IHT readership up in South Korea

The International Herald Tribune is reporting dramatically increased readership in South Korea following the establishment of a publishing partnership with JoongAng Ilbo. Under the partnership, JoongAng Ilbo - one of Korea's leading newspapers - produces an eight-page section in English that covers news, economy, business, culture and sport in Korea. This section is inserted into the IHT as a second section and sold as a joint newspaper throughout the country by subscription and through newsstand sales. During the launch week, IHT daily copy sales soared dramatically from 1,600 to almost 8,000, while subscriptions jumped a hefty 35 per cent. The Korean partnership represents the first "global local" in Asia, IHT vice-president and commercial director Stephen Dunbar-Johnson said. "Korea was the first in Asia because that was the country where we could strike a deal first. Of course, we are having discussions with other Asian publishers, primarily Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia Singapore, Indonesia and Japan is certainly right up there," he told MEDIA. Mr Dunbar-Johnson said the IHT's soaring circulation in Korea was not a one-off affair. "It's happened wherever we have forged these publishing partnerships, which is why we will continue setting up these partnerships." The aim of including local news from a nation's leading publisher into the IHT is to grow its market of "global readers", a class of people whom IHT Asia-Pacific advertising director Jonathan Kenny described as multinational in outlook, affluent and travel frequently. "We want to try to create a point of difference in each of the markets we serve and in this case, our readers can get both international and local news from two reputable publishers in one paper," Mr Kenny said. Mr Dunbar-Johnson added that growing circulation in this way guaranteed to advertisers the quality of the IHT's readers. "We're not going out there and just dumping newspapers in hotels and airlines and then saying, 'Hey, our circulation has gone up 25 per cent'. "What we are doing is growing our readership base of high net worth, global individuals and delivering just that to our advertisers," he said.

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