From the New York Times:

Politico, the upstart news source from Washington, and Reuters, the venerable wire service, have joined forces to offer articles to newspapers and sell advertising on the papers' Web sites, the latest step in the rising competition among electronic news media to fill the void left by the shrinking print business.

Politico recently began offering papers a limited number of free articles, and beginning this week the papers that sign onto that service, the Politico Network, will also see the stream of daily output from Reuters, and choose up to 10 articles and 10 photographs each day to use in print oron the Web.

Politico would gain the right to sell ads on the newspapers' Web pages containing the Politico and Reuters articles -- though not the printed pages -- and would share the revenue with the papers.

At the same time, Reuters will begin carrying most of Politico’s work on its news wires.

Read the rest here.

Below is an internal notice sent to Politico staffers from Jim VandeHei and John Harris re: the partnership:

Gang,

We wanted to send you a quick update on a cool expansion of our Politico Network - the project Roy, Beth and many others have been working on for months. As you will see from the NYT story below, we announced tonight that Reuters will be joining the network next month, offering its content to the 100-plus papers and TV stations that currently run our content. Reuters will also add Politico news stories to its wire service here and overseas. You might not realize it, but tons of people are reading your content not only on Politico but also in some of the top newspapers in the country. This deal should vastly increase the audience globally.

It is no secret the newspaper industry is in trouble and searching for premium content. The Politico Network is our effort to provide such content -- and see if we can make money for the newspaper partners and us in the process. If you want more details, please email Roy, Beth or Kim.

Thanks,

VandeHarris