Judgment on September 3, 2008: While a plausible idea, this did not occur in the allotted timeframe, which the community correctly predicted.  Judged at 0%.  -- The Industry Standard

Original prediction: First the Washington Post finalized a syndication deal with TechCrunch in May. Today, GigaOM announced a similar deal with BusinessWeek. Back in the Fall of 2007, the New York Times adopted a related, if more diversified strategy with its Blogrunner acquisition and implementation. And just this week the Guardian (UK) announced that it had acquired PaidContent for $30 million-ish. The times, they are a-changin' indeed.

The recent news of the Tribune Company's latest round of layoffs is no doubt putting pressure on management to rethink current strategy, which clearly isn't working. (It is no secret that newspapers in general have been slow to perfect their online offerings, and especially the Tribune Company among them). Not to mention that with the dropoff in talent is likely to come a dropoff in production-- and pageviews. Looking to blogs (and not just technology ones, of course) is a sound decision for any major news organization searching for cheap, plentiful and timely content to help prop up editorial and drive traffic.

The logic behind such a deal is clear -- the Tribune remains, despite recent setbacks, one of the largest and most powerful newspaper organizations in America, and ReadWriteWeb likewise one of the few top-10 blogs that remain unaffiliated with any major news organization.

More on the Tribune Company from the New York Times:

"Tribune Company is under great financial pressure from rapidly falling ad revenue and some $8 billion in debt that it took on last year to go private. The company has agreed to sell Newsday, the newspaper based in Melville, N.Y., on Long Island, and it is trying to sell the Chicago Cubs baseball team. The company also owns The Baltimore Sun, The Orlando Sentinel, The Hartford Courant and several smaller papers, as well as about two dozen television stations."

The caveat?  Well, the Tribune Company might just manage not to see the writing on the wall -- but that's for you to decide.

This is a prediction that the Tribune Company and/or ReadWriteWeb will announce a syndication deal by September 1, 2008. The details of the deal need not be revealed, nor does any of ReadWriteWeb's content actually need to appear on a Tribune Company property's website by the deadline -- the deal need only be announced. In the case that the deal only includes a single property such as the Chicago Tribune (to the exclusion of other Tribune properties) this prediction will still be judged favorably.