80 more papers join Monster's group

The number of newspapers outsourcing job classifieds for their papers just keeps growing. The Associated Press is reporting that 80 additional newspapers have signed with Monster to provide job listings.

by Kristina Knight

Those 80 join 60 other papers, including the New York Times and the Boston Globe, already in the Monster group. Most of the new additions are from Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc.

Community Newspaper Holdings owns 93 daily papers; according to the deal, Monster and CNH will build 80 new co-branded websites with Monster providing the job listings. Each of those new websites will be tied to a newspaper from the CNH group.

Newspapers aren't the only sites in which Monster is interested. Last month, Monster entered into an agreement with several broadcast television stations to provide job listings on their websites.

Monster and other online job listings sites such as Yahoo HotJobs and CareerBuilder have been racing against one another to power the most job listings on the Internet. Yahoo boasts about 260 newspapers in their job listings consortium. For their part, newspapers seem to have no problem outsourcing classifieds. They are apparently choosing instead to focus on news, boosting an ever-decreasing readership and flagging advertising sales.

Whether the move by newspapers will increase ad sales or readership is unclear, but some analysts say outsourcing job classifieds is a mistake. With job listings a large part of paper-buying, offering listings for free online could decrease readership even more.