September 9–16, 1999

on media

Enemies, A Love Story

In the world of print journalism, your competitors are obvious. You can bet that the reporters at the Chicago Sun-Times flip open the Chicago Tribune every morning with a certain level of anticipation, wondering if they got scooped. The same holds true in all markets with two daily papers — and strong weekly papers — including Philadelphia.

The world of online journalism operates in a completely different sphere, however. The line between a site’s competitors and its partners is murky.

Take, for instance, the Real Cities Web site (www.realcities.com). Knight-Ridder, the newspaper chain that owns both the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, runs Real Cities. In addition to hosting the newspapers, the site provides links to movie showtimes, local maps, shopping and even mortgage information.

Real Cities competes with a similar Web site, run by Internet giant America Online, called Digital City (www.digitalcity.com). Log onto that Web page and find out where to get great deals on a new car or where auctions are being held this weekend, and skim classified ads from hundreds of national firms.

And beginning last week, you can also read a handful of stories from the Daily News and Inquirer when you log on to Digital City.

Arrangements such as this have created an entirely new business dimension.

"It is called ‘coop-etition,’" says Cynthia Funnell, of Knight-Ridder’s New Media division. "It is a win-win situation. They provide distribution for us, we provide content for them."

Digital City officials concur that collaboration among Internet rivals has blurred the lines.

"It’s not uncommon to partner and compete with someone at the same time," says Digital City’s Diane Sebold. "You see it happening a lot. AOL has a deal with the New York Times, and the New York Times competes with its Web page."

Times they are a-changing, say Web players.

"In the old world, it is clear whom your partners and competitors are," says Fred Mann, general manager of www.philly. com, the Web site that hosts the Inquirer and Daily News. "That is not so in the digital world."

Mann acknowledges that his own Web site contains content similar to Digital City’s, and that the audience demographics for each site are comparable.

"But one additional thing Digital City has is real distribution possibilities," he stresses. "AOL is giant — it is the gateway to the Net for many. Our thought is that if we have a limited amount of our content on their site, they will link viewers back to our site."

And who is getting the better end of the deal?

"Who knows?" Mann asks. "We are going to try this for a year."

Knight-Ridder is supplying Digital City with just two full stories daily — and brief summaries of a few others.

"It is just a little bit, and deliberately so," Mann says. "We don’t want to provide so much content that people stop logging on to our own site."

Knight-Ridder is actively recruiting other large city newspapers to join its Real Cities network, to broaden its national appeal.

—Gwen Shaffer

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