Siliconbeat highlights a rather innovative way how Topix has found make money:

"Topix will give ''featured placement'' to Times headlines in 80 of the site's 150,000 categories, such as world news, U.S. news or Bronx news. The headlines will appear at the top of each page, in a box that separates them from other news headlines. (Example here.) CEO Rich Skrenta says when a Topix news page --- generated automatically by a computerized algorithm --- includes Times headlines, those will be pulled from the list and featured at the top of the page. The Times will pay Topix for each click through to its Web site."