About Us

Topix is the leading news community on the Web, connecting people to the information and discussions that matter to them in every U.S. town and city.

A Top 20 online news destination (ComScore, November 2007), the site links news from 50,000 sources to 360,000 lively user-generated forums. Topix also works with the nation's major media companies to grow and engage their online audiences through forums, classifieds, publishing platforms and RSS feeds.

Based in Palo Alto, Calif., Topix LLC is a privately held company with investment from Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI), The McClatchy Company (NYSE: MNI) and Tribune Company.

Topix LLC is not affiliated in any manner with Tokyo Stock Exchange, Inc.

How do you build a better news site?

The answer seemed simple in 2004: aggregate news from thousands of sources, create thousands of topically driven news web pages and populate each of those pages with only news about that particular topic.

The Topix team did just that. We created artificial intelligence algorithms that continuously monitor breaking news from over 50,000 sources, 24 hours a day.

These algorithms read every story as it is released and then categorize each one into one or more of the 360,000 news pages, including pages for all 32,500 US zip codes, 5,500 public company and industry verticals, 48,000 celebrities and musicians, 1,500 sports teams and personalities, and many, many more. Pretty soon, millions of people were visiting the site every month.

But visitors wanted more: they wanted to tell us what they thought about the news on the site. They jammed our email and voice mail with comments about the articles and stories that mattered to them. In response, we added forums to the site in December 2005.

And then it got really interesting.

A news community is born.

More than 1 million people posted 5.5 million comments, adding more than 30,000 comments a day. And many of the most passionate discussions were happening at the local level.

But even with 50,000 news sources, there just wasn't enough local news - and what news there was, couldn't be tuned finely enough with algorithms alone.

So, in April 2007, we decided to open up our site, and give anyone the power to discuss, edit and share the news that matters to them.

Previously, several Topix founders created the Open Directory Project (originally called "NewHoo"), the first open development directory for the Internet, and now the largest human-edited web directory.

Topix is applying that model to the news, turning passive news into active dialogue by giving people an easy-to-use publishing system with a built-in audience.

We have combined the best technology with the strongest local participation to create the best destination for news and discussion. By giving everyone access to the tools to talk - and an audience to listen - Topix redefines what it means to make the news.

Topix. Your town. Your news. Your take.