Local and vertical content is eagerly sought by national players, from The New York Times to Yahoo, MSN/Bing to AOL. Now, Thompson Reuters is leading the local, vertical charge for wire services.

In an aggressive push to lure traditional U.S. media away from the Associated Press, the information industry giant is moving into aggregation with Reuters America, striking content-sharing deals with local and vertical providers that it hopes will differentiate it from AP. Its first subscriber is The Tribune Co., which will halve its financial commitment to AP and incorporate Reuters America’s content into its Media on Demand content modules for Tribune papers.

Among the companies that will support Reuters America are Examiner.com, SB Nation and The Wrap. Examiner said that Reuters will begin distributing the local and topical content contributed by 65,000+ “Examiners” (with more than 6,000 being added each month). The local content aggregator reports that more than 22 million people see its content across 230 U.S. cities. In return for supplying locally targeted content, Examiner.com can publish Reuters’ work on its own vertical Examiner sites. The deal is similar to Demand Media’s agreement with USA Today and Hearst Newspapers.

SB Nation and The Wrap are adding sports and entertainment content, respectively. At ILM:10 last week, SB Nation CEO Jim Bankoff noted that the company now features upwards of 300 online sports communities built around teams, leagues and regions.

The big picture here? Reuters America clearly sees profitable potential in building aggregation around verticals. “Profit pools have gathered in vertical markets,” notes CEO Devin Wenig, in a memo announcing the initiative.

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At ILM:10, SB Nation CEO Jim Bankoff revealed that his fleet of brand-based online sports communities is now experimenting with high school sports through the launch of a Washington, D.C., trial site (part of DC.SBNation.com) that will “test if the model scales to that level.”

The competition in the digital sports space — with CBS, Comcast, FOX, Yahoo and the ubiquitous ESPN all locking horns — is as intense as the passion of the fans whom these networks covet. That’s exactly why Bankoff has taken SB Nation down an explicitly different path, one that doesn’t try to roll up individual sports communities into larger groups, but instead embraces digital fragmentation by acknowledging that the “Web is topical” and then building 300 different brands around individual teams, leagues and regions.

The crux of the network of blogs is community-driven content from paid bloggers and fan forums built around a “strong partisan focus on sports teams.” SB Nation’s bloggers’ ability to expertly weave a palette of interactive content (original work, social media, community dialogue) drives engagement with the brands, leading Bankoff to extol this as the “highest form of art online.”

As for monetization, don’t say “sponsorships,” a dirty word in Bankoff’s book because of the overt commercial connotation it brings with fans who view community forums as safe havens or private clubs. SB Nation’s value is not in selling, per se, but in “getting people talking about brands” naturally within the gates of the online community.

The company is not currently pursuing any paid-content tiers, whether premium information or gaming (fantasy leagues, sports games).

SB Nation faces ambitious obstacles to scale because of the aforementioned rampant fragmentation and the challenge of simultaneously serving several hundred brands. Bankoff is encouraged, however. He stresses that the latest iteration of the Web makes production and distribution much simpler. As such, SB Nation can add “new sites at low incremental costs and keep quality high.”

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SB Nation (Sports Blog Nation) presents a fan-centric, highly verticalized (i.e., local) view of sports from dozens of bloggers. The site has completed a new $10.5 million “C” round of funding, pushing it past the $23.5 million mark.

The new round is led by Khosla Ventures, and includes Accel Partners and Comcast Interactive Capital, which had also invested in earlier rounds. SB Nation has also received funding from Allen & Co. and angel investors such as former AOL executive Ted Leonsis.

The site, which launched in 2003 and now has 290 topical sites and 21 regional sites, is run by former AOL exec Jim Bankoff. AllThingsD reports that the new funds will be used to boost SBNation’s technology platform, its bloggers, mobile, local, advertising sales and a few relevant acquisitions.

Bankoff will be interviewed on a one-to-one basis at the upcoming ILM:10 show in Santa Clara. Investor Michael Yang from Comcast Interactive Capital is also appearing at the event.

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