Unlike other app solutions that require publishers to use the app maker’s ad network and share revenue, Publish2′s News App is based on a simple software-as-a-service license fee. For a reasonable fixed annual cost, publishers get all of the upside from monetizing their app.

Publishers Control Monetization

Speaking of monetization, Publish2′s News App is optimized for high CPM video advertising, and not just for video content — News App can monetize text and photos with video ads. We see a huge opportunity with the immersive engagement of tablet apps to monetize text and photo content better than on the desktop web. We will support all third-party ad servers and ad networks, giving publishers full control over ad monetization and without taking a share of the revenue. (We will of couse support display ads as well.)

The same principle of publisher control applies to paid subscriptions. Publish2 News App will integrate with third-party paid subscription services, giving publishers full control over whether and how to charge for their app, making it easy to align with their existing paid content strategy.

User Experience Consumers Will Pay For

Our goal is to help publishers create an app that consumers will pay for by creating a highly engaging user interface for news consumption. Since the iPad appeared, numerous tablet app aggregators have launched, focused on innovating news consumption to create user experiences worth paying for. Publish2 News App enables every publisher to compete with the user experience innovations of these tablet app aggregators, so that they can retain full control of the consumer relationship, but without incurring high development costs.

Speaking of aggregation, our News App is powered entirely by Publish2 feeds. That means publishers can create an even better user experience by complementing their own original content with content curated from a network of new content sources: sister publications, regional partners, alternative newswires, local blogs, local businesses, and more.

As to white labeling, publishers will be able to fully customize the app’s look and feel, to match the color pallet, typography, and design of their publication.  Publishers will also have full control over the app’s consumer-facing delivery — the app can be hosted on the publisher’s servers or on a dedicated cloud hosting account.  As with all software-as-a-service, Publish2 will maintain and update the app code, so publishers and their readers will always have the most up-to-date version.

Here are the highlights of Publish2 News App in brief:

Cross-platform HTML5 app that creates an experience fully equivalent to that of a native code appWhite label solution can be customized to match publisher’s colors, fonts, and design aesthetic 

Hosted software-as-a-service always has the most current app code, no need for users to download updates

App powered entirely by Publish2 feeds, combining publisher’s content with content curated from Publish2′s network

App user experience optimized for displaying high CPM video ads, for both text and photo content

Publishers have full control over user data (in contrast to Apple’s iTunes app store)

App will integrate with third-party paid subscription services

Simple, annual software-as-a-service license fee avoids the need to share subscription or advertising revenue

Here is a live demo of the Publish2 HTML5 Tablet App for Publishers.

So it’s time for an update on the growth of our content distribution network and our new software-as-a-service licensing business.

Network Growth

The value of any network grows exponentially with the number of participants. So we’re excited to report the our network now includes over 200 news organizations that are actively distributing and acquiring content through Publish2.

See who’s in the Publish2 network.

We’ve found the key to network growth is members “inviting their friends,” just like on Facebook, which in our case means news organizations inviting their partners. When all of your partners, and news orgs that you want to partner with, are on the network, it’s easy to see the value in joining.

We’re focused on bringing the hundreds of newsrooms we’ve worked with over the past three years into the network.  As with all networks, the larger it is, the more valuable it becomes for everyone involved.  We’re exploring every network vector for content distribution and content sharing — state, region, sports leagues, topics like health, environment, business, etc.

(Interested in joining the network? Let us know.)

New Business Model: Software-as-a-Service

In the past six months, we have also successfully launched our paid software-as-a-service business. Here are some of our paid SaaS customers, which include over 50 news orgs:

• Freedom Communications
• USA WEEKEND Magazine, a Gannett Company
• Bakersfield Californian
• Oregon Public Broadcasting
• East Oregonian Publishing Company
• Climate Central
• C-SPAN

SaaS is the ideal business model for our network because we can support the business models of our network participants — whether that be content bartering, licensing, ad revenue share, or branding — without dictating what their business model should be. All news organizations on our network control their content rights, terms of use, and the business agreements they set up with their network partners. There a lot of companies out there looking to take a percentage cut of your revenue, but we’re not one of them. SaaS also ensures our long-term sustainability as a network platform.

While joining the Publish2 content distribution network is free, our paid software-as-a-service license is required for automating the delivery of content directly into publishing systems — legacy front end editorial systems, hosted web CMSs, open source CMSs, mobile apps — we support them all.  We know most news orgs don’t have a developer with free time to code to an API, so we skip the API and integrate directly with existing systems using open formats and technology that newsrooms can use right out of the box. Our software-as-a-service comes with full support for integration and newsroom training — we’ll meet your technology and newsroom where they are today.

