The total membership of Yahoo’s (NSDQ: YHOO) Newspaper Consortium - 26 publishers, but not all their papers - are joining with the upstart newspaper ad alliance quadrantOne, which was formed last month by the New York Times Co (NYSE: NYT). and Tribune, Gannett (NYSE: GCI) and Hearst. The addition of Yahoo’s members is a coup for quadrantONE, since it was created as an alternative to Yahoo’s newspaper network.

Specifically, the Yahoo members joining quadrantONE’s partnership include A.H. Belo (NYSE: BLC) Corporation, Cox Communications, Lee Enterprises (NYSE: LEE), The McClatchy Company (NYSE: MNI), Media General (NYSE: MEG), MediaNews Group, Morris Communications Company, The E.W. Scripps (NYSE: SSP) Company and others. The addition will bring quadrantONE 138 sites and representing more than 250 newspapers. However, not all of the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium’s 630 papers are included so far; quadrantONE plans to add an unspecified number of other newspapers in Yahoo’s group over the year. It now reaches over 20 major markets and about a dozen smaller areas. Overall, quadrantONE claims that its network of newspaper and broadcast sites represent in excess of 70 million unique monthly visitors. Release

-- AP: Rusty Coats, head of product development for Media General’s online division, was reserving quadrantOne for its bigger market entities like The Tampa Tribune site, TBO.com. The ad sales QuadrantOne will be handling will not overlap with its participation in the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium.

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