As reported on the main site, the social network Wired Journalists is now looking rather different; it has been incorporated into Publish2, the social journalism venture based on a belief in the link economy. Since no terms of the deal were disclosed in the announcement, Journalism.co.uk was keen to know more. Publish2 CEO Scott Karp didn’t reveal the details of the agreement but added this statement:

“Creating a social network for our journalist community within P2 was always on our roadmap, and WiredJournalists presented an opportunity to buy instead of build. It was a great fit. WiredJournalists grew from nothing to more than 3,000 journalists in 18 months.

“The frontline web producers, reporters, and editors using Wired Journalists are exactly the journalists we’re bringing together at Publish2 to collaborate and share links with each other and their readers.

“With this deal, Publish2 now has the equivalent of 20 per cent of all journalists in the U.S, since launching less than a year ago.”

Similar Posts:

• Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – build your own social network
• @press_freedom: a new Twitter service from Journalism.co.uk
• BeatBlogging.org: Wired Journalists creator on how to get to grips with Ning
• Journalism Daily: Guardian Q&A, Wired Journalists’ new look, Google News re-indexing
• DEN: Patrick Altoft on news organisations and social media

Proponent of link journalism Publish2 has introduced a set of new features aimed at ‘curating the real-time web’ for newsgathering and news coverage.

Referring to recent coverage of the Iranian election protests and the growing use of tracking news on Twitter by monitoring hashtags, Publish2 now allows uses to aggregate, tag and repurpose Tweets as a widget or feed.

“Social Journalism has clear value for breaking news, to curate what’s already being shared on the real-time web,” writes founder Scott Karp.

Full post at this link…

Similar Posts:

• Win a job in journalism! Yes, really. A whole real job up for grabs…
• Update on Wired Journalists’ new look; Publish2 claims it now has 20 per cent of all journalists in the US
• Karp on the theory behind the Publish2 contest
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – curating content
• Publishing 2.0: When a newspaper stops publishing in print, what happens to the advertising dollars?

The headline quote comes from a round-up up by Eric Scherer of a meeting involving French newspaper and magazine publishers and Google. The meeting suggests some heavy anti-Google feeling on the publishers’ part.

According to one executive at the event, magazine and newspaper publisher Lagadère is on the brink of reporting Google to the EU Commission for ‘predatory practices’.

Watch the video below (courtesy of Adrian Vanachter Damien Van Achter of Scherer’s tweeted coverage of the meeting and make your own mind up as to which party you agree with.

One quote that grabbed my attention, however, was newspapers reported remark: “You are accepting the end of news as we know it.”

Google, secrecy about its algorithms and dominance of the online ad market aside, is looking forward; newspapers are trying to protect and control what they perceive as news and the news business. The problems they are facing, some related to Google and others not, should show them that this self-interested attitude can’t be maintained and their perception of ‘news as we know it’ is out-dated.

Jeff Jarvis sums this up in a blog post reacting to Scherer’s report:

“This anti-Google attitude comes from an apparent sense of entitlement that we see clearly in France but also elsewhere: Google owes us (…) They – like other publishers and journalists – think a market should be built around what they need and that there is a fair share that belongs to them even though they did not innovate and change so those who did should rescue them. But as Scott Karp has said, no one guarantees them a business model.”

Similar Posts:

• links for 2008-07-11
• paidContent.org: Interview with Google News’ Josh Cohen
• paidContent:UK: Italian Competition Authority searches Google’s Milan offices in newspaper dispute
• Reuters: EU investigating Google-Yahoo advertising deal
• Googleblog: archived newspapers going online

The New York Times has launched its beta news aggregation feature Times Extra. As the screengrab below shows, it makes for a pretty busy page with scrollable links to external, relevant content below each main news item:

The alternative version of the homepage features up to eight links from blogs and other news organisations’ sites beneath each of the top articles.

“The days when content sites were afraid to link to other sites are over,” said Marc Frons, chief technology officer for digital operations at NYTimes, in a release about the launch.

“Times Extra is an important part of our strategy to become a destination for compelling journalism, not only by The New York Times, but by other content providers as well. We want to give our readers a comprehensive view of the news and opinion our editors think is important.”(Not dissimilar to Scott Karp’s argument for a newspaper using link journalism)

Mashable’s Stan Shroeder wants to see how the Times’ algorithm performs in selecting the links and while supporting its decision to link out, is concerned about some of the design elements:

“NYTimes adds boxes with additional sources quite erratically, and I expect many users to get a headache, reverting to the standard view very fast. It would be a pity, though, if this initiative were to fail because of unfortunate design choices,” he writes.

Similar Posts:

• Washington Post using Apture for article links
• NYTimes.com – Bono’s first column starts with ‘Gaelic revelry’ in a Dublin pub
• Gawker: NYTimes falls foul of Google with IHT.com fold
• Tewspaper – the ‘online newspaper with no writers’
• New BBC homepage

Just as that last post, on how to bag a new job in journalism, was published Publish2’s co-founder and CEO, Scott Karp, sent Journalism.co.uk some extra information. Here, Karp explains in more depth the rationale behind the contest:

“We’re a startup with a pioneering technology designed to support and encourage the rapid evolution of journalism in the digital age. We’re in uncharted territory.  Everything is ‘out of the box.’  An unconventional approach to hiring fits right in. We’re not hiring for a standard, well-established position. We’re creating new jobs.

“The best candidates for our job – and any job in journalism – are those who can see beyond conventional approaches. We’re looking for candidates who think, wow, this is a cool way to hire!  We’re looking for journalists who are eager to try new things, to learn and grow on the job. Everyone is facing the challenge of learning many new skills quickly. So attitude and disposition are very important. Experience is still a huge asset, but the ability to learn and adapt is increasingly important.

