When I think of Fox's Q13 news, I imagine stories about goose droppings, car crashes, and Elvis Presley cell phones. (Those were Monday morning's top stories, by the way.)

So when an ad in the Puget Sound Business Journal last week announced a partnership between Q13 and the stiff biz rag, I about fell out of my chair. It's like the failed marriage between Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie--it just seems, well, unnatural.

The team-up began a few months ago, in January. Every Thursday night at 10:00, a Q13 reporter reads a top story from the week's Journal, and then embellishes it with video footage. The broadcast runs again Friday morning. The benefits to Q13 are obvious--instant cred, and the opportunity to capitalize on good, exclusive Journal content. "We don't get a lot of credit for some of the breaking news stories we do," admits Q13 News Director Todd Mokhtari. "The Journal will help fix that." (Maybe it's already working--according to the latest Nielsen numbers, Q13 Morning News beat out the CBS Early Show and ABC's Good Morning America last Wednesday.) And while Q13 wins through association, the Journal, which targets a small executive readership, gets more exposure. "It helps us go beyond our typical reader," says Journal publisher Mike Flynn.

Though the Q13/Journal team-up seems bizarre, media partnerships are becoming more common in Seattle, says local American Federation of Television and Radio Artists Executive Director John Sandifer. The partnerships often have PR and credibility value, he says, and also let TV broadcasters, for example, avoid hiring additional reporters, thereby cutting costs. Other local partnerships involve The Seattle Times, which runs the forecast of KING 5 weatherman Jeff Renner, and KIRO radio, which also runs KING 5 weather forecasts. Though he couldn't comment on specifics, Sandifer, who helps negotiate media labor contracts, says Seattle can expect a whole slew of new media partnerships shortly.

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