Not one to be left out by growing overlap elsewhere around News Corp (NYSE: NWS). Sun Online is now starting to formally link out to other news sites in the Murdoch portfolio. The site has added a footer to its homepage and all of its section pages, linking directly to 10 stories each on four other sites in the group – not just domestic Sky News and Times Online but US stablemates FoxNews.com and New York Post. It’s not reciprocal for The Sun, however.
Sun Online editor Pete Picton told paidContent:UK the site already had good relations with group stablemates, occasionally running stories from News.com.au for example. But this addition is not so much a News Corp-level initiative; the idea came from Sun Online itself, Picton said.
It is, though, the latest example of News Corp units helping each other out. Sky News, which already syndicated web video to Times Online, is now starting to co-produce new videos with the paper. Bosses of WSJ.com, which is already cross-selling Times Online ads in the US, met the paper site’s chiefs in London in May, intending to add their business tools on the site, though we haven’t seen much evidence so far, at least not WSJ-branded.
WSJ.com already does a co-branded business section with the joint News.com.au/The Australian site – with WSJ.com set on European growth in ’09, who’d bet against a similarly greater presence for WSJ.com on Times Online?