New York venture capitalist Fred Wilson is one of the most prolific and renown bloggers on the web.  And if you go his blog, avc.com, you’ll notice that (like most blogs) he runs advertising to generate revenues.  But what many of you may not know is that all the proceeds Fred generates through his blog goes to charity.  What a concept!!  You blog for a few minutes each day, and presto!  You’re supporting your favorite charity!  Now, imagine if millions of people did this… imagine the impact we could have on the world.

Starting today, if you’re a blogger who uses Wordpress, (both hosted .com as well as .org) you can do precisely that.  Through a newly-launched partnership, Wordpress and SocialVibe (disclosure: I am on the board) are introducing a widget that will enable millions of bloggers that use Wordpress to support their charities of choice.

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Originally posted at BeatBlogging.org, a resource for journalists using social networks, blogs, and other Web tools to improve beat reporting.

Whenever I talk with news organizations of any size about linking to sources, resources and journalism that originated outside the walls of their newsroom, two questions come up: How and Why.

Well, conveniently enough, I work for Publish2, and we build tools that help answer the question of How. If your problem is that systems make adding links directly in the text of your story a difficult task, let’s solve that by adding links in widgets, sidebars, scrolling across the bottom of the browser window, blinking in 96pt red Helvetica, pushed to Twitter — wherever and however you want them.

My standing offer on How is that if the question comes up, you can talk to me and I’ll help you out.

So back to the question of Why.

Why we link: Five reasons your news organization should tie the Web together

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If the wire editor and feature editor roles are becoming obsolete for print newspapers, as Steve Yelvington persuasively argues, then those editors should be retrained — or retrain themselves — as web curators. Rather than become obsolete, these editors could become essential to their news organization’s future on the web.

Steve observes:

On the Internet, we have no need of wire editors; if we wish to have wire content on our websites, we can plug in AP Hosted News, or run a full feed of AP Online or some similar product from another service. But with everything on the Internet just a click away, the value of such branded and hosted wire content is low (and measurable), and even that may go away before long, based on simple cost-benefit analysis. We may be better off sending users to CNN, MSNBC and NYtimes.

Feature editing faces the same problem:

But the job simply doesn’t transport to digital media. Again, everything on the planet is just a click away, much of it more interesting, entertaining and informative than can be found in the typical daily newspaper’s features.

Yet there is a HUGE opportunity in this shifting landscape. Just because there’s a wealth of content a click away doesn’t mean that news consumers know where to click in order to find it.

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Perhaps you’ve noticed a bit of activity online the last few days related to a certain not-quite-pandemic bug that’s going around.

Swine Flu.

Or, to put it in microblogging terms, #swineflu.

The wonderful thing about the ease of communication online is that anyone can start a discussion, carry it on, pass along information, retweet it, forward an e-mail, leave a comment on a blog post, or bookmark a page in a social way.

The problem, of course, is that when millions of people are desperately looking for solid, clear information, that’s when it can be the most difficult to find it. Continue reading…

Today we’re announcing three major additions to the Publish2 team — journalists whose stellar reputations speak for themselves:

• Ryan Sholin joins us next week as Director of News Innovation.
• Greg Linch is the winner of the Publish2 Future of Journalism Contest and will join us in the fall as our Producer.
• Howard Weaver has joined our Board of Directors.

Get the full scoop at the Publish2 Blog.

There is so much misunderstanding flying around about the economics of content on the web and the role of Google in the web’s content economy that it’s making my head hurt. So let’s see if we can straighten things out.

Google isn’t stealing content from newspapers and other media companies. It’s stealing their control over distribution, which has always been the engine of profits in media. Google makes more money than any other media company on the web because it has near monopoly control over content distribution (i.e. like a metro newspaper in the pre web era).

Those who argue that Google is a friend to content owners because it sends them traffic overlook the basic law of supply and demand. The value of “traffic” is entirely relative. The more content there is on the web, the less value that content has — because of the surfeit of ad inventory and abundance of free alternatives to paid content — and thus the less value “traffic” has.

The more content there is on the web, the less money every content creator makes, and the more money Google makes by taking a piece of that transaction.

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The Seattle Post-Intelligencer today because the first major metro newspaper to stop publishing in print but keep the news brand alive on the web. Seattlepi.com’s Executive Editor Michelle Nicolosi promises bold experiments, “to break a lot of rules that newspaper Web sites stick to.” And to be sure, the entire news industry will be watching to see what an editorial staff of 20 can accomplish compared to a staff of 165. (Given their intent to look “everywhere for efficiencies” — and that they won’t have “reporters, editors or producers—everyone will do and be everything” — I suspect they will accomplish more than most people think.)

But in addition to the key editorial question, Seattle has also now become a test case for one of the most important questions about the near-term future of the newspaper industry that is almost never asked:

What will happen to the print advertising when the newspaper stops publishing in print?

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Today, with the signing of the largest government stimulus program in history, Publish2 is announcing a new initiative to help newsrooms faced with declining resources continue to play the watchdog role that is so vital in this time of crisis. Digital Sunlight is our code name for a new feature set that will allow citizens to help journalists cover the stimulus act and the other big stories that affect our lives and our communities by submitting tips, leads, anecdotes, questions, etc. into a global searchable database.

In particular, we aim to overcome what we believe is a limitation of many “citizen journalism” initiatives to date, i.e. viewing citizen journalism as an end in itself, where citizens are supposed to replace professional journalists, filling up community sites with reporting. We believe citizen journalism is part of a larger process where professional journalists still play the vital role they always have. The key is to enable dynamic and ongoing collaboration between citizens and professional journalists, where citizens can become a true practical extension of the newsroom.

It’s all about collaboration.

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