The (re)launch of Inform yesterday generated a lot of newspaper coverage. But the question I have is why haven’t the newspapers done something similar with a property they actually own: Topix.net. On the “back end,” Topix and Inform may be doing somewhat different things technologically but it all amounts to the same thing for the end user: more news content.
I’ve previously advocated that newspaper use Topix’s news aggregation capabilities and (now) community content to deliver more value to newspaper sites. The only integration that I’m aware of to date are modules/boxes containing related news that link back to Topix. (See e.g., “Related news from the web” [right column].)
I think there’s clearly much more that could be done with an asset like Topix than is currently being done.
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Vaguely related: Barry Schwartz at SEW posts about Google reportedly paying content providers it includes in Google news. Assuming this is accurate — I believe it is — it’s a good development.
Screenwerk 
August 2, 2006 at 12:23 am
We do.
We power “related links” on article pages for all 177 Tribune, Gannett and former Knight Ridder publications.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/15174261.htm
lower right corner.
We did this over a year ago — while we probably need to uplevel the PR around this, I will be surprised if this effort works any better for Inform than their previous strategy.
Chris Tolles
VP Marketing
Topix.net