• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, June 26, 2007

The divide between newspapers and TV continues to shrink online. The latest evidence is an effort by the Sun-Times News Group to build out programming niches for its newspaper Web sites with video producer AnswersMedia.

Sun-Times, which owns over 100 papers in the Chicago area, including the flagship Chicago Sun-Times, tapped AnswersMedia to supply how-to videos for a new across-the-chain food site.

“We’re looking at using video in a variety of content channels and this is the first arrangement of this type for us,” says Fred Lebolt, vice president of new media for the Sun-Times. He adds that the company is discussing development of additional channels with AnswersMedia and other video providers.

Under the deal, the Sun-Times newspaper Web sites will mainly sell local and regional ads in and around the videos, while AnswersMedia handles national ad sales for the clips. The agreement includes an undisclosed revenue-sharing arrangement.

Lebolt says the Sun-Times already has a partnership for local news video on its sites with Chicago’s WMAQ-TV, but the AnswersMedia pact signals a broader content push. “We see this as a model for us to rapidly deploy online video content in a way that’s appealing to both readers and advertisers,” he says.