• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, March 18, 2010

Another big news publisher is beefing up its hyperlocal content offerings, with Thursday's announcement that The New York Times Co. has signed a deal with Fwix, which aggregates hyperlocal content.

The deal gives NYTCO's various newspaper properties access to Fwix's technology, which aggregates hyperlocal content online by combing blogs and other publications for relevant stories and posts (with light human editing to ensure relevance). Fwix drives traffic to the source sites and also has an ad revenue-sharing agreement.

In addition to the flagship New York Times, NYTCO properties that receive access to Fwix technology and content include The Boston Globe and 15 regional newspapers like the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in Florida and the Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, California. Fwix is currently aggregating and distributing local news content in 175 markets in the U.S. and Canada.

Fwix is just one of several services dedicated to helping newspaper Web sites and other online publishers aggregate and distribute hyperlocal news content. Another service, Outside.in, focuses on aggregating local content and pairing it with highly targeted advertising.

In February, Outside.in announced that it had struck deals with a number of national newspaper Web sites, including The Miami Herald, New York Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and various properties of Tribune Co., including the Chicago Tribune, several Chicago-based online news sites, and the Baltimore Sun.

Outside.in has also partnered with CNN.com and the Dow Jones Local Media Group, which owns community media operations -- principally local newspapers -- in California, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon and Pennsylvania.

Not all online local news initiatives are necessarily ad-supported. In 2009, NPR announced the upcoming launch of a nationwide local news operation dubbed "Project Argo" with $3 million in funding from the Knight Foundation. Project Argo will coordinate in-depth journalism intended solely for the Web -- on topics of local as well as national interest -- by 12 participating public radio stations.