CBS News has formed a partnership with GlobalPost, the foreign news startup Web site that began in January, to provide reporting from its approximately 70 correspondents in 50 countries. The arrangement allows the “Tiffany Network” to further cut back its foreign news staff.
In the beginning, at least, GlobalPost reporters will provide only background information. They will not appear on the air. CBS will use its own reporters and anchors to flesh out coverage for broadcast.
“We hope to become an important source of international news for Americans, and this partnership is a big step in that direction,” said Philip S. Balboni, a founder of GlobalPost. CBS News suggested that the partnership with GlobalPost, in which the network will pay a monthly undisclosed fee to the Web site, represents an expansion of the news divisions’ efforts to cover the rest of the world.
GlobalPost, based in Boston and founded by Balboni, the creator of New England Cable News network, and Charles M. Sennott, a longtime foreign correspondent at “The Boston Globe,” uses a federation of correspondents who also have an ownership share in the site, to report from all over the globe. It has about 20 investors, including the lead investor Amos B. Hostetter Jr., chairman of the venture capital firm Pilot House, as well as Benjamin B. Taylor, former publisher of The Globe, and Paul Sagan, chief executive of Akamai Technologies.
The Web site’s revenue model includes a paid membership service, syndication and display advertising. Balboni said the site averaged more than 400,000 users a month.
Many of the journalists employed by GlobalPost formerly worked for American newspapers, which have mostly forsaken foreign bureaus because of the cost at a time of declining circulation and advertising revenue. The site has produced an increasing amount of work in video, but GlobalPost’s video generally features a lone reporter shooting, narrating and doing some of the editing on a piece.
