Board Chair, Peter Goldmark in Paris: "The Middle East is an origination point for many of the world’s formative political and economic trends. The close relationship between global and regional developments will be reflected and reported by this new partnership combining an international with a regional newspaper in that sensitive part of the world."

Table 1: Foreign Correspondents Rate
Israel’s English-language Press

Useful Features Ha’aretz Post Report
Identifying story ideas 3.98 2.60 3.36
Staying abreast of issues 4.17 2.59 3.48
Keeping current with public’s thinking 3.83 2.73* 3.04*
Gauge the thinking of Israeli elites 4.33 2.80* 3.19*
Discover new sources 3.47* 2.59 3.32*
Gain in-depth knowledge of new issues 3.75* 2.18 3.91*
TOTAL 23.59 15.66 20.52

*All of the comparative differences in the total usefulness ratings of the three newspapers were statistically significant at the .01 level of probability, except those comparisons between individual publications marked with asterisks.


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Lambeth, a journalism professor at the University of Missouri, was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Haifa in Israel in 1997-1998. Rodgers is a doctoral candidate at the University of Missouri.