Newspaper, online alliances make for better bedfellows

By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor


ORLANDO, Fla. — What a difference a year makes for newspapers and their online partners.

Twelve months ago, newspaper execs wondered if their partnerships with the likes of Google, Yahoo and Monster would take root. Today, all of the energy is focused on what’s next.

Case in point: Yahoo, which now boasts more than 630 newspapers in the HotJobs consortium first launched in late 2006.

“The Yahoo consortium partnership has been a very significant and wonderful experience for myself and a lot of our newspapers as well,” said Gregory Schermer, vice president of interactive media for Lee Enterprises.

Lee was one of the consortium’s original members, along with Hearst, MediaNews Group, Belo, Cox Enterprises, Journal Register Co. and E.W. Scripps.

Schermer said the potential to tap new opportunities led Lee to participate in the consortium, a goal that was reached last year when the partnership expanded its mandate to include content slated for MyYahoo’s Local module.

Next up is the introduction of a national graphical ad network, designed to let newspapers take advantage of Yahoo’s ad-serving, targeting and inventory management capabilities. The network, now being tested at two newspapers, will be rolled out later this spring with final deployment expected this year.

Zillow expanding

Google, meantime, is expanding the features it provides newspapers through its Print Ads program, including the introduction of an ad creation tool and a forthcoming analytics app (see related story, page 58).

Finally, Zillow.com is planning to strengthen its newspaper alliance. The real estate Web site last year struck a deal with Lee and several other publishers to advertise selected listings both on Zillow and in papers’ classified ad pages.

“When we were looking at a newspaper partnership six to eight months ago it became pretty clear to us that we could work well together,” said Mark Earner, Zillow.com’s director of business development.

The company has approximately 150 people on staff, of which more than 100 are engineers dedicated to writing code for the site’s various real estate features. A partnership with newspapers is ideal for Zillow because it ties the company with a local sales staff and a trusted name in the community.

“We got this technology and asked what can a newspaper do,” said Earner. “In our conversations with local brokers (we discovered) there was one person they trust and it’s their newspaper.”