Yahoo! Announces Partnership With The Blaze for Election Coverage

Do you Yahoo?

That was the question Yahoo! once used in its viral marketing campaign. The answer: about 90 percent of the country's voting-age population does. And today, The Blaze is happy to say that it does, too.

In a Tuesday press release, Yahoo! announced that The Blaze will be one of its 2012 election coverage partners.

"Yahoo! News is doubling down on delivering premium original content and reporting, expending its robust team of journalists," the release said, and that includes soliciting the "insights and viewpoints" of "journalists and opinion-leaders from established and emerging news outlets such as The Atlantic, The Blaze, FactCheck.org, Forbes, National Constitution Center, National Journal, Our Time, Reuters, The Week."

“In this time of enormous economic and global challenge, the Yahoo! audience will determine the next president of the United States,” Ross Levinsohn, executive vice president of Americas at Yahoo!, said. “We’re building Yahoo! News to be the source for political coverage, harnessing the voices, opinions and proposed solutions of Americans from across the country to deliver content and reporting focused on the issues and decisions that voters and their families must deal with daily.”

"Yahoo is promising the most extensive political coverage in its history," The Hollywood Reporter said, which will also include expanding on its relationship with ABC News.

In addition to the partnerships, Yahoo! announced a series of other election endeavors that include a "Newsmaker" interview series with the GOP candidates (we featured Ron Paul's interview earlier Tuesday); “Remake America," which will be an original web show following eight American families facing economic issues; and a new website called "The Signal."

According to the press release, “The Signal” is an "up-to-the minute web site devoted to elections: predictions, sentiment, games, and commentary" that will utilize Yahoo's "planet-scale cloud technology and deep research resources to run sophisticated prediction models using live data, to capture the national sentiment and accurately predict outcomes on everything from who the front-runner is for the Republican Party, the likelihood that Obama will win re-elections, and how other political news, economic and financial indicators might impact the elections."

A beta version of that site can be seen here.

So what does this mean for Blaze readers? First, you can expect to see more information soon on The Blaze's election coverage. And second, you can expect to see your favorite Blaze writers, as well as unique Blaze analysis, sprinkled throughout Yahoo's election coverage. (You can already check out Blaze commentator Will Cain's latest thoughts on Jon Huntsman.)

Blaze Editor-in-Chief Scott Baker explained it to me this way: "We're excited to be part of such an ambitious effort to cover such a pivotal election. The Blaze approach will be truly multimedia. Look for vigorous reporting and sharp commentary with an emphasis on video and visual insight."

"Yahoo is a fantastic partner with unsurpassed reach," Blaze President Betsy Morgan added. "The approach they are taking to 2012 election coverage is innovative and unique. We are looking forward to working with them."

Blaze readers have already made our site one of the 25 most valuable blogs on the internet. The site 24/7 Wall St. ranked The Blaze number 13 on its annual list, ahead of sites such as Newser, Boing Boing, and Gothamist.

Since launching 14 months ago, The Blaze has garnered over 800 million page views. In fact, in October we logged 5.2 million absolute unique visitors (according to the analytics site Omniture), which is more than double the traffic from a year ago.

The Blaze started with a small staff of four last August, and operated with that number for the first five months. Now, the site is comprised of 32 employees ranging from editors to sales people, and has been executing planned expansion beyond the web site to include a print magazine, Blaze news anchors on radio and GBTV, and other endeavors to come.

Kind of makes you want to shout "yahoo," doesn't it?