WebProNews

Yahoo's Newspaper Consortium has occasionally seemed like a bad idea.  A troubled group of dead-tree entities working with an imploding Internet company . . . what good could come of it?  Well, as it turns out, 100 million visits to members' sites.

The system works as follows: Consortium members provide headlines to Yahoo, Yahoo puts them in some visible places, and then those links cause all sorts of people to click through to the newspapers' sites.

 

Anthony Moor, the editor of dallasnews.com, stated, 'It's like a firehose blasting us with up to 800,000 page views in just a couple of hours.  We've had placements that have accounted for up to 27 percent of the day's page views, and 65 percent of the day's unique visitors."

Increased traffic results in increased interest from advertisers, which puts the newspapers in a stronger financial position.

Yahoo sees some financial effects, too, of course, and the 100 million visits announcement conveys a solid, feel-good message of all-around success.  It'll almost surely cause a few more newspapers to join the 779 that currently make up the Newspaper Consortium.

Count on this getting mentioned during Yahoo's August 1st shareholder meeting.