Should Yahoo Buy Gawker, <i>The New York Times</i>?

So what's in store for Yahoo? New CEO Carol Bartz will be announcing the company's first quarter results tomorrow, and all signs point towards the numbers being less than spectacular. What's a CEO to do? Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster appears to have some suggestions: Why not buy Gawker? How about the New York Times? Says Jaffray's in 'An Open Letter To Carol Bartz:'Acquire a major print new company with global scale and stature in addition to a blog network experienced in creating short content to generate significant page views. In particular, he says that the New York Times and Gawker Media would fit this profile. "These content acquisitions would allow Yahoo to own and distribute a collection of the best content on the Web in addition to generating short-form content to maximize page views and stickiness."Crazy? We've actually speculated on a number of our podcasts whether it would be smarter for MSM companies to purchase established blogs rather than attempt to start their own from scratch (we're not the first to do so, by the way). But a Yahoo-owned Gawker? We asked Gawker-head Nick Denton what he thought of the suggestion. I suspect that there might be an obstacle: Valleywag's relentless coverage of Yahoo's travails. Oh, and Gawker's chronicle of the death agonies of the New York Times.What about vice-versa? How does a Gawker-owned NYT strike you? Says Denton: "There are a couple of struggling properties that we're looking at -- but nothing quite as gigantic or as struggling as the New York Times!" Struggling properties? Denton would only go so far as to say the "properties" were online, not newspapers. Perhaps there is a little bit of extra cash to spread around Denton tells MediaMemo's Peter Kafka that first quarter ad sales are a bit better than he'd famously forecast last year (don't get your hopes up, they're not good either!).

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Should Yahoo Buy Gawker, The New York Times?

Glynnis

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