We also know that unless content gets delivered where time-crunched editors work every day, it won’t get used. Logging in to another website to download content is typically a non-starter.  We deliver content into existing wire queues and post directly to websites. That’s what puts news orgs in the position to reduce the cost of “filling the news hole” and create new products by curating content from their network (what we call the Content Graph).

Our software-as-a-service now includes a range of “content modules” that enable news organizations to take advantage of connecting the network directly to their publishing systems.

For example, Freedom Communications is using our Internal Newswires module to create a content sharing network for all of their properties, to maximize the value of the content that their newsrooms create everyday. Editors can export stories from their editorial system with one click, without having to log into Publish2. And shared stories show up in their existing wire queues alongside other wire stories. They are also sharing budgets to help newsrooms plan around shared content.

Once they have all their publishing systems connected, Freedom can use other Publish2 modules to:

• Join regional and national content sharing Co-ops
• Receive content from Alternative Newswires
• Integrate with social media

USA WEEKEND Magazine, a Gannett Company, is using our Syndication Management module to distribute content from partners like The Doctors, as well as some of their own content, to their hundreds of newspaper customers for use in print and/or online. Our Syndication Management module allows USA WEEKEND’s carrier newspapers to pull content directly into their publishing systems.For web syndication, we provide content tracking, branding and links back, and Google’s syndication-source meta tag to prevent problems with duplicate content in search.

Climate Central is similarly using our Syndication Management module to enable news orgs interested in their environmental reporting to get it delivered directly into their publishing systems, with the goal of significantly ramping up their syndication across hundreds of partners. We take care of all the implementation and support for their partners, while they sit back and enjoy greater pickup by getting their content to editors. Climate Central is also using Publish2 to automate posting content from partners on their own site — here’s an example.

East Oregonian Publishing Company is using our Co-op module to share content internally and with other news orgs in the Northwest, starting with Oregon Public Broadcasting. They are also using our Content Bridge module to bridge the gap that still exists in most newsrooms between print and web. At the same time that editors share stories through the Publish2 network, they can send them to their own website. For stories already on the web, they can be shared back into the print production process and delivered to the archive. Hours spent copying and pasting can now be more productively reallocated.

Bakersfield Californian uses our Alternative Newswire module to receive content from a range of news sources, from free newswires like AOL DailyFinance to licensed content from California Watch and McClatchy-Tribune.

News organizations continue to surprise us with new ways to use our platform — setting up content distribution as a peer-to-peer network opens up a lot of possibilities for cost savings and new revenue streams. Having integrated directly with news organizations’ web and print publishing systems, Publish2 makes it easy for them to expand their use of the network.

For example, based on newsroom feedback we created a module for newsrooms to set up a PR newswire service for local businesses, as a way to add content to their sites, source local business stories, and source local advertising leads. We created the Local Industry Newswires module as a way for news orgs to enable companies in a major local industry to share news and information — news orgs can even create a B2B publication and sell advertising. We created the Community Newswires module to make setting a blog network turnkey and easily scalable.

We are also excited to be serving the mission of news organizations on our network:

• Sustaining and growing resources for original reporting (especially local) by reducing the costs of third-party content
• Enabling new products that produce new revenue streams to support journalism
• Enabling broader regional and national distribution of important public issues reported at the local level
• Enabling broader distribution for nonprofit news organizations, and new business models that support those organizations
• Enabling news organizations to be the beneficiaries of disruptive new models, rather than the victims

The other question we get asked is, “Why is Publish2 creating a network for the news industry? Isn’t that like vitamins for dinosaurs?”

Yeah, well, for those keeping score, the news industry is still a $100 billion worldwide market and many newspapers are in fact profitable. The last few years may have been painful, but every news organization is now solidly focused on transforming for future growth.  To do so, news companies must adopt technologies that enable their newsrooms to create new digital products while simultaneously preserving the ROI of their legacy print product.  Providing that bridge between old and new is precisely what Publish2′s platform and network are designed to do and, given the rate of adoption we’re seeing now, we are very optimistic about the future of the news industry.

Digital consumers get their news from a wide range of “content packagers” — social media (Facebook, Twitter), search (Google), portals (Yahoo, AOL), and now a new breed of tablet apps (Flipboard, News.me, Zite). Find out how news publishers can meet consumer demand and support new business model by distributing their content through all of these new channels. Learn how editorial brands can become curators themselves and take back control of content distribution by creating news packages the news consumers want.

Here’s the program overview:

In today’s complex digital media landscape, there is only one way you can stay ahead of your competitors: create a compelling user experience.

API’s Creating the Digital User Experience will connect you to the interrelated world of content and revenue and platforms and applications on the Internet. It’s about understanding what people want and giving them the rich online experiences they crave. It’s about the wave of always-connected consumers, location-aware mobile apps and services, and digital platforms that are making business and news unlike anything we’ve experienced before. And, it’s about driving revenue from it all.

