Finally some good news for Yahoo… Today it announced a partnership with 176 newspapers. Coverage on TechCrunch, NY Times, PaidContent, and others.
From the NY Times:
A consortium of seven newspaper chains representing 176 daily papers across the country is announcing a broad partnership with Yahoo to share content, advertising and technology…
This sounds to me a little like the beginning of the "Switzerland Inc." that Tom Mohr (ex-President of Knight Ridder) described in his manifesto a few months ago (this very important doc is behind a password on Editor&Publisher… urrggghhh! No link love here!… see Greg Sterling’s blog for some snippets).
From it:
To win, industry
leaders must adopt a Marshall Plan embodying two key objectives: the
migration to common platforms, and the acquisition of the ability to
sell top-quality online product to our advertisers. To fulfill these
objectives, the independent companies of a proud industry must
aggregate into an industry-wide network. In this network, each company
must cede some control over its digital future into a “Switzerland”
organization that manages the network.
Seems like Yahoo is now tackling some of the pieces of the first part – offering common technology platforms for classifieds, maps, etc.
On the second part, Quigo (full disclosure: which I founded, and am employed at) is the undisputed leader. As the NAA recently pointed out in a research called "Online Newspapers’ Response to Google":
"…Quigo easily took the category, having affiliations with half the respondents."
With Yahoo handling the classifieds/syndication/maps areas, and Quigo handling the performance-based advertising, it seems like the newspapers are starting to put together those building blocks for creating a Switzerland Inc. that will survive (and hopefully thrive!) through the Google storm.