“In terms of specific skills, I think most important is a familiarity with the web and digital media that comes from actually using them. The best way to learn new media is to use it yourself. There are a lot of journalists on Twitter, for example. Most of them started using Twitter originally to learn about it. Some many not have understood it when they first heard about it. But they learned by doing. That’s the key skill.

“So anyone who would enter the ‘I Am The Future Of Journalism’ Contest is, by virtue of the contest format and framing, already exhibiting many of the qualities we value and that we believe are key to future success in journalism.

“Journalists can shape the future of journalism. We’re excited about that. We’re looking for people who are also excited about it.”

Similar Posts:

• Win a job in journalism! Yes, really. A whole real job up for grabs…
• Skillset’s report digested: Is there a skills gap amongst new journalism recruits?
• New Media Bytes: It’s not about survival – journalists can ‘own’ 2009
• Editor&Publisher: Versatility and commercial focus are a must for young journalists
• Hannah Waldram: ‘What journalism students need to know’

Publish 2 has had the bright idea of a contest for journalists, with the much-coveted and very rare prize of… a whole, brand new, job in journalism (paid, and everything)!

Entrants need to promote themselves as ‘the future of journalism’.

“We believe journalism has a bright future, and we’re betting everything on that belief,” writes Publish2 CEO and co-founder Scott Karp on the Publish2 site.

The winner of the ‘I Am The Future Of Journalism’ Contest will bag a job with Publish2, a site and application developed to promote ‘link journalism’ in newsrooms, as reported by Journalism.co.uk in October.

The new recruit will join a team of two existing journalists and included in the offer is a $1,000 signing bonus.

Unsuccessful entrants will also receive a boost, writes Karp: Publish2 will promote them to ‘news organizations and media companies that are looking for journalists who are focused on the future and who want to help journalism evolve’.

Entries can be video, slide show, or written (or all three) but must address ‘why you believe you are the future of journalism’.

“I am the future of journalism because…”

And then it’s down to the entrant. Further information here. Publish2 users will rate the contest entries.

The contest is open to submissions until December 30, and entries can be rated up until January 9.

Similar Posts:

• Karp on the theory behind the Publish2 contest
• YouTube and Pulitzer announce five Project:Report finalists
• YouTube partners Pullitzer Center for journalism contest
• Update on Wired Journalists’ new look; Publish2 claims it now has 20 per cent of all journalists in the US
• MySpace and NBC select citizen journalism competition winners

Publishing 2.0 takes the Yahoo/Microsoft story as a good example of where it is uneconomic to run news pieces that will just be swamped by leading and other news sources running the story.

Over 2000 news pieces on a Google News search about the latest developments about the deal – if your not it the top ten – is it really worth the bother?

“If each site were, as in print, an island unto itself, this would make sense – if the news outlet did not cover the story then its readers might not know about it,” wrote Scott Karp.

“But seen as a whole on the web, which connects each and every one of these websites, and especially seen through the lens of an aggregator like Google News or Techmeme, this huge mass of content about the same story doesnâ

Similar Posts:

• French publishers vs Google: ‘You are becoming our worst enemy’
• Publishing 2.0: When a newspaper stops publishing in print, what happens to the advertising dollars?
• Publishing 2.0: Newsrooms can grow Twitter followings with links
• Google’s Spotlight – highlighting journalism of ‘lasting value’
• Ohio’s leading newspapers to share stories across web

Journalism.co.uk talks to journalists across the globe about social media and how they see it changing their industry.

1. Who are you and what do you do?

I’m Howard Owens, director of digital publishing for GateHouse Media. A large company of small newspapers based in Fairport, NY.

Previously, I was VP of interactive for the Bakersfield Californian and director of new media for the Ventura County Star.

I’ve been doing online newspapers since 1995, when I founded East County Online (San Diego County), the first group of weekly papers in the US with websites.

2. Which web or mobile-based social media tools do you use on a daily basis and why?

Google Reader; Digg; Twitter (not quite daily); Buzznet (not as often as I used to, and haven’t for a while). LinkedIn isn’t daily, but necessary; Facebook, not so much. My primary social network is that loose affiliation that comes through blogs.

3. Of the thousands of social media tools available could you single one out as having the most potential for news, either as a publishing or newsgathering tool?

As much as I find Facebook useless, I see a lot of potential there for how to build an SN for community newspapers. There are things about it I would change, but the basic infrastructure is there.

I see a lot of potential for journalists and the sites they work on in Scott Karp’s Publish2.

4. And the most overrated?

I don’t get social search, such as Mahalo and other such efforts. I have many great friends whom I have nothing in common with. I don’t give a rip what they search for.

There’s maybe two or three people in my life whom I think I have enough in common with that that might, might be useful … but for the most part, I don’t even care what they search for, because I see no reason to believe that for the most part Google is meeting my needs, and where it falls short, I don’t see social search solving that problem.

Vertical search could (see mediageeks.org for an example I built), but social search seems like a solution in search of a problem.

Similar Posts:

• Social Media Journalist: ‘USG is the most overrated social media ‘news’ craze’ Jack Lail, Knoxville News Sentinel
• Social Media Journalist: “I’ve never met anyone who isn’t a media type who’s ever heard of Del.icio.us.,” Robert Hardie, Northcliffe Media
• Social Media Journalist: “Facebook is overrated. The novelty is wearing off and people are getting bored” Matthew Buckland
• RCFP: Ohio newspaper allowed access to deleted state emails
• Social Media Journalist: “BBC journalists are increasingly using Del.icio.us to collaborate and turn research into content” Robin Hamman, BBC Senior Broadcast Journalist