The New York Times’ Deal with Monster: Sign of Hard Times

Monster Worldwide, owner of Monster.com, partnered with The New York Times in the spring of 2007 to share brands on the newspaper’s career sites. The deal isn’t shocking – many newspapers are forming partnerships with online companies that were once taking their ad business from them.

But in November, The New York Times ran a special for companies to advertise their job listing online and get a free print ad in the Sunday edition – the most read edition of the newspaper. According to a Mashable editorial, this deal is “one more nail in the coffin” for print newspapers.

But whose idea was this? 

It was Monster’s idea, according to Douglas E. Klinger, president of Monster North America. Monster approached The New York Times in the fall of 2006, along with more than 60 other newspaper sites. Monster’s goal is to tap into local markets, which newspapers still have a stronghold on. Monster can give local consumers better access to nationwide job opportunities that they might not otherwise see.

Other pairings

This isn’t a novel idea. In November, Yahoo reached an agreement with seven newspaper chains to integrate the newspapers’ job listings with Yahoo’s HotJobs Web site. Google, Yahoo’s nemesis, signed a deal in which it will sell advertising space in 50 newspapers, including The New York Times.

It sounds like The New York Times is selling out during hard times, but a spokesperson for the company, Abbe Serphos, said “This alliance is about the strength of The New York Times Company brand and local market penetration combined with Monster’s expertise, recruitment tools and brand strength. This is part of our long-term strategy to build our online recruitment product offerings and revenue.”

A step forward

I don’t see this move as something that will break The New York Times. Many people, including Mashable author Paul Glazowski, still want to hold on to the print version of the newspaper. Many people like to read the paper at their leisure, placing their breakfast plate on top of the bottom section of newspaper while they’re reading the top.

The New York Times has simply taken a step further into making their newspaper profitable in a space that is losing money. And, both companies’ stock prices went up after the deal was announced.

The move is something that the newspaper couldn’t not do when the trend of posting classified ads on the Internet is taking over the industry. JupiterResearch analyst Barry Parr told the E-Commerce Times, “We're in for a period of innovation as newspapers try to figure out what they should look like when all the news they print is already online.”

With online job sites taking away one of newspapers’ biggest profit centers, what else would experts expect newspapers to do? To me, this is a smart choice, and really, the only choice.