CBS News in partnership with Global Post

"We are putting our correspondents at their disposal, kind of a first line of defense in breaking news situations," Global Post co-founder Philip Balboni told AFP in a telephone interview.

"Our 70 correspondents in 50 countries can feed information back to CBS in a variety of ways," Balboni said. "It might be a phone interview that gets cut into a piece that CBS is doing. It might be a video interview.

"Where we have access to video we might send video for them to incorporate into a piece," he said. "What it doesn't include is classic television reporting by our correspondents. That's not what they do."

The Boston-based Global Post launched in January with the goal of covering the world for American readers. Its correspondents are on retainer or are paid per story and are not salaried employees. They include veterans of The New York Times, Newsweek, CNN and other major media outlets.

The partnership between CBS News and Global Post comes as many US news organizations are closing their foreign bureaus and cutting back on foreign coverage because of a steep slide in advertising revenue.

Balboni said he hopes the tie-up with CBS News "helps to build awareness of Global Post and to bring people to our site."

"What it means for Global Post is exposure to the CBS audience of our brand and our journalism," he said. "This partnership with CBS gives us the opportunity to reach millions of people."

He said GlobalPost.com expects to attract more than 450,000 unique users this month and was on track to meet its target of 600,000 unique users a month by the end of the year.

Balboni said Global Post was doing well meeting its goals despite the fact that it has been "a very, very difficult year for everyone with this devastating global recession."

He said 25 newspapers and websites have joined as affiliates taking stories from Global Post and a premium content membership service called Passport launched in April had attracted 500 members and was continuing to grow.

(c) 2009 AFP