Cox Newspapers, publishers of papers including the Palm Beach Post, Austin American-Statesman, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (among 14 other local dailies) is closing its Washington Bureau. The bureau was founded in 1974 and has won Pulitzers and all that jazz. This also means the end of Cox's five foreign bureaus! Also they're selling three papers! Cox Enterprises co-owner Anne Cox Chambers is the fourth richest woman in America, with an estimated net worth of $13 billion. She shares the privately-owned company with the children of her late sister Barbara Cox Anthony, whose net worth was estimated at a paltry $12 billion upon her death last year. (Pictured: James M. Cox founds a newspaper that will no longer be profitable in 100 years.) [AP via Google]

Yahoo's online advertising partnership with newspapers is facing a new threat — from the newspapers themselves. Five of the nation's largest newspaper companies — Gannett, Tribune, Hearst, MediaNews, and Cox Newspapers — are teaming to create a one-stop shop for online advertising. A single sales force will be able to sell ads across all major markets. Hearst, MediaNews, and Cox remain members of the Yahoo consortium, but the new partnership is foreboding, especially for Yahoo president Sue Decker, who helped engineer the deal and keeps holding it up as a totem of Yahoo's new partnership strategy.