Last week the sale of askjeeves.com got all the press. But another deal that got some mention has large implications on how the Internet affects newspapers and print media.

I refer to the deal in which Gannett, Knight-Ridder and the Tribune Company joined together to purchase three-fourths of topix.net.

Topix.net is an online business that monitors over 10,000 online news sources. To quote an article in The New York Times (23 March) by Katharine Q. Seelye: "Topix.net is a news aggregator continuously monitoring updates on thousands of news media Web sites as well as government sites and organizing links to articles in more than 300,000 subject areas."

In addition, ...."the acquisition will allow it [topix.net]to approach the newspapers' online advertisers about using its technology for customizing ads. It will also let Topix.net add material like television listings."

The co-founder of Topix (Rick Skrenta) is quoted as saying "They get powerful contextual advertising technology, and we make their ads more profitable."

What we have here is traditional newspaper organizations making a bigger bet on the power of the Net and also getting an insurance policy against print ad shrinkage as well as a buy into the fast growing contextual ad market.

Or to put it in another way here is a quote from the above referenced article from Chris Tolles (VP of Marketing for Topix): "The newspaper industry is looking out for its future and is more savvy than people give it credit for."

When I compare this deal to The New York Times' purchased of about.com a few weeks ago, I vote for the topix.com deal as the wiser and better deal.

We continue to see the relentless onslaught of the Internet against tradtional forms of publishing. These newspaper giants have seen the writing on the wall.