Yahoo, Newspapers and Quigo

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.