MediaNews Outsources User Input

A US publisher has signed a deal to hand over management of its forums and comments sections to a third party.

Web journalists at titles including the San Jose Mercury News and the Denver Post will no longer handle messages on articles submitted by users as control is being given to Topix.

As a community news aggregator, Topix provides details of hyperlocal news from thousands of sources and claims to provide links to some 360,000 forums.

Topix Chief Executive Chris Tolles told Online Journalism Review that the deal brings many benefits to MediaNews: “They get content up without any work on their part.”

He added: “And there are opportunities down the road for them to actually integrate their journalism and the commentary - using forums as a place to get stories, to take the pulse of the community.”

Comments auto-moderated by Topix will appear on both the newspaper website and in the relevant themed section on the Topix site, which Tolles asserted will drive more traffic back to the original article.

The practice of outsourcing user input has come under fire from some media commentators and things got pretty heated when Tolles took the opportunity to answer critic Howard Owens via the journalism.co.uk blog.

Reaction to the deal can also be found at Poynter Online, while further details on the story are available here.