The Yahoo Watch

The ongoing upheaval at Yahoo is one of the most interesting business/technology stories around. In the wake of the collapse of Microsoft's effort to take over the company, key executives are leaving in droves and Wall Street sharks are circling. Reaction to the company's travails range from dire to humorous to VC Fred Wilson's counterintuitive argument that this is a cleansing moment that's good for the company. (Nah.)

Watching Yahoo implode is more than a spectator sport for a lot of newspaper companies. Former Knight Ridder executive Hilary Schneider has built an impressive and still-growing consortium of newspaper partners to share content, advertising and technology. I've always thought these deals made more sense for Yahoo than the newspapers, but at least they're giving the papers access to leading Web technologies and and online advertising network that they'd have difficulty getting on their own.

But with Yahoo in disarray, can the members of its newspaper consortium still hope to get the benefits of the partnership, especially in badly needed online ad revenue? That's the question that newspaper analyst Ken Doctor is asking, and it's a good one–especially now that Yahoo has brought Google into the relationship.

Ken writes:

In old times, newspapers would find this all great sport. They'd cover it big as the fascinating business story that it is, and that would be the extent of their interest. Now, though, more than 40% of US dailies by circulation have hitched their 2009 growth wagons to Yahoo and its emerging AMP ad platform. AMP is the most important part of the newspaper's consortium's deal with Yahoo. 

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The depletion of Yahoo's staff, if accelerated, could slow down AMP development and implementation. We don't know what's going on inside Yahoo, but recent defections signal that lots of people might be taking their eye off the ball. 

Ken's analysis of the situation is well worth reading–and pondering. As if the newspaper industry didn't have enough problems...