The Contra Costa Times was in stable condition today, after it dislocated its shoulder while patting itself on the back as it announced that MediaNews and other second tier newspapers had cobbled together a classified ad deal with a struggling Yahoo. The deal will allow more than 150 papers to sell ads on the search engine’s online classified service.
While the Times buried the more balanced AP feed online, the front page print story bulged with forward-looking pronouncements from such Lieutenants of Industry as Dean Singleton and John Armstrong, instead of mentioning that Monday’s announcement comes just two weeks after Google, the acknowledged king of online ad sales, brokered a similar deal with 50 leading newspapers including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and other top-tier groups.
If self-congratulatory “We’re #2!” spin like this is what the Times means by “24×7 newsroom,” then maybe it should just pickup the AP feed afterall.
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