Newspaper Firms Invest in Website

Three major newspaper companies are investing in Topix.net, a start-up technology company that collects and sorts news stories from various sources on the Internet.

Tribune Co., Gannett Co. and Knight Ridder Inc. are each taking a 25% stake, the Palo Alto-based company disclosed Tuesday. Topix’s founders will retain the remaining share. Financial terms were not disclosed under the deal, which will be formally announced today.

Topix launched its site a little more than a year ago and had 1.4 million monthly users as of February, according to ComScore Media Metrix, which measures Internet traffic. That’s still well behind leading automated news aggregators such as Google News, which had 5.9 million users last month.

Topix is a small company with nine employees working above a trophy shop.

Chief Executive and co-founder Rich Skrenta said that Topix became profitable in December and had about $1 million in annual revenue, mostly from advertising.