One company dominates online news, sports and finance. It has more visitors to its news site than the runner-up in the category, CNN, more in sports than ESPN, and more in finance than Dow Jones, owner of The Wall Street Journal.
That online media colossus is Yahoo!, and it is in distress.
Despite a huge audience of 686 million users and resources like high-tech film studios and talent-filled newsrooms, Yahoo!’s future is in doubt. Potential buyers are circling to pick up parts after the messy firing last month of Carol A Bartz, Yahoo!’s chief executive.
Yahoo!’s portfolio of media sites is the company’s crown jewel, and potentially its savior. The company announced on Monday it had partnered Walt Disney’s ABC unit to showcase articles and videos from ABC News, and to create a co-branded web site for ‘Good Morning America’.
But the Yahoo! sites also suffer from symptoms infecting the rest of the company: shifting priorities and a shortage of innovation. Yahoo! has another problem: A lack of respect.
“If we ask somebody on the street, ‘What’s the top news brand?’ Would they say Yahoo! news?” said Mickie Rosen, the senior vice-president who oversees Yahoo!’s media properties. “The honest answer is they probably wouldn’t.”
Yahoo! built its huge audience largely by aggregating news from other sources. The Associated Press, US Weekly, Politico and The New York Times are just some of the partners that feed it content around the clock. Now, Yahoo! executives are pushing for original reporting, covering special events like the Emmys and creating exclusive online video programmes. This month, Yahoo! would exclusively video-stream a charity concert that includes performances by Lady Gaga, Usher and Bono. They say they have made it a priority to hire reporters and editors who write and break news online.
Rosen, a former executive with Fox Interactive Media and Disney online who joined Yahoo! 10 months ago, said Yahoo! had not done a good job of creating “a voice” that made people take notice. Fixing that falls in large part to Jai Singh, Yahoo!’s editor in chief, another newcomer. He helped build a newsroom for Arianna Huffington as a top editor at The Huffington Post, just as he built the newsroom for the technology news site, CNet.
“Yahoo! is going through a transformation in every respect,” Singh said. “We are trying to get our digital media chops. But transformations are not a snap of the finger.”
©2011 The New York Times News Service