And the other session leaders — awesome group:

Featured Discussion Leaders

Tyson Evans and David Wright Interface Designer, The New York Times and Senior Interactive Designer, NPR Session: If coders are from Mars and designers from Venus, how can we all get along?

Dorian Benkoil Co-founder and Senior Vice President, Teeming Media Session: Apps or HTML? How to get on every screen.

Kelley McDonald Director of Information Architecture, NavigationArts Session: Future proofing your digital strategies

Rebecca Moreno Director, Front Page Programming, Yahoo! Session: Art + Science: The Yahoo! Home Page

Mary Peskin Associate Director, American Press Institute

Limor Schafman President, KeystoneTech Group Session: Mobile strategies, mobile business. Find out how the mobile experience can transport your company to your audiences and consumers.

Ryan Sparrow Instructor of Journalism, Ball State University Session: SND Best of Digital Design: What makes a winner and why

More about the seminar here.

Demotix pioneered the professionalization of what they call “street journalism” — enabling photographers on the scene of major news events to sell their photos to news organizations. Demotix splits the revenue with photographers 50/50 each time the photo is sold (unlike some major photo agencies that take a much larger cut and only pay photographers once). Photos sourced from Demotix have appeared on the front pages of New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time, and The Guardian.

Newspapers seeking alternative sources of news photos have already recognized the huge benefits of sharing photos directly, which News Exchange will enable them to do now on a national scale and with much greater efficiency (and no more emailing photos back and forth!). With the addition of Demotix to News Exchange, newspapers will also be able to buy photos a la carte for coverage of major news events around the U.S. and around the world.

Turi Munthe, CEO and Founder, describes Demotix as “the freelancer’s AP”. We love that. Demotix is disrupting the news photo market, opening new options to photo buyers like newspapers. We love disruption that helps all the news orgs on News Exchange evolve evolve their businesses — that’s our mission.

Here’s what Turi had to say about our partnership:

“We’re thrilled to be partnering with Publish2 News Exchange. The future of news is open, agile and collaborative. Publish2 is at the very cutting edge of that revolution, and we are proud to be joining them. We have a shared vision of democratising news gathering and distribution. Activating our 3,000-odd global contributors across the News Exchange platform brings every corner of the world to News Exchange and gives voice to our community across the US.”

Check out Turi’s piece in the Spring Nieman Reports on creating a new marketplace for news photography.

Here’s more on Demotix:

Launched in January 2009, Demotix now has over 3,200 active reporters in 190 countries around the world, a 250,000-strong picture archive from Kabul to Kentucky, and a monthly growth of over 20,000 editorial images and video.

Demotix has been profiled by Reuters TV (twice), Bloomberg, CBC, Le Monde, The Guardian, Wired.com, El Pais, The Telegraph and countless other media all over the world.

In the last year, Demotix has won the Guardian Media Award for Independent Journalism, the British Airways Young Business Award, was named a Tech Invest 100 company by PWC, was a finalist for Mashable’s Open Web Award, SXSW 2010′s Community Award, and the Knight Batten Prize (Demotix was the only non-US news outfit nominated).

ProPublica, GlobalPost, Texas Tribune, and Texas Watchdog have created their newswires in Publish2′s platform for sharing and distributing journalism in print and across the Web.

ProPublica is a Pulitzer-winning nonprofit news organization specializing in investigative journalism on topics including the Gulf oil spill, mortgage modifications, and post-Katrina New Orleans.

ProPublica stories are available for free, for print or online publication, via Publish2 News Exchange.

Here’s what Scott Klein, ProPublica Editor of News Applications, finds exciting about News Exchange:

“We’re excited by Publish2′s idea of making the process of syndicating news stories frictionless and intuitive, and think it dovetails well with our strategy of partnering with news organizations who reach influential audiences to have real-world impact. We’re looking forward to working with them to get our stories in front of editors all over the world.”

Subscribe to the ProPublica newswire today and automatically export their stories to your newsroom’s publishing system for easy access to a free and steady stream of award-winning journalism.

GlobalPost is an international news service that employs a core team of more than 50 correspondents around the world and works with more than 125 freelance journalists to produce top-shelf news and features, more important than ever to newspapers as many have cut their own reporting from overseas.

Dave Underhill, Director of Syndication at GlobalPost, had this to say about Publish2:

“Publish2 News Exchange provides a variety of platform options for our customers. We deliver our syndication service via RSS, but some legacy newspapers have front-end systems that aren’t designed to take in RSS feeds easily. Publish2 will allow them to integrate our story feeds with their own content and other services, which in turn makes it easier for the editors to select and use our material. Simultaneously, their online operations can ingest our RSS and create custom pages for their readers. We look forward to the growth of this service and to providing GlobalPost to new clients in partnership with Publish2.”

