International Herald Tribune - History

History

The Paris Herald was founded on 4 October 1887, as the European edition of the New York Herald by the parent paper's owner, James Gordon Bennett, Jr. The company was based in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris.

After the 1918 death of Bennett, Frank Andrew Munsey bought the New York Herald and the Paris Herald. Munsey sold the Herald newspapers in 1924 to the New York Tribune, and the Paris Herald became the Paris Herald Tribune while the New York paper became New York Herald Tribune.

In 1928 the Paris Herald Tribune became the first newspaper distributed by airplane, flying copies to London from Paris in time for breakfast. Publication of the newspaper was interrupted during Nazi Germany's occupation of Paris (1940–1944).

In 1959 John Hay Whitney, a businessman and United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom, bought the New York Herald Tribune and its European edition. In 1966 the New York Herald Tribune was merged into the short-lived New York World Journal Tribune and ceased publication, but the Whitney family kept the Paris paper going through partnerships. In December 1966 The Washington Post became a joint owner.

The New York Times became a joint owner of the Paris Herald Tribune in May 1967, whereupon the newspaper became known as the International Herald Tribune (IHT).

In 1974 IHT began transmitting facsimile pages of the paper between nations and opened a printing site near London. In 1977 the paper opened a second site in Zürich.

IHT began transmitting electronic images of newspaper pages from Paris to Hong Kong via satellite in 1980, making the paper simultaneously available on opposite sides of the planet. This was the first such intercontinental transmission of an English-language daily newspaper and followed the pioneering efforts of the Chinese-language Sing Tao Daily newspaper.

In 1991 The Washington Post and The New York Times became sole and equal shareholders of IHT. In February 2005 it opened its Asia newsroom in Hong Kong.