Forty-nine daily newspapers in the U.S. have formed a national sports content-sharing programme that will exchange stories and coverage via a communal Web site beginning in September, Editor & Publisher reported Wednesday.

The programme aims reduce the restrictions on content use by competing papers, requiring only that stories be reprinted with the proper byline and credit. Online use will be limited to a few paragraphs and require a link to the original source.

The group includes The Plain Dealer of Cleveland, the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, with most of the number of the collaborating papers sporting circulations of more than 100,000.

"It will have a Web site base where newspapers put their budgets, file stories and they will be made available to others," said Roy Hewitt, sports editor of The Plain Dealer, adding that members can use the stories they want, and edit them to fit their publications. The group will likely be more helpful for features and columns, rather than straight sports news, he said.

The approach is modelled on the Ohio News Organization, which the Plain Dealer and seven other Ohio dailies created last year. That group has a similar restricted Web site to which each paper contributes and takes news and sports stories.

The content share will begin with a pool from 49 papers but this is expected to increase. Hewitt said a launch date is not yet set, but the group is aiming for early to mid-September, according to E&P.