Online Newspaper Network Adds MediaNews Group Sites

The Real Cities Network, which brokers ads on a collection of local news Web sites, has expanded its relationship with MediaNews Group to include an additional 51 properties.

Real Cities is owned by McClatchy Interactive, a division of The McClatchy Company and it already represented 31 of MediaNews Group’s Web sites. With the expansion, the network expects “to increase the size of our footprint in the top 25 DMAs,” said David Fitzpatrick, vice president of sales for McClatchy Interactive.

“We felt that it would be advantageous to us both to make their entire company an affiliate,” he said. “What we’re doing is offering up our expertise in becoming a national sales channel for them. They have empowered us to become a sales extension of MediaNews Group.”

New Web destinations in California, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and several New England states join a network of approximately 1,500 sites nationwide. Both McClatchy and MediaNews Group are part of the Yahoo newspaper partnership project, which is initially focusing on recruitment classifieds via HotJobs. Fitzpatrick said the partnership between the two companies won’t affect their relationship with the Yahoo newspaper project. Rather, he said the Yahoo newspaper initiative helped the two publishers come together in the first place.

“It doesn’t affect what’s going on with Yahoo, but Yahoo has been a way to kick start us having a deeper relationship with all the newspaper consortium members,” he said. “Participating with the newspaper consortium has helped to drive some positive momentum for all the members, including MediaNews Group.”