McClatchy Makes A Deal With Social Shopper Groupon
McClatchy (NYSE: MNI) Chairman and CEO Gary Pruitt has emphasized the newspaper publisher’s preference for ad support over paywalls, so affiliate sales revenue seems like a natural area for the company to pursue. The owner of The Miami Herald and The Sacramento Bee is doing just that through a partnership with local social shopping site Groupon. The collaboration begins with Groupon distributing content about shops and deals that are only available to 28 of McClatchy
this is a really stupid move by McClatchy… They are allowing Groupon to monetize their web traffic and community reach for a fee. Once they have raped them of their assets, they are free to walk away with it all – so a free lunch for Groupon for a marginal return to McClatchy. All it would take is for McClatchy to compete – ie: buy some off the shelf software and put their own sales force on the job AND use their print component to actually beat Groupon in terms of offering online and offline marketing. Better still – they should aggregate as many newspaper publishers as possible and build a common platform for everyone. It never ceases to amaze how short term, opportunisitic and foolish these newspaper groups are. Just another nail in the coffin I suppose