The Google/Yahoo antidote?

Interesting question by Ken Doctor to McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt:

5. Will you push TMG (TGM?) for new collective investments, for instance, in buying an ad matching company, like Quigo or Context Web, so that the news industry’s reliance on Google and Yahoo for paid search/contextual revenue can be reduced?

Well, I certainly agree that any newspaper (or for that matter, any other traditional media company) in the country that's still relying heavily on Google AdSense for monetization is committing long term suicide. Ad sales is one of the three core assets a media company has (the others being owned content and readership).

A media company outsourcing its ad sales, is like a restaurant shutting down its kitchen and outsourcing the food part of the business to McDonalds.