Chris Tolles identifies himself as your basic "Silicon Valley rock-thrower." He is also CEO of
Topix, a heavily trafficked site with some news aggregation and a whole lot of freewheeling user commentary (100,000-plus posts a day).
Tolles said he is uncomfortable with "hateful" speech, and like most anyone hosting comment chains, he and his staff spend a chunk of each day taking down the most offensive. Otherwise, though, he is tolerant of posts that are directed at individuals, factually unreliable or even tinged with racism. He is from the school that free speech and participation are good and that taste and truth will emerge in the end.
None of which is too startling except that Topix is 80 percent owned by Gannett, Tribune and McClatchy (picking up its share in the Knight Ridder acquisition). In the long-running ethical debate on what level of civility established news organizations should enforce on their sites, I take Tolles to be an outlier, who can live with both dialogue or anonymous diatribe.
The ownership arrangement reminds me of Disney's decision 20 years ago to begin releasing R-rated movies under the Touchstone label. As mainstream sites struggle to balance audience building through lively discussions with enough restraint to stay consistent with a brand image of quality, their parent companies have a financial foot in the wilder alternative.
Tolles told me in a phone interview that Topix has been a hit in small towns -- Somerset, Ky., was his example -- where professional news is scarce. I asked whether metro pullbacks from exurban and suburban areas was proving to be an opportunity, and he said absolutely.
Topix gets revenue from advertising and from contracts to partner in creating and maintaining the comment systems at newspapers and other old media. It has the ability to display ads by zip code, a degree of geographical targeting some predict will be increasingly appealing to local merchants, and recently
announced partnerships with several hyperlocal sites.
Tolles said that he expects the site, which he describes more as a "home of local voice" than journalism, to become cash flow positive sometime in 2009.
It is a culture shift, Tolles readily concedes, "when anyone can say anything." But he sees an evolution allowing most users access to must-read neighborhood discussions with posts like one resident saying another is trying to sell his house but having a hard time of it.
As an analogy for the reliability of such content, Tolles offered the choice between picking hotels and restaurants in a distant city using a guidebook like Fodor's or a comment site like Trip Adviser. He'll take Trip Adviser, Tolles said, even with an awareness that some glowing reviews may have been posted by employees of the destination.
In the 20 months since, Topix's business has kept growing and the readers' representative position at the Courant has been eliminated.
