My favorite news and blog aggregation site has landed a deal with the Associated Press:

The Associated Press has entered into a 15-month agreement with news aggregator Topix.net aimed at increasing the flow of Internet traffic to member newspapers that contribute breaking news to the AP. Under the arrangement, AP will work with Topix.net to guide the news aggregator's zip-code search engine to the most authoritative sources of breaking news stories across the country. AP will identify for Topix.net the stories that local newspapers contribute to AP so that the search engine can link to them. Newspapers that don't wish to participate can opt out. Topix.net will also use its NewsRank(TM) technology to tag AP-originated content with the identity of the most geographically relevant member publication, for use on its own site, as well as providing that locality information back to the AP.

I previously wrote how Topix is the place where non bloggers discuss the news as their forum hosts a lot of conversation about news. Local newspapers recognize that Topix can generate traffic for them because of their search, aggreation and community features.