Gannet Co., which produces 90 daily newspapers; The New York Times; the Tribune Co.; and the Hearst Corp. are forming quadrantONE, a company that will cater to national advertisers who want to target specific local audiences, The New York Times reported.

QuadrantONE will be based in Chicago and hire 17 employees, who will place ads in papers across the country, the report said.

But newspapers deemed national, such as USA Today (a Gannet newspaper) and The New York Times won't participate. Newspapers deemed local or regional, such as The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times and The Des Moines (Iowa) Register will participate.

The joint venture will allow advertisers to reach 50 million unique online visitors a month and is meant to keep the newspaper companies competitive while being pursued by the likes of Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT), the report said.

"We want to control our own destiny," the Hearst newspapers' senior vice president for digital media, Lincoln Millstein, told the Times.