According to a press release in the Topix blog, Tribune Company, Gannett and Knight Ridder have jointly acquired 75 percent of Topix.com. Ownership among the three of the largest news organizations in the country are split evenly with each company gaining a 25 percent stake.
According to Rich Skrenta, CEO and co-founder of Topix.net, “This transaction provides us with the resources to be the best place to connect to a very wide range of news on the Web. We all serve the news enthusiast, so it’s a natural partnership. Gannett, Knight Ridder and Tribune generate valuable online content and Topix.net is dedicated to making that content easily found. By believing in the potential of our ideas and technology, they have made an investment in the future, and we’re thrilled to be a part of it.”
Here’s a little background about Topix.com, ‘Topix.net was founded in 2002 with the specific mission of providing users the ability to quickly and easily find targeted news on the Internet. With thousands of news sources continually releasing stories twenty-four hours a day, finding relevant news can often be a time consuming task. For complete coverage, users are forced to visit many different sites and sift through a variety of stories that may or may not be relevant to them. Topix.net alleviates this problem by creating thousands of topically driven, specific news web pages and populating each of those pages with only news about that particular topic. So, whether you are interested in finding all the news about your community, or your company or industry or perhaps even your favorite team or celebrity, Topix.net provides an intuitive, easy way to find the targeted news that is relevant to you.”
Now, why is all of this important? For those who subscribe to the “Internet will develop like Television” theory with Google, Yahoo! and MSN paralleling both the growth and flattening interest in CBS, NBC and ABC, this may give some more ammunition for this argument. Some recent studies have pointed out that Internet users jump to using more than one search engine for their specific needs. With the backing of the three large newspapers’ news databases and advertiser base, Topix could be the next premiere news search portal on the Web. Over time, it may elbow out Google News, Yahoo! News and MSN News as users become more sophisticated and expand their searches beyond the Big 3.
Just like CNN created the first 24 / 7 news channel, the Internet may be ripe for its own version of this. News search portals running 24 / 7 is nothing new to the Internet, though, but having one mega-site serving up relevant news gathered from 10,000 new sources from around the world, rather than from just its own company’s resources may make Topix a big player in the months and years to come. Time will tell. Wait for the late-breaking news on this one.
