It seems the newspaper industry is hopping lately when it comes to online deal striking. Seven newspaper groups recently announced a partnership with Yahoo to share content and technology across properties.
Details of the deal are still vague, but Yahoo HotJobs appears to be the first technology scheduled for local integration. The employment classified site currently lags significantly behind other players in the vertical, but this deal could definitely work to change that.
From my couch, I’d say Yahoo is the one that should be smiling. They stand to gain valuable localized content in the form of news and classified ads (that’s right, classified ads are content first, advertising second.) They also stand to gain from huge promotion as each of the 176 properties devote their collective house ad schedules to HotJobs.
The head of Yahoo Listings, Hilary Schneider, comes from Knight Ridder (recently acquired by McClatchy) and knows very well all that Yahoo stands to gain. As one of the three owners of CareerBuilder and Classified Ventures*, Knight Ridder gave a similar push to each of its own classified platforms of record.
Earlier this month Gannett, Tribune, and McClatchy (which recently absorbed Knight Ridder properties) made news for their investment into topix.net, an online news aggregator. Gannett also announced a community publishing initiative to leverage crowd sourcing.
The news houses appear to be scrambling to usher in some fresh thinking in the field of online publishing.
Rumors of the deal came from The Local Onliner. An article today at nytimes.com confirmed the deal. Even TechCrunch is weighing in on the topic.
