Yahoo takes more steps into online magazine world

GIANT INTERNET player Yahoo is pumping in more of its own original content to its pages, a prospect that could well give established players like the Wall Street Journal and Business Week an attack of the heebies and the jeebies.

According to the Journal itself, Yahoo has signed up a raft of columnists. It's hired nine columnists and could boost that to 30.

According to a VP in charge of content, Yahoo has "no plans" to compete with traditional media and so has signed authors of business books. It doesn't want to cheese off the Wall Street Journal, and other partners including Reuters, the LA Times, USA Today and others. It does want to sell advertising against the content, however.

It's already got writers working on foreign news such as ex-CNN foreign correspondent Kevin Sites, and some sports coverage by hacks which is all of its own.

So when is a duck a duck? Surely when it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and if it's a drake in the mating season behaves like a drunken chav.

More at the Wall Street Journal. µ