NPRbackstory is an automated Twitter feed that attempts to add context to the news stories trending popular today according to Google’s Hot Trends. It leverages NPR’s archives (very smart, as Joshua Benton notes archives are underused assets), and Yahoo! Pipes to produce a RSS feed that is fed into the NPRbackstory account. It was developed by Keith Hopper of NPR’s Public Interactive group.

Read Joshua Benton’s piece at Nieman Journalism Lab

Read more about it at Keith Hopper’s blog.

Check out his other Twitter related project – Twitterstars – a tool to find local Twitter power tweeters.