• Forbes.com, Wednesday, October 8, 2008 12 PM

As part of an effort to make its NYTimes.com site "more global," the New York Times Company is shuttering the site of its international edition, the International Herald Tribune. The move will force some "hard decisions about jobs" at the IHT, and the company will be looking to reassign or relocate some people, according to an internal memo.

But NYTimes.com general manager insisted on Tuesday the move was not about saving money but was about growth. Combining the sites into one will hopefully increase NYTimes.com traffic and give it more content against which to sell ads. The move should also allow the company to sell more ads against the 18-20% of its traffic that comes from overseas.

Regardless of the outcome, it's a decision that was long awaited by media observers. IHT.com had been floundering for some time now, and was proving to be a drag on the primary brand. NYTimes.com reached roughly 19.4 million unique visitors in August, up year-over-year from just under 8 million. By contrast, comScore reports IHT.com reached 2.5 million unique visitors in August.

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