New York Times and I.H.T. Study Web Merger

The New York Times is looking at merging nytimes.com with iht.com, the Web site of the International Herald Tribune.

Top executives of both newspapers said on Monday that they intended to create a “co-branded international home page” that would replace iht.com, the existing Web site of the International Herald Tribune. The Times Company acquired full control of The Herald Tribune in 2003, and has been accelerating the integration of the two papers in recent months.

“We want to examine the potential to merge iht.com with nytimes.com,” the publisher of The Herald Tribune, Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, said. “And the reason for that is that we believe that it will provide us with much more scale and will expose our journalism to a much larger audience. In terms of driving revenues from advertising, it will be a much more powerful proposition.”

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Web designers are preparing a new digital architecture for The Herald Tribune, with six to seven international sections, including business, culture, sports, luxury and travel. 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.