• Ad Age, Friday, February 3, 2006 10:48 AM

Yahoo, reacting to widespread concern (fear?) among traditional news organizations that it was planning to establish a full-scale newsgathering shop of its own, told a group of media professionals the other day that they needn't worry. Neil Budde, the general manager of Yahoo News, said his company was mainly interested in aggregating news from other sources and finding ways to personalize news for its 25 million news-site users. Although Yahoo has lately made some moves that suggested it might be mounting an assault on traditional news media--hiring its own high-profile overseas newsman, for example-- Buddle had a clear message when he spoke to members of the Software and Information Industry Association: Calm down. "We're not interested in setting up a full news service with a correspondent in the White House." Among the more interesting Yahoo initiatives he described was a plan to allow users to see which are the most popular news stories of the day among their friendsor among information professionals. It's on the drawing board, Budde said.

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