N.Y. Times, CNBC to team up
New York Times Co. and business news channel CNBC will share video and stories from each other’s websites in an alliance that could bolster them against an expected assault by News Corp.
Under the deal, New York Times stories will be posted on CNBC’s website and the Times will use CNBC video for its site. Neither company will pay the other for its news.
“They have something we don’t have enough of -- video -- and we bring in-depth business reporting,” said Larry Ingrassia, the Times’ business news editor.
“You try to make alliances with partners who you think can add value to your report, and to whom you can add value,” he said.
The video clips will be two to three minutes long and will include items such as CNBC interviews with newsmakers in the business world, Ingrassia said.
The deal also gives the Times and CNBC access to each other’s breaking business news as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. prepares to fight them both with the nascent Fox Business Network cable channel and the recently acquired Wall Street Journal.
Still, the deal is not specifically designed to defend against Murdoch, Ingrassia said.
“This is a world in which there is not just one competitor,” he said. “Clearly, the Journal is the main competitor of the Times . . . but this is not aimed at any single competitor.”
CNBC wants to take advantage of the Times’ analytical capabilities, said Allen Wastler, managing editor of CNBC.com.
“They connect the dots really, really well,” he said.
The deal brings several advantages to the Times, including prolonging the time that people linger at the website and offering more video -- an increasingly popular pastime on the Internet as more people use high-speed connections.
News websites want people to stay with them for longer periods as a way of convincing advertisers that they have a willing and regular audience, but increasingly they are showcasing material from their partners to drive traffic to each other’s sites.
This becomes more important as the amount of news and analysis proliferates on mainstream news sites, as well as on blogs and other online information sources.
“If we don’t point people to what’s good out there, people are going to find it elsewhere,” Ingrassia said.
The New York Times has a Web content-sharing arrangement with other channels within the NBC Universal unit that owns CNBC. NBC Universal is majority-owned by General Electric Co.
