In the end, everything is local.
It should not surprise anyone that Huffington Post, the most successful pure-play online news entity, would shift its attention to local franchising at some stage. Their/her first stop is Chicago, where HuffPost will aggregate local news, blogs and content, but dozens of U.S. cities are on the horizon.
Meantime, Topix has entered into a handful of content deals in listings, apartments, TV and movie listings, business and (yes) pet directories. It's shifting itself from a mainly news to a broader portal locally.
