IHT Web site merging with NY Times foreign coverage

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The New York Times Co plans to merge the International Herald Tribune website and non-U.S. coverage from The New York Times into a joint "international edition," according to an internal memo.

Aiming to improve advertising revenue and attract a larger global audience, the joint site will include internationally focused stories from the New York Times and from the International Herald Tribune, a European-focused, English-language paper owned by the Times.

"(W)e have determined that the best future online for the IHT and the NYT globally is through a joint international presence," said a memo sent to IHT staff by Times Executive Editor Bill Keller and IHT publisher Stephen Dunbar-Johnson on Monday. The memo was provided to Reuters by the The New York Times.

"We believe that together we can be a more competitive force in the global marketplace than IHT.com, for all its strengths, can be on its own," Keller and Dunbar-Johnson said.

The integrated site will be a "co-branded international homepage" that will replace the IHT news website and feature "internationally focused" news on business, culture, sports, luxury and travel.

The memo stated that the future site will cut advertising competition between the IHT and New York Times websites and boost total international readership.

Nytimes.com draws 58 million readers a month, while iht.com has 7 million readers, The New York Times said on Monday.

(Reporting by Jennifer Martinez, Editing by Peter Henderson and Carol Bishopric)