McClatchy and the Christian Science Monitor announced Monday that they have begun exchanging news stories from their bureaus in South Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Under the arrangement, McClatchy will provide the Monitor with stories written by Tyler Bridges, its correspondent in Caracas, Venezuela, and Shashank Bengali, its Nairobi-based Africa correspondent. In return, stories by the Monitor's Mexico City correspondent, Sara Miller Llana, and its New Delhi correspondent, Mark Sappenfield, will be shared with McClatchy's Web sites and 30 daily newspapers.
The agreement allows both news organizations to expand coverage even as they struggle to cope with declining circulation and advertising revenues. McClatchy has eliminated hundreds of jobs at its newspapers this year while the Monitor announced last month that in April it would cease publication of its daily paper, shift daily coverage entirely to the Web and publish a print edition once a week.
"Cooperation between McClatchy and the Monitor supports the continued professional coverage of international news," said Monitor editor John Yemma. "That's important because readers need independent and trustworthy sources of news to understand complex issues around the world."
"At a time when America's economy, national security, environment and even health are bound more closely than ever to the rest of the world, we're pleased to be able to give McClatchy readers access to some of the world-class reporting for which the Monitor is famous," said John Walcott, chief of McClatchy's Washington bureau, which oversees McClatchy's seven foreign bureaus.
Under the agreement, the news organizations don't share editorial direction or expenses. The agreement's initial term is three months, after which it will be evaluated.