Topix and AP Sign News Distribution Deal
From the Official Topix Blog, Chris Tolles announced that Topix has signed a deal with the Associated Press: “to guide users to the most authoritative source of breaking news across the country by applying our clustering and localization technology to a feed of AP stories.” More from the official press release:
“The Associated Press has entered into a 15-month agreement with news aggregator Topix.net aimed at increasing the flow of Internet traffic to member newspapers that contribute breaking news to the AP.
Under the arrangement, AP will work with Topix.net to guide the news aggregator’s zip-code search engine to the most authoritative sources of breaking news stories across the country. AP will identify for Topix.net the stories that local newspapers contribute to AP so that the search engine can link to them. Newspapers that don’t wish to participate can opt out. Topix.net will also use its NewsRank(TM) technology to tag AP-originated content with the identity of the most geographically relevant member publication, for use on its own site, as well as providing that locality information back to the AP.”
New media and old media are getting together quite nicely nowadays, what with Topix and the AP, and yesterday with Sphere and Time. Dan Gillmor and Jeff Jarvis would be proud.
