WebProNews

Yahoo has expanded its network of newspaper partnerships to 634 newspapers that includes 425 dailies that account for 30 percent of all U.S. daily newspapers and 37 percent of all Sunday circulation.

Yahoo's additional partnerships include Shaw Newspapers and its 25 daily and weekly papers in northern Illinois and Iowa. The Buffalo News that covers Buffalo, New York, the Times Publishing Company that prints The Erie Times in Erie, Pennsylvania, and the Columbian Publishing Company, which produces The Columbian in Vancouver, Washington.

The company said it has launched co-branded HotJobs sites with more than 425 newspapers and Yahoo Search is on 126 newspapers. Yahoo is also in the initial phase of advertising cross-sales with sales staff at a number of newspapers integrating Yahoo inventory into sales packages for local advertisers.  Yahoo said it plans to expand the program in the coming months to allow its members to target ads to specific audience segments.

"We're in the infancy of a relationship between Yahoo! and our newspaper consortium that already exceeds our expectations," said Jay Smith, President of Cox Newspapers, Inc.