Yahoo, McClatchy in News Agreement

Mar 29, 01:48 PM

Current Headlines: By Dale Kasler, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.

Mar. 29--The McClatchy Co., seeking to broaden its Internet reach, will soon begin supplying news and blogs from its overseas bureaus to Yahoo Inc.

The alliance, announced Wednesday, represents the latest effort by traditional media companies like McClatchy to tap into an audience that increasingly gets its news online. Although McClatchy's 31 daily papers operate their own Web sites, the Yahoo arrangement gives the Sacramento-based publisher access to a far larger audience.

The deal calls for McClatchy correspondents in Baghdad, Beijing and elsewhere to supply news stories and blogs to the Yahoo News site under the banner "Trusted Voices." The news stories also will be made available to McClatchy's newspapers and others that use McClatchy content.

"This is a deal that has enormous potential," said Howard Weaver, vice president for news at McClatchy. Weaver said the program could be expanded to include dispatches from McClatchy's Washington bureau.

Weaver and Yahoo officials declined to say how much Yahoo will pay McClatchy for the content.

Other publishers are forming alliances with the big Internet companies. Last fall a group of newspaper chains, led by Hearst Corp. and MediaNews Group Inc., announced a deal with Yahoo to cross-sell advertising. The deal could eventually include sharing of news content.

Although newspapers' own Web sites are growing in audience and ad sales, publishers are searching for ways to ramp up the numbers more quickly to offset a troubling decline in print advertising and circulation revenue.

McClatchy, which owns The Bee, is the third largest U.S. newspaper chain. Yahoo's news traffic is the largest on the Web and is about six times greater than McClatchy's, according to data measured by Web consultant comScore Media Metrix and supplied to The Bee by Yahoo.

"Our agreement with McClatchy will evolve over time, but right now we're probably most focused on introducing Yahoo's audience to McClatchy journalism," Yahoo news Editor in Chief Neil Budde said in a prepared statement.

The Yahoo deal "may well be a part of the emerging new media picture," Weaver said.

McClatchy shares closed at $31.36, down 25 cents, on the New York Stock Exchange.

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