• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, September 5, 2007

Internet job site CareerBuilder.com will remain partly owned by The McClatchy Co. now that the newspaper publisher has resolved issues pertaining to its affiliate agreement with the site. McClatchy said Tuesday it completed talks with Gannett Co. and Tribune Co.--which also have stakes in the site--which were intended to renegotiate the affiliate agreement.

"It was our clear preference to remain with CareerBuilder, and we are pleased to continue our affiliation with them," Gary Pruitt, chairman and chief executive officer of McClatchy, said in a statement on Tuesday.

McClatchy is holding on to a 14.4% stake in CareerBuilder. It acquired a 33% stake in the site when it purchased Knight-Ridder Inc. last June, and sold 18.3% of that share to Gannett and Tribune shortly thereafter.

Also on Tuesday, McClatchy Interactive's Real Cities Network said it now includes an additional 51 Web sites from MediaNews Group, the fourth-largest U.S. newspaper company. The network of local news destinations now includes all 82 MediaNews newspaper sites and 1,500 total sites. It reaches 44 million unique monthly visitors, based on June figures from Nielsen//NetRatings.

Some of the sites added through MediaNews include dailybreeze.com in Los Angeles, santacruzsentinel.com and greenwichcitizen.com.

As with CareerBuilder and Real Cities, McClatchy has chosen its online investments carefully. Earlier this year, it reached an agreement with Yahoo to syndicate its foreign correspondents on the online portal. The project, named "Trusted Voices," involves McClatchy reporters in select regions--such as Iraq, the Middle East, China and Latin America--filing traditional news stories as well as personal blog reports only available through Yahoo.

Also this year, McClatchy abandoned its online ad partnership with Tribune and Gannett to join an ad network managed by Yahoo. Last fall, the group--which also includes Hearst Corp. and MediaNews--signed an agreement with Yahoo's Hotjobs to provide classifieds ads. McClatchy did not participate in the Hotjobs deal because of its existing stake in CareerBuilder.

In June, Kevin McClatchy, a director at the publishing company, acquired a minority stake in Gather.com, a social network for adults focused on niche interests and activities. The move was a personal investment, but got industry tongues wagging about strategic cooperation between the companies in the future.

Established job hunting sites like CareerBuilder and Hotjobs face increasing competition from non-traditional players. In May, for example, Facebook added free classified ad-listings to its popular social networking site. The launch of the service, dubbed Marketplace, coincided with the launch of a similar offering from rival social network Friendster.