Yahoo's newest money-minded hire

Yahoo on Monday said it hired career expert James Citrin as a financial columnist, in an apparent bid to boost traffic to its finance site after faltering last year.

In addition to Citrin, Yahoo said it will now host news and information from CNNMoney.com, The Wall Street Journal and Barron's on its finance site.

Citrin is only the latest hire for Yahoo in its strategic focus to develop original content. Last October, Yahoo Finance brought on several columnists, including economist and entertainer Ben Stein, to create unique material. More broadly in news and information, the company has launched original multimedia site "Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone" to cover war news in the last year.

Still, traffic to Yahoo Finance, one of the network's more important moneymakers, fell in 2005. The site's page views fell from more than 800 million in January 2005 to just a tick above 500 million in January of this year. In addition, Microsoft's MSN Money site now brings in more unique visitors than Yahoo Finance, though Yahoo Finance still leads on total page views.

Citrin is a senior director of well-known executive search firm Spencer Stuart, where he founded the global technology, communications and media practice. Citrin's column, "Leadership by Example," will appear twice every month on Yahoo Finance.