History Hash Outs—An American Newspaper for the World: The International Herald Tribune and the Contradictions of Globalization

Join us to hear historian Christopher Schaefer discuss his current book project on the International Herald Tribune (IHT), based on his award-winning PhD dissertation at the University of Cambridge.

The IHT was both an agent and a product of American globalization. Owned by the Washington Post and the New York Times but edited and produced in Paris, the newspaper embodied a postwar synthesis of American economic and journalistic power with French cultural prestige. As it expanded worldwide, the IHT extended American influence and cultivated a distinctive form of cosmopolitanism among its international readership. Yet its global ambitions increasingly brought its American identity, commercial interests and journalistic ideals into conflict. Its eventual demise reveals the fragility of a cosmopolitan ideal that aspired to transcend national boundaries while remaining deeply rooted in American power.

Christipher Schaefer
Visiting Assistant Professor of History
Mount St. Mary's University