The seeds of the deal announced today in which seven major newspaper companies will work with online giant Yahoo Inc. were planted 18 months ago, said William Dean Singleton, vice chairman and chief executive of Denver-based ap, one of the seven publishers.
At the time, MediaNews and Yahoo were hammering out a deal to allow advertisers to post job listings in MediaNews’ newspapers and on Yahoo’s online classified service, HotJobs.
Initial results from the partnership were positive, Singleton said, prompting other newspaper companies to clamor for similar pacts with Yahoo.
“We’ve always believed that strategic partnerships with others that do things differently, or better, make a lot of sense,” said Singleton, who has led a range of joint ventures and partnerships in the newspaper industry.
In December, Singleton took part in a brainstorming session with top executives, some from New York-based Hearst Corp. and Yahoo, including Terry Semel, Yahoo’s chairman and chief executive.
The talks focused on possible partnerships that would generate revenue for both Yahoo and the newspapers.
“We felt this should be much more comprehensive than employment,” Singleton said.
The new partnership could give newspapers a bigger chunk of the estimated $12.4 billion in annual local online advertising that is to be generated by 2010, up from $3.4 billion today, according to Bank of America.
The agreement comes a decade after companies such as Microsoft – with a service called Sidewalk – and AOL’s Digital Cities venture rolled out local news and entertainment sites aimed at swiping readers and advertisers from daily newspapers.
Those offerings stumbled, at least in part, because they were unable to form partnerships with newspapers, said John Morton, a newspaper-industry consultant based in Silver Spring, Md.
“There is one thing that newspapers have that no one else has: (local) information,” Morton said.
Morton said challenges exist. He said it’s not clear how well the newspapers will work with Yahoo, or how receptive consumers will be to a Yahoo-branded search function incorporated in the newspapers’ websites.
Staff writer Will Shanley can be reached at 303-954-1260 or wshanley@denverpost.com.
