The Wall Street Journal reports that Yahoo is strengthening its original content.
The Internet company today will begin publishing columns about personal finance and investing by an array of writers, including such well-known names in the business press as Ben Stein, Robert Kiyosaki and Stephen Covey. The Sunnyvale, Calif., company has signed nine new columnists to write for its Yahoo Finance site and plans to hire as many as 30.
Yahoo’s move is part of a larger effort to add original news and entertainment programming to a Web portal that has long relied on media content provided by partners. The company hopes the original content will make its site more compelling to visitors and help it bolster advertising revenue, though it says it has no plans to become a traditional news organization.
The finance columns follow Yahoo’s announcement this month that it had hired journalist Kevin Sites, who has worked as an international correspondent for CNN and others, to report on global conflicts using video, audio and Web logs, or blogs. Mr. Sites’s first dispatches, from Africa, also are scheduled to be published on Yahoo’s site today. Yahoo’s sports pages already feature original commentary from a team of writers, including the former pro basketball players Clark Kellogg and Steve Kerr.
And Journal columnist Terri Cullen on Friday discusses how you can know whether your blog is worth selling.
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