Local News Links on Yahoo! Drive 100 Million Visits to Newspaper Consortium Web Sites

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Yahoo! (Nasdaq:YHOO) today announced that the company has driven more than 100 million visits to Newspaper Consortium¹ member Web sites through the distribution of local news headlines across the Yahoo! network. The milestone is a significant achievement for the Newspaper Consortium, an innovative partnership between Yahoo!, one of the most trafficked destinations on the Web, and 779 local newspapers nationwide.

“Our overall partnership with Yahoo! has been game-changing, and has brought new energy to our content and business.”

Under a content-distribution program, Newspaper Consortium member sites provide news headlines to Yahoo! for placement across a wide range of Yahoo! properties, including the top-ranked Yahoo! Homepage, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance and Yahoo! Sports², as well as across Yahoo! Mobile and on Yahoo! Messenger. The links take Yahoo! users directly to the full articles on the local news sites.

Yahoo! increasingly has been opening up its network to aggregate content from top-tier publishers to provide users with the most personally relevant experience, and links to local news on Consortium members’ sites are an important part of Yahoo!'s local offering. Some members credit the premium placements they receive on Yahoo! with the record growth in the number of page views and unique visitors that their sites are now seeing.

“It’s very exciting when our news makes it to Yahoo.com’s top features,” said Anthony Moor, Deputy Managing Editor, Interactive, The Dallas Morning News, and editor of dallasnews.com. “It’s like a firehose blasting us with up to 800,000 page views in just a couple of hours. We’ve had placements that have accounted for up to 27 percent of the day’s page views, and 65 percent of the day’s unique visitors.”

“Placing Newspaper Consortium headlines on Yahoo! has given our users access to some of the nation’s highest-quality reporting, and made our sites more relevant than ever,” said Scott Moore, Senior Vice President and head of Media, Yahoo!. “Whether we’re providing story headlines about a locally headquartered company on Yahoo! Finance or news about our users' hometown teams on Yahoo! Sports, the ability to link to a national network of newspapers gives our audience a more valuable local perspective.”

The content-distribution program builds on Yahoo! and Newspaper Consortium members’ complementary strengths. It provides member newspapers with access to Yahoo!’s highly engaged community, which accounts for 78 percent of all Internet users in the U.S.³ In turn, Yahoo! users benefit from the local perspective that the Newspaper Consortium members provide.

Yahoo! Buzz has been a key driver of traffic to Consortium sites. By measuring several variables, including user votes and search popularity, Yahoo! Buzz identifies interesting and timely stories. Top stories are then given primary editorial consideration for feature placement on the Yahoo! Homepage, making Yahoo.com even more relevant for consumers.

“One of Media General’s major initiatives is to grow audience in our local markets,” said Kirk Read, President of Media General’s Interactive Media Division. “Yahoo!’s multiple entry points, incredible reach and tremendous site content get the great journalism created by Media General reporters and producers before news consumers when, where and how they want it.”

Content distribution is just one of the components of this unique and deep partnership between America’s newspapers and Yahoo!. Initially focused on providing a powerful local and national recruitment network through Yahoo! HotJobs, the Newspaper Consortium is expanding to provide member newspapers with Yahoo!’s best-of-breed advertising platform technology. In addition, newspaper sales forces will have the ability to sell targeted Yahoo! inventory to their local clients.

The New York Daily News, one of the Consortium’s largest members, has seen significant traffic from its editorial collaboration with Yahoo!.

“More than the bursts and spikes, sharing our content with Yahoo! brings a steady growth in traffic to our site, which provides us with more inventory to sell to our advertisers,” said Jon Beck, Vice President, Online Advertising and Business Development, The New York Daily News. “Our overall partnership with Yahoo! has been game-changing, and has brought new energy to our content and business.”

In June of this year, The New York Daily News Online recorded year-over-year growth of 109 percent in the number of unique visitors to its site.⁴

About Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet brand and one of the most trafficked Internet destinations worldwide. Yahoo! is focused on powering its communities of users, advertisers, publishers, and developers by creating indispensable experiences built on trust. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit pressroom.yahoo.com.

¹Newspaper Consortium members are: A. H. Belo Corp., Black Press, Buffalo News, Calkins Media, Inc., Columbus Dispatch, The Columbian Publishing Company, Cox Newspapers, The Day Publishing Company, The E.W. Scripps Company, GateHouse Media, Inc., Hearst Newspapers, Herald Media, Inc., Independent Newspapers, Journal Register Company, Journal Sentinel, Lee Enterprises, McClatchy Company, Media General, Inc., MediaNews Group, Inc., Morris Communications Company LLC, New York Daily News, New York Times Regional Group, Paddock Publications Inc, Paxton Media Group, Philadelphia Media Holdings LLC, Shaw Newspapers, Sun-Times News Group, Stephens Media Group, Times-Shamrock Communications, The Times Publishing Company, the Tribune Review Publishing Company and Yankton Media.

The newspapers represented by the Newspaper Consortium include major market dailies such as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Boston Herald, Chicago Sun-Times, The Commercial Appeal (Memphis), The Dallas Morning News, The Denver Post, The Florida Times-Union, Houston Chronicle, Las Vegas Review Journal, Miami Herald, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, New Haven Register, The Philadelphia Daily News, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Rocky Mountain News, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Sacramento Bee, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News and The Tampa Tribune.

²ComScore, June 2008: Yahoo! Homepage, News, Finance and Sports are among the Yahoo! properties that ranked number one in their respective categories.

³ComScore, June 2008: Yahoo! averages 25.6 visits per user, remains the most frequented property among the Internet’s top sites, and has the largest share of online time.

⁴Nielsen Online, June 2008