WebProNews

When it was announced that CNN.com would increase its local coverage, I was suspicious - that seemed like a pretty big step outside the site’s “comfort zone.”  But CNN.com has stuck with the idea, and, thanks to a partnership with Topix, is now putting an even greater emphasis on local coverage.

A deal with Internet Broadcasting coincided with that first announcement; no obvious changes occurred as a result.  Yet this new development has seen a Topix box get prominent placement on the main CNN page - it’s not at the top, but it’s still above the “More News” section.

As “amy” puts it on the Topix.net Weblog, “To see this in action, just swing by their homepage and scroll down to the ‘Local News’ widget and input your ZIP.  Voila!  Local headlines at your service.”

While describing the overall arrangement, “amy” continues, “CNN.com’s local news headlines are now powered by Topix . . . .  We’re proud of this partnership, because it showcases our ability to localize news for ZIP codes across the country.”

Still, not everything’s perfect at the “leading news community”; while covering the development with CNN, Greg Sterling notes, “Despite the fact that Topix is owned by newspapers they have yet to leverage all its capabilities on their own sites.  There’s much to learn and borrow from the site, yet no newspaper site is really doing that fully more than two years after the Topix acquisition.”