Newspapers have been struggling for a while now with just how to participate in the online medium in an impactful way. 

The biggest papers have been able to fund their own, major online efforts.  The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post are good examples.  However, local papers have had a bigger challenge.  Now they have a big solution. 

Partner with Yahoo!

Yahoo! announced this morning in a press release a partnership with more than 150 U.S. dailies reaching 38 states including the San Francisco Chronicle, The Dallas Morning News, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Houston Chronicle, Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and San Jose Mercury-News.  The press release explained:

Yahoo! and the consortium have initiated plans to work together in the following capacities:

Advertising: Use Yahoo!'s technology platform to sell online advertising for the newspapers' Web sites.

Search: Use Yahoo!'s search monetization functionality on newspaper Web sites, such as Web search, downloads of the Yahoo! toolbar and sponsored search.

Local: Offer Yahoo!'s local products such as Yahoo! Local listings, Yahoo! Maps and Event Listings on the newspaper Web sites.

Content: Use Yahoo!'s extensive network to distribute the newspapers' content in areas such as Yahoo! Search results, Yahoo! News and other content verticals.

Good idea. 

Those of us in the communications world need to start thinking about this and what kinds of trends it suggests.  First, it's not hard to see that locally reported news distributed by a partner like Yahoo! gets far better reach than a local paper's website.  This mean working with reporters in local markets  will be more valuable.  The partnership may also provide more potential outlets for stories and a broader set of reporters covering any given story. 

Let's see how this shakes out.  At first blush, it's very, very interesting.

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