Politico and Reuters Forge a News Distribution Alliance

Politico, the upstart news source from Washington, and Reuters, the venerable wire service, have joined forces to offer articles to newspapers and sell advertising on the papers' Web sites, the latest step in the rising competition among electronic news media to fill the void left by the shrinking print business. Politico recently began offering papers a limited number of free articles, and beginning this week the papers that sign onto that service, the Politico Network, will also see the stream of daily output from Reuters, and choose up to 10 articles and 10 photographs each day to use in print or on the Web. Politico would gain the right to sell ads on the newspapers' Web pages containing the Politico and Reuters articles — though not the printed pages — and would share the revenue with the papers. At the same time, Reuters will begin carrying most of Politico's work on its news wires.