Aggregators & Newspapers – A Perfect Match?

The head of a hybrid news aggregator has said it can work well in collaboration with online newspapers.

Chris Tolles told the Editors Weblog that he sees Topix.net as a “great partner to newspapers” because it creates a platform for users to discuss articles of interest to them.

The chief executive of the participatory news aggregation site also asserted that it can introduce regional newspapers to a new audience online.

Topix.net has so far enjoyed an impressive year in terms of traffic and is now ranked as America’s third most visited newspaper site.

In addition, the website has seen an increase in its numbers of active users and recently received over 140,000 comments in one day.

The secret of success? Tolles reckons the effective strategy pursued by Topix can apply to newspapers working in the digital environment.

“I would urge any news organisation starting today to figure out what they provide their audience, and then focus on that relentlessly.

“We did that with participation, but there are other ways to succeed.”

Topix allows users to select articles from over 50,000 national and local news sources by topic or by location.

It has investment from American regional news publishers Gannett Co , the McClatchy Company and the Tribune Company .