Career site Monster is facing the defection of one of its largest, remaining North American newspaper publishers next month when Gatehouse Media switches its employment sites to ZipRecruiter.
The announcement was made today that beginning Oct. 1, ZipRecruiter would power the media company’s 550+ websites, which collectively serve some 21 million users. The sites include 125 daily newspapers nationally and over 300 weeklies, most of them free distribution.
“We’re excited to team with GateHouse Media to power their recruitment services,” said Ian Siegel, CEO and co-founder of ZipRecruiter. The deal is ZipRecuriter’s largest partnership with a national media company, according to the announcement.
Most of the Gatehouse newspapers serve smaller, local markets. However, where other newspaper groups in the U.S. have been consolidating, Gatehouse just last month reached a deal to acquire Morris Communications, owner of 11 daily newspapers, including the 100,000 circulation Times-Union in Jacksonville, Florida.
When the deal closes, Gatehouse will own newspapers in 37 states nationally.
This is the third major defection of newspaper sites this summer. Last week, McClatchy announced it was switching from CareerBuilder to Recruitology for its newspaper employment sites. Ironically, McClatchy is a part owner of CareerBuilder.
In July, Gannett, which was a part-owner of CareerBuilder until it was spun-off from TEGNA, switched its newspaper network from CareerBuilder to RealMatch.
Two decades ago, Monster aggressively pursued newspaper partnerships, attracting a growing number of titles by the turn of the century. In response, three of the largest newspaper groups joined forces to buy CareerBuilder, creating a powerful network of major dailies across the country that successfully challenged Monster’s supremacy.
Now Monster is owned by Randstad which bought the formerly public company last year for $429 million. A majority share of CareerBuilder was sold in June by its media partners, McClatchy, TEGNA and Tribune Media Company.