McClatchy Abandons Tribune and Gannett For Yahoo Ad Project - WSJ

The Wall Street Journal reports that the nation's third newspaper largest publisher, The McClatchy Company, has abandoned a newly begun national advertising partnership with Tribune Co. and Gannett Co., the nation's number one and two publishers, and opted instead to join a rival group negotiating with Yahoo that establishes a common online platform. The Yahoo group is led by privately owned Hearst Corp. and MediaNews Group and includes 12 publishers who together print more than 250 newspapers. The 12 initially reached an ad sharing agreement with Yahoo over its Hotjobs website in the fall; McClatchy has joined up in time to get in on a more widespread arrangement which could be reached as early as the coming week. It would require the newspapers to power their websites with Yahoo search; Yahoo and the newspapers would in turn sell ads on each others' Web sites, sharing the revenue. In addition, Yahoo would get to feature content from the newspapers on its individual channels, such as news, finance and technology. The partners will gain an enhanced ability to attract national advertisers. According to anonymous sources, the ability to use Yahoo's new ad-serving technology is why McClatchy abandoned the Tribune-Gannett venture. The companies still plan to continue partnering for their joint CareerBuilder website.

Sources: Wall Street Journal, AP
Commentary: The McClatchy Company: Focusing on Local Online Expansion • Project 'Open Network' -- Nation's Big-Three Newspapers to Join Forces? • Yahoo: Estimates Up On Success Of Panama
Stocks/ETFs to watch: The McClatchy Company (MNI), Yahoo! (YHOO). Competitors: Gannett Co., Inc. (GCI), Tribune Co. (TRB), The Washington Post Co. (WPO), The New York Times Company (NYT), Google (GOOG). ETFs: Internet Architecture HOLDRS (IAH)

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