In July 2007, revenue at all of Gannett’s branches declined. All but one, online properties. Online revenues grew 37.3% in the same period, and classified online revenues now represent about 50% of domestic community newspaper online revenues, according to Seeking Alpha.

A quick look at Gannett’s online assets quickly reveals that the newspaper company has extended its operations far beyond the reach of its newspaper websites.

Interestingly though, many of these diversified operations still revolve around a revenue source that once was solely on newspapers’ turf: classifieds.

Gannett owns Classified Ventures, in partnership with Belo Corporation, The McClatchy Company, Tribune Company and The Washington Post Company. Classifieds Ventures groups a wide range of websites that sell classifieds.

Gannett thus has stake in CareerBuilder, which was founded in 1995, and serves as a centralized classifieds jobs site jointly owned with Tribune and McClatchy. CareerBuilder is now the number one job site in the US, with over 21 million monthly unique visitors and about 1.5 million job postings per month.

The three newspaper companies also own ShopLocal, a website that links potential customers to sellers. Although it has less than $100 million in revenue, the website counted 9 million unique visitors in March 2007, up 26% year-on-year.

Classified Ventures’ holdings also include real estate sites such as Apartments.com and Homegain.com, online automobile website Cars.com, as well as travel site ShermansTravel and social news community site Topix.

Niche sites, such as IndyMoms.com, are expected to bring in an estimated $3 million per year in revenue.

On the other hand, Gannett’s online portfolio seems to be lacking “in some of the most important and rapidly growing categories like finance, dating & matchmaking, gaming, music, photo-sharing, film, and sports,” writes Seeking Alpha.

Considering newspapers’ roots and establishment in domains like business, personals and sports, Seeking Alpha suggests that these be the next areas in which Gannett – and newspaper companies – invest online.

Source: Seeking Alpha