In an interview with AFP, director of editorial programming Jessica Barron said:

Yahoo News is a news organization. We have been doing a lot of original reporting and we are going to be doing a lot more.

Why is this important and scary?

1. They already have millions of viewers – half a billion, according to Barron, although Comscore puts the number at about 140 million uniques per month.
2. According to this report from the AP (pdf), young people get their news casually and in snippets while doing other things – like checking their Yahoo mail.
3. They can afford to staff a big news bureau. Like maybe AP or Reuters big. See where this is going yet?
4. They understand the Internet and have tons of data about what people are interested in and what they click on. Barron said Yahoo’s news judgment is constantly shaped by how many people “click” on news stories and the instant comments by readers.
5. They have tons of other properties (everything but the kitchen sink, you might say) so mash-ups and context and insinuating all kinds of other data into stories and story presentation will be dead simple for them.

Not content to make money on the back of the stories you produce, Yahoo is now in competition with you on your core product: original reporting. Look out!

We want to be the number one independent news source on the Internet.

Right. And who will stand in their way?

Via: The Editor’s Weblog