Feature Idea

Last week, Yahoo announced a deal to work in partnership with seven newspaper groups in the USA, covering 176 newspapers.

For my feature idea, I am going to look at how search engine partnerships such as this would have an effect if this occurred in Europe? Could this happen to local newspaper groups in England? The Yahoo group are looking towards advertisement and content for the time being but where will this eventually lead? Crucially, large companies are looking for expertise in local community papers. The BBC are already on the case with their increased involvement in "Where I Live." How will local papers react?

I hope to speak to journalists in local newspaper groups such as Sarah Radford of the Newbury Weekly News to ask her thoughts on what they could offer the big companies. I would also like to speak to local newspaper editors to see what they think of this business model approach, which is in contrast to Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of MySpace.