Newspaper Deals with Job Sites Still Valuable?

By: Jennifer Saba Print advertising revenue is taking a beating, with the lashings expected to grow more severe as the year wears on. That means the focus on hiking online revenue becomes more prominent with each passing day, as newspapers gingerly shift their business model from ink and paper to bits and bytes. Publishers have been especially active when it comes to classified revenue migrating to the Web, particularly the help-wanted category.

Last fall and well into this year, the industry was busy selecting the best online recruitment partners (many of which were once considered the enemy), including the big three: CareerBuilder, Yahoo's HotJobs, and Monster. So, given all this action, E&P decided to check in and see how things are progressing with those partnerships, and others.

CareerBuilder, jointly owned by Gannett, Tribune, and McClatchy, nearly looked like it was going to a loose a limb this year. McClatchy executives were very vocal about evaluating other options, with the potential of taking its 14.4% stake elsewhere. Part of the problem is that when McClatchy renegotiated the former Knight Ridder's ownership in CareerBuilder, it did not have access to the same sales packages that Knight Ridder apparently once did. McClatchy felt the difference: Year-to-date through August, its classified employment revenue is down 16.2%. The company negotiated a new, equitable deal with CareerBuilder that was announced in September.

"We had discussions with other companies, but ultimately stayed with CareerBuilder," says McClatchy Co. Vice President of Interactive Media Christian Hendricks, who declined to offer specifics.

The landscape for Web recruitment is getting extremely competitive, notes Borrell Associates CEO Gordon Borrell, who adds that CareerBuilder has to make some tough choices: "I would say that McClatchy, Gannett, and Tribune have to determine if they are in the newspaper recruitment advertising business, or the recruitment advertising business." He says that if it's the latter (which he suggests is the case), there will be cannibalization.

Monster and Yahoo both have experienced their share of volatility this year as well. Executive changes, layoffs, and identity theft have affected Monster. Jordan Gold, vice president of product marketing at Freedom Interactive, a Monster partner, says his company liked the job site's program and national brand identity. Freedom launched some of its papers, including The Orange County (Calif.) Register, on Monster's platform last year and rolled out others in Q1 in 2007. Freedom encountered some glitches with feeds and product training during the switch, but nothing out of the ordinary. Gold says, "Monster seems like they are pretty heavily focused on the newspaper partnership. Anytime anything happens," such as a change in leadership, "we get assurances that the newspaper partnership is important to them."

The more than 300 newspapers that have launched with Team HotJobs are on target, says Lem Lloyd, Yahoo's vice president of the newspaper consortium. He acknowledges that in the beginning there were issues with feeds and sales channel conflicts, but they are smoothing over any rough patches via collaboration. HotJobs is already seeing benefits in traffic numbers and in some markets the growth in listings boosted HotJobs to the No. 1 slot, he adds.

Not all newspapers are aligned with the three tenors of online job search. The Job Network, a joint venture between TownNews and software company Redmatch, signed up nearly 700 newspapers with its platform ? which Kevin Hoppes, vice president of sales and marketing, describes as the "eHarmony" of job sites. Using Redmatch technology, a candidate is matched with an employer based on very specific data.

For example, at the South Bend (Ind.) Tribune, a person fills out a profile that specifies the exact kind of job, education level, and salary expected. If someone types in, say, "account director," which could cover a whole gamut of industries, the site whittles down the possibilities with a series of follow-up questions. This helps ensure that the applicant and the employer are the best possible match.

"We are not like CareerBuilder or other job boards," says Hoppes. "We are not interested in promoting our brand. We are really interested in promoting the newspaper."