Monster, newspapers in Net ad deal

The Internet job search company Monster Worldwide Inc. is expanding its links to the newspaper industry.

Monster, a New York company with most of its operations located in Maynard, yesterday disclosed a partnership with Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. of Birmingham, Ala. Community Newspaper controls 93 daily newspapers in the United States, including papers in Gloucester, Newburyport, North Andover, and Salem. Monster and Community Newspaper will set up 80 Internet sites linked to the firm's newspapers. The sites will present employment ads sold through Community's local papers and enable easy searches of Monster's nationwide database of job openings and job hunters.

"We thought they would be a very, very good fit for us," said Steve McPhaul, Community's senior vice president of newspaper operations. McPhaul said the deal would let advertisers in his company's small town newspapers more easily tap into the national labor market.

In February, The New York Times Co., which owns The Boston Globe, disclosed a strategic alliance with Monster. The Globe and Monster launched a co-branded Internet site for job hunters last week. Such alliances are becoming routine as Internet sites try to reach out to traditional buyers of newspaper ads, while the newspapers try to capture the revenue they're losing to Internet advertising. The giant Internet company Yahoo Inc., for instance, has classified advertising alliances with 264 newspapers in 44 states.

Peter Newton, senior vice president and general manager of media alliances for Monster, said his company is doing deals with newspapers to increase Monster's access to local advertising markets throughout the United States. "We are very interested in the great reach that newspapers have," Newton said. "They still are the local audience leader."

But Barry Parr, media analyst for JupiterResearch in San Francisco, said that as more people get their news and information through the Internet, the day may come when Monster and other online firms could dispense with their print partners altogether. "In the short term, it looks like a good deal for the papers, but in the long run, it seems problematic to me," Parr said.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.