AUSTIN, Texas - Sunnyvale, California-based Internet company Yahoo has announced the addition of seventeen newspapers to its consortium of online publishing partners, increasing the group's total number of newspapers to 550, including 140 weekly papers and about 415 dailies. Sixteen regional newspapers owned by The New York Times Company but not including the Times itself, and The Columbus Dispatch have partnered with Yahoo in a consortium begun last November 20, Yahoo executives told the Associated Press today.

The Yahoo newspaper consortium allows participating papers a discount on listing jobs in Yahoo's national HotJobs system, and beginning in 2008 the papers will be able to take part in a Web advertising system run by the search and Internet media company. So far 377 of Yahoo's newspaper partners have integrated their help-wanted listings from local classified advertisements into the nationwide HotJobs database. The partnerships have helped Yahoo increase revenue by tens of millions per year and have also provided gains for partnering newspaper publishers, according to consortium leader Lem Lloyd, who declined to offer specific dollar amounts.

Facing increased competition from online services such as the Craigslist Web site, newspapers in the consortium see the partnership with Yahoo as a way to keep their advertising income, a trend led by CareerBuilder.com which is a joint offering of the McClatchy, Tribune and Gannett companies. Yahoo's consortium has seen a steady increase in new newspaper partners, including the New York Daily News on November 9, and a group of twelve newspaper publishers in April.

Newspaper consortium partners are able to use Yahoo's search technology on their Web sites, and to share headline news from Yahoo.

Cox Newspapers, a unit of privately held Cox Enterprises Inc., has seen increases in the number of visitors to its seventeen newspaper Web sites since joining the partnership, a venture that has "gone very well" according to Leon Levitt, the company's vice president of digital media. Levitt told the AP that Cox's Austin American-Statesman newspaper of Austin, Texas, has seen an increase in online recruitment market share from nineteen percent last year to 40 percent this year.

While the 550 newspapers Yahoo has partnered with is impressive, there are a number of notable papers that have not signed on, including the top two publishers by circulation Gannett and Tribune, both of which are reported to be formulating online advertising plans, and the Washington Post Co. Tribune and Gannett along with MediaNews Group Inc. are reportedly looking into a possible joint advertising venture, Levitt said. The Washington Post is also said to be looking into forming a partnership.

The Yahoo newspaper consortium includes, among others, the following partners:

	Atlanta Journal-Constitution
	St. Louis Post-Dispatch
	Dallas Morning News
	San Jose Mercury-News
	San Francisco Chronicle
	Belo Corp.
	Cox Newspapers Inc.
	Hearst Newspapers
	Journal Register Company
	MediaNews Group
	E.W. Scripps Company
	Lee Enterprises, Inc.
	New Haven Register
	Memphis Commercial Appeal
	Houston Chronicle

The New York Times Web site differs from those of many competing newspaper sites in that almost all of its online advertising in sold in-house and not through the advertising networks used by the majority of publishers. With The Boston Globe and fifteen of The New York Times Co.'s regional group newspapers making a move to join the coalition, Yahoo may be hopeful that this is a precursor to an eventual partnership with the Times, whose Web site received seventeen million unique visitors in November, according to Internet traffic analysis company Nielsen/NetRatings, a number much higher than many newspaper sites.

Yahoo Group Adds Seventeen Papers, Now 550 Strong

The Times appears to be taking an approach different from its competitors, however, offering no guarantee that just because sixteen of the newspapers owned by its parent company have joined with Yahoo, that it will do the same. "We need to consider these things in a very different way and a different mind-set than some of our newspaper colleagues," said Denise Warren who is the Chief Advertising Officer of the New York Times media group.

Related Links:

• Wall Street Journal article
• Associated Press article
• International Herald Tribune article
• TechCrunch article
• WebmasterWorld's Yahoo Publisher Contextual Advertising Network forum