Yahoo adds 17 to troubled newspaper coalition
Yahoo president Susan Decker's newspaper consortium is just fine, thank you. Just ask Yahoo PR, which today announced that 17 new newpapers have joined, raising the total to 415 dailies and another 140 weeklies. It's a big number; the result of a rare good idea out of Yahoo. Problem is, Yahoo's blowing it.
So far, the consortium has only lead to newspapers sharing their job listings with Yahoo's HotJobs. The deal was supposed to give newspapers access to Yahoo's online advertising expertise, with Yahoo reps selling ads on newspaper sites, and newspaper reps selling region-specific ads for Yahoo's local properties. But technical progress has been slow. Tired of waiting, five of the nation's largest newspaper companies — Gannett, Tribune, Hearst, MediaNews, and Cox Newspapers — already announced consolidated their sales forces and go ahead without Yahoo. And the technology needed to implement the deal, we hear, continues to be way behind schedule. Adding more partners for Yahoo, just means having to say sorry 17 more times.
