If you’re wondering what Scott Karp, uber-smart new media blogger at publishing2.com, has been up to (well, I have — but that tells you the extent of what my life is like at the moment) is launching a new service this fall called Publish2.com. You can read the 2800 word treatise on what its about over here, but it sounds like, Publish2 is “a social network and 2.0 platform for journalists (and independent “news bloggers,” “citizen” journalists, student journalists, i.e. ALL journalists, BROADLY defined), which aims to put journalists at the center of news aggregation on the web.”

This is going to be one of those situations where I’m just going to have to see what the final product is about, because although I *think* I know what Scott is describing, that actual summary above, I don’t think, actually gets at the heart of what publish2 is about, which are, it sounds like at least two important things.

Social News With A Twist:
From what I understand, Scott is going to be creating a news aggregator like service which is powered by journalists. Unlike Digg (which he references liberally, and with good reason), or other social news sites, Publish2 will not be powered by the wisdom of the plebs. It will be powered by journalists, who Scott feels are actually the best people to do the filtering as, well, its pretty much their job. As for who counts as a journalist, this is pretty broadly defined, but it sounds like there will be an initial coterie of them (as defined by Scott, Robert Young, and others) [if you'd like to be part of that coterie, you may apply over here], who then get invites to people *they* think count as journalists.

So, does this sound elitest?

Well, of course it does, and Scott admits that this is so. Better yet, should you care? I think, as with all things in life, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting. And that is, you should only care if the outcome, the socially bookmarked news, of Publish2 is good.

Cool.

Noteworthy.

Good-at-finding-things-that-non-journalists-would-love-to-read -but-don’t-already-find-them-in-their-or-news-sites.

One issue that I wonder how Scott is going to get around, however, is achieving a critical level of quality through numbers. While the “crowd” that sorts through the news is going to be journalists, with Digg like news you do need a critical level of people submitting news to get a diverse (and “good”) selection of news.

Which brings me to what I think Publish2 will *also* be about

Bringing Journalists Into Social Media:
Its unclear if blogging per se will be part of these tools so far, but it looks like there will be supportive tools, technologies, forums, group hugs and so on (perhaps the latter is done virtually). Scott thinks that there is a niche for this, and this very well may be the case, as Scott is in a good position to comment on the state of journalism and new media, what with his work at Atlantic Media in the past, and, of course his own blog. Bringing known quantities into the mix will help as well, as he’s brought perennial new media media wag, “il professore“, Jeff Jarvis, along for the mix.

Ultimately the second of these things will feed into the first of those things, and I think that it will be Scott’s greatest challenge to not only to gather and evangelize social media and *blogging* to journalists, but to get them to actually participate on this specific platform at this time. He’s got to create something so compelling and so cool — to *journalists* — that they will want to join, and pull that social media engine to churn out all that bookmarked, socially driven goodness.

… and whatever the output of that engine is, that people — laypeople (the plebs) — will find it interesting enough to come back.

Some time ago, I read that social news was attempted by some news organization with mixed results (someone furnish me with a reference). People submitted stuff they liked, but by and large, it only included explosions, car crashes, and babes in bikinis. Or all three.

I think I know and understand what Scott is trying to get at. I like the idea of *elevating* the idea of crowdsourced news by targeting a very narrow band of people. What I do wonder, however, is if the tastes of this admittedly elite few will find a broad enough niche to satisfy the tastes of the many — and if it doesn’t, will having a place for journalists in and itself be enough?