ity Xpress (www.cityxpress.com), an organiser of online auctions, has developed a new tool for newspapers to beat competition from new media, in the form of online classified auctions. The company's eMarketplace Xpress offers newspapers an online marketplace that supplements their existing classifieds. The platform offers complete ecommerce functions - ad acceptance and payment, browsing and searching and other features for online transactions.

City Xpress has staged about 500 auctions for newspapers since 2002, generating revenue of $125 million for them, according to the company. There are 300 clients associated with City Xpress, representing newspapers from the US, Canada and Europe. The big names include The New York Times Company, Knight Ridder, Barclay Brothers and Trinity Mirror. ... more