Just-outside-Paris headquarters of the Eee-Ash-Tay.

Tuesday, October 22, 2002

So, as I did not mention in previous installments, my first day at the International Herald Tribune (or "Eee-Ash-Tay," as I will always think of it now), the talk was about the future of the paper. It's co-owned by the Washington Post and the New York Times. The buzz was the Times wanted to change that, somehow. The New York Observer had called executives at both newspaper companies for comment. The Wall Street Journal and Business, a salmon-colored European rag that is trying very hard to look like the Financial Times, both ran stories.

Today the other chaussure dropped: The owners have signed a letter of intent for the Times to buy out the Post's stake in the IHT. The publisher of the IHT gave a well-attended talk (in English and French) and explained that he would fight for the paper, and he sounded quite sincere. But he said right up front that he couldn't, at this point, answer any of the questions everybody has. And I think we all know the fate of the paper is not in his hands.

One possibility, obviously, is that the Times will launch an international edition and close down the IHT. They could edit it from New York, too, unless they fear that such a paper would lose its global focus, and that they'd lose their street cred.

At the other end of the spectrum, they could decide the IHT is fine the way it is — maybe that the paper is understaffed and the staff is underpaid — and let the IHT carry the Times's banner around the world, literally and figuratively.

The only certainty is that nothing is going to happen tomorrow. The Post and Times have a letter of intent, not a contract. They still must clear this with French and European Union authorities, and they have to resolve any concerns the employees associations have, because in France the workers apparently have some say in what happens to the company they work for. (No wonder the Frenchies can't compete with the U.S., and god bless 'em.)

I'm certainly in a better position than IHT staffers who have kids going to Parisian schools, or own property here, or have other ties to the city. And it's a bad time for any journalist to be looking for a job, on either side of the Atlantic.

I don't have to worry about that, because I have a piece of paper that says the Post will have a job waiting for me when I get back. What adds novelty to my situation is that, unlike everyone else here, the Post is paying my salary, and the IHT is reimbursing the Post for it. It's a great arrangement, allowing me to keep my seniority and all my Post benefits uninterrupted.

But it's unlikely that the Post will want or be able to keep my deal going after the Times owns the IHT lock, stock and tonneau. And even if the Times wants me to continue to work in Paris through December 2003, I would presumably have to be a Times employee and not a Post employee for that to happen.

The ax will not swing tomorrow at the Eee-Ash-Tay. But when the Times does take control, perhaps by the end of the year, I may be the first one to bid adieu. But who wants to spend April in Paris anyway?

© copyright 2003 Mark J. McGarry