How the Globe is recouping the tons of money it poured into its search engine

Mac Slocum reports that when boston.com built a fancy Boston-area search engine and not all that many people actually used it, the site figured it could repurpose the thing as a platform to power its Your Town hyperlocal sites:

... Database? Targeted content? That’s search, and that's something Boston.com already had. The search platform in place had more than enough mojo to power the hyperlocal sites. All it took were a few customizations. ...