The Sun-Times Media Group has struck an alliance with Monster.com on forming a series of online recruitment services and co-branded job sites across the publisher’s 70 newspapers. The deal comes over six months after Chicago-based Sun-Times joined the Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Newspaper Consortium, which includes access to Yahoo’s Hot Jobs site. More recently, newspapers and online recruiters have seen help wanted ads decline precipitously as the economy worsens and unemployment ticks higher. The deal could help Sun-Times generate some more incremental revenue and attract more readers to its classifieds. For Monster, it represents the growth of a media alliance that includes 250 newspapers and their sites, such as the NYTimes.com, and over 100 local TV outlets. Release.

The AIM Group’s Classified Intelligence blog notes that in joining Monster, the Sun-Times has jettisoned its partnership with CareerSite and away from the ChicagoJobs.com network, which have lost a number of its affiliates to the larger alliances run by Monster and HotJobs. 

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