Newspapers Buy Topix.net

Story Text:
Rich Skrenta reports that 75% of his Topix.net has been sold to three newspaper groups. Topix has been a hot property for some time, and news of the deal whilst surprising, makes an awful lot of sense, particulary from the point of view of a very scared newspaper industry...
The papers involved are..

• Tribume Group
• Gannett
• and Knight-Ridder

In explaining the deal Skrenta said

First, the basics: We're taking a majority equity investment, and
will remain both editorially and structurally independent from our
new partners. I'll continue being the CEO and will report to the
board of directors, and our team will continue to develop Topix.net.
Why did we do this deal? Given our desire to grow Topix.net,
there was no better option we could imagine. Tribune, Gannett and
Knight Ridder bring enormous assets to the table. Not just financial
backing, but online audience, content assets, and deep advertiser data.
Operating alone we'd be aggressively seeking deals to work with the
various parts of T/K/G anyway.

and as John Battelle pionts out,

None of the new companies will have the ability to control the company, and this alone says volumes about how Web 2.0 is terrifying the newspaper industry. They can't even buy their competition outright!

There's plenty of coverage on this rather hot topic today, here are a few of the better reports:

• News: Topix Beds The Newspapers...
• Three Newspaper Publishers Acquire 75% of Topix net
• Newspaper Giants Buy Web News Monitor
• Topix.net to be acquired by newspaper J-V

Congratulations and good luck Rich!