US: Washington Post and Baltimore Sun share content

Posted by Lauren Drablier on January 5, 2009 at 12:36 PM

The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun announced in December that they will begin sharing content including stories, photos and news.

The exchange is in order to cut costs and "benefit from each others expertise." For example, The Washington Post will use the Sun's regional coverage and the Sun will "tap the Post's federal government coverage."

This follows several other groups of papers that have announced content-sharing arrangements, including some in New Hampshire, Florida and Texas. In addition, several news organizations have recently entered into content sharing deals including the BBC, Politico and Reuters. In most cases, even though papers may be fierce rivals, a content-sharing deal allows them to cut staff but still expand coverage.

Much like the structure of the Florida deal, the Post and Sun will only be able to publish each other's stories online and only after the article has appeared in the originating newspaper, according to the AP.

Source: AP, Yahoo! Finance