New York Daily News joins Yahoo Newspaper Alliance

The New York Daily News, fifth largest newspaper in the U.S., has joined the Yahoo Newspaper Alliance, which enables Yahoo’s HotJobs to power the publication’s career site. By entering into the coalition, the New York Daily News will allow Yahoo to advertise on the site.

From the article Yahoo’s Newspaper Alliance Adds Major Player:

For newspapers, the Yahoo partnership represents a comprehensive strategy for tackling the Web after years of losing circulation and classified ads to the Internet portals and free listings sites such as Craigslist. But the industry continues to suffer steep declines in readership.

The consortium has been the center of controversy since its inception last year. Many analysts believe that the growth experienced within the program thus far cannot sustain itself over a longer period of time.

But Borrell and other analysts warn that it will be hard for newspapers teaming with Yahoo to sustain high growth rates over time. “They’ve basically relinquished ownership of the help-wanted advertising franchise,” Borrell says. “HotJobs now owns it in those markets because it’s merely using the newspapers to build up the HotJobs brand.”

The New York Daily News is but one of nearly 400 newspapers that have joined the consortium.

Related:

Fifth largest newspaper in U.S. joins Yahoo

Flashback: 176 Newspapers to Form a Partnership With Yahoo

Digitize your personal library – then distribute it…illegally…

Atiz Innovation, Inc., a company specializing in content digitization, announced the release of BookSnap, the “first consumer book ‘ripper’.” For a mere $1,595, researchers, genealogists and readers have the ability to digitize their collections at a rate of 500 pages per hour. Using OCR (optical character recognition) technology and outputting to PDF format, publications can now be accessed through e-book readers and mobile devices while on the go.

“We designed the BookSnap for people who have always wanted to digitize their personal libraries but haven’t had a viable way to do it – until now,” said Nick Warnock, president, Atiz Innovation. “We sat down and said, ‘Can we innovate reading?’ How do we take what we are doing with our professional products and make a version tailored to the consumer?’ The result gives archival power to everyone, and changes the way people convert and access their books collections.”

The greater-than $1,500 price tag may still be a deterrent for the average consumer, however, we can expect to see distribution of these ‘digital copies’ take off just as we did with the onset of the mp3. In addition, copyright will become a greater issue for publishers as well as those who take it upon themselves to scan and distribute their personal libraries.

Though a consumer-grade book scanner may be the answer for family historians or personal archivists with the intent to preserve and share their microcosmic histories, a device of this kind is bound to cause havoc and we can expect discussions about digital rights management to flourish. The main question that needs to be asked of Nick Warnock, president of Atiz, is “Are you going to take responsibility for illegal content distribution and the lawsuits that follow? Or, are you going to take responsibility for the product you are releasing and become involved in the fight for DRM reform?”

McClatchy shares drop 69% since purchase of Knight-Ridder

Tuesday was a sad day for McClatchy with shares closing at an unholy $16.73, reflecting a 69% drop from $53.24 per share since the company’s purchase of Knight-Ridder in 2006. McClatchy reported a $1.3 billion loss for the first nine months of 2007, a drop of nearly $16 per share.

Gary Pruitt, McClatchy’s chairman and chief executive officer, said “The challenging business environment, coupled with the drag on our stock price, has resulted in our taking an impairment charge to write down the value of goodwill, mastheads of certain newspapers, and other assets on the company’s balance sheet in the third quarter. However, these are non-cash accounting charges, and nothing about them changes our operations or our ability to reduce debt.

When McClatchy took on Knight-Ridder for a total of $6.4 billion, the company assumed an additional $2 billion in debt. Not only did McClatchy possibly over-pay for the acquisition, but the mortgage crisis has affected ad revenues, particularly in the states of California where some of their major holdings, like the Sacramento Bee, reside. In addition, McClatchy owns nearly 50% of the Seattle Times, which the company valued at about $102 million at the time of the Knight-Ridder purchase, however, on Monday a report listed the publication’s value at a mere $19 million, reflecting a drop of nearly 80%.