Papers are said to plan Yahoo deal expansion
A dozen companies that own about 250 daily newspapers are preparing to expand a ground-breaking partnership with Yahoo Inc. to share advertising and editorial content, several newspaper executives familiar with the situation said.
The companies, facing the flight of readers and advertisers, are working with Yahoo to give wider Internet play to their news reports, draw users to their Web pages and offer national advertisers a one-stop solution for multiple newspaper websites, the executives said.
The Yahoo-newspaper partnership began last November when seven news companies teamed up to sell employment ads through Yahoo's classified job site, HotJobs. The consortium has been growing since and will be strengthened considerably by the addition of McClatchy Co., the nation's second-largest publisher by circulation, the executives said.
The deal with Yahoo will allow the newspapers to gain access to Yahoo's giant audience of hundreds of millions of daily viewers. For its part, the Web portal will be able to take advantage of the local news content and advertising sales forces of the newspapers.
One newspaper executive called McClatchy, owner of the Sacramento Bee and 30 other newspapers, "a huge swing vote in the industry" whose participation could encourage other companies to sign on with the Yahoo newspaper partnership. Right now, the consortium includes Cox Newspapers Inc., Hearst Communications Inc. and MediaNews Group Inc., which publishes the Daily News, the Pasadena Star-News and the Long Beach Press-Telegram.
An executive at another large newspaper company said: "Is this a cure-all to our ills? Probably not. But we are very excited about it. It's a lot of revenue at a time we need it a lot."
Both executives asked not to be named because they hadn't been authorized to speak in advance of a formal announcement, which could come as early as Monday. Spokeswomen for both Yahoo and McClatchy declined to comment.
The agreement would come on the heels of a deal with Viacom Inc. in which Yahoo agreed to place so-called sponsored search and short text ads on 33 of the media company's websites, including MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon. Yahoo hopes to close the gap with Google Inc. in part through such cooperative agreements with "old media" companies.
The newspaper industry has been trying for more than a decade to form a single consortium to increase the reach of online advertising and content.