The GlobalPost newswire is available now in News Exchange for their existing syndication customers. Find out more about becoming a GlobalPost syndication customer here.

The Texas Tribune covers every major issue in the state of Texas as a nonprofit news organization, with a mission to “promote civic engagement and discourse on public policy, politics, government, and other matters of statewide concern.”

Ross Ramsey, managing editor at The Texas Tribune, offered his take:

“Part of The Texas Tribune’s mission is to make news and information about Texas politics and government available to everybody, including to other publications interested in our content. This ought to make that easier.”

Subscribe to the Texas Tribune newswire now in Publish2 News Exchange to publish their stories in full — in print and online — for free, in exchange for proper attribution and links.

Texas Watchdog is another Lone Star state nonprofit digging into politics and local issues with original investigative reporting and curation of the best journalism in the region.

Subscribe to the Texas Watchdog newswire in News Exchange to route their reporting to your print edition or website — and to your readers — at no cost to your news organization.

Ready to get started? Log in now at Publish2.com and search for newswires that suit your news organization’s needs.

Want to syndicate your own content, or share it with partner newspapers in your state and across the country? Create your first newswire and give your subscribers and partners permission to subscribe to it today.

New to Publish2? Register now. Publish2 News Exchange is the easiest way to share and distribute content for print and Web publishing.

Any questions? Drop us a line! We’re here to help you get started.

News Exchange enables newspapers to create newswires for print and the Web by combining content sharing networks with alternative newswire sources.

“This is an ambitious concept that could be genuinely disruptive of existing distribution networks,” the judges said in the announcement Monday morning.

The Publish2 team would like to extend our thanks to J-Lab, the Knight Foundation, and all the judges. It’s a great honor to be recognized as we expand News Exchange and continue innovating to help news organizations best serve their audiences.

And we’re in great company! Congratulations to all the winners, including Sunlight Live, ProPublica’s Distributed Reporting project, PolitiFact’s Obameter, and Ushahidi Haiti!

Be sure to also check out the 30 notable entries, which Publish2 advisor David Cohn’s Spot.Us Community Centered Advertising and Lakewood shooting coverage (PDF) from the Seattle Times.

We look forward to meeting all the winners on Sept. 14 at the Newseum!

If you’re in town, we hope you can make it too. Register to attend for free (space is limited) and be sure to say hello.

Ready to get started In Publish2 News Exchange? Now’s the time.

Here’s an overview of some of the first reactions to what we like to call P2X:

Publish2′s News Exchange Aims to Help News Outlets Cut Ties to AP
Poynter | June 1, 2010

“If his service does what he says it does,” said [Roger Plothow, editor and publisher of the Post-Register in Idaho Falls and one of the more vocal would-be AP dropouts], “I’ll be lining up for it and so will a lot of other people.”

While the AP may be the great white whale for new media enthusiasts, it will keep swimming around the ocean for some time to come. But credit Karp and company with a well-aimed harpoon.

Publish2′s Ryan Sholin: “We did not set out to kill the Associated Press”
Nieman Journalism Lab | May 28, 2010

What the News Exchange and its creators do want, Sholin said, is to broaden the ecosystem of access when it comes to the wire content available to newspapers.

Publish2 Wants To Disrupt The Associated Press With An Online News Exchange
TechCrunch | May 24, 2010

Publish2 is taking a swing at the newswire mammoth – they un-lovingly call it an inefficient monopoly – by launching a platform that allows newspaper publishers and other media organizations tap the vast amount of quality content already available for free on the Web (we don’t mean to brag, but TechCrunch was one of the examples cited by the startup on stage).

Publish2 takes a swing at the AP with News Exchange
Romenesko | May 25, 2010

Publish2 is launching a platform that allows newspaper publishers and media organizations tap the vast amount of quality content already available for free on the Web.

Publish2′s News Exchange offers great promise for journalists
LoganMolen.com | May 24, 2010

After using News Exchange for a few days — and quite a bit today — I can safely say it brings a whole new mindset to how media organizations can share, pursue and purchase content. I’ve worked with Associated Press content and tools since I was a college student in the 1980s and my first impressions of News Exchange last week were, “Wow, this is a game changer.”

Publish2 News Exchange launches: Competition for AP’s market?
Knight Digital Media Center | May 27, 2010

If this technical integration actually performs well, that’s pretty important. Many news organizations face increasingly constrained options because they rely on entrenched, large, hard-to-update, print-focused content management systems. These systems are typically very picky about content formats. It often takes time and effort to integrate content produced by more modern CMSs into these systems—at least, if you want to run that content in print, rather than online only.

Buried in a local paper: a glimpse of the future of journalism
The Independent | June 12, 2010

Is this kind of exchange the key to reshaping the newspaper industