So, it may be that Yahoo isn’t much of a Kraken these days, with the alleged purchase of MyBlogLog really more of a in-the-process-type rumour, but that hasn’t stopped some large newspaper conglomerates from partnering up with Yahoo to help save themselves from the monetization blues.

But, I suspect that it must a red herring of some kind.

That is, surely the heads of these newspapers have some other kind of plan in place; a “real” plan in the works — because surely they won’t be depending on this kind of partnership for their future survival.

I mean, surely their survival depends on more than simply earning a few more pennies per visitor.

Sure, partnering up will allow them the short term benefits of allowing Yahoo to broker ad placement on their news, drive more traffic to their sites, and leverage Yahoo’s technologies for their own purposes.
But this stopgap solution that helps them monetize their traffic in the short term must surely lead to some kind of master plan in the long term — this conglomerate must have some kind of strategy to join the wider movement of news media to embrace, or take the first tentative steps to acknowledge user generated content, the rise of news aggregators, social content sites, and the intimacy of blogging.

Doesn’t it?

I mean, without such a plan, the Yahoo deal would be no more than a short term tactical bandaid covering a giant wound threatening to overcome an entire industry.
Newspapers would never rest their laurels on such a short term gambit.

… would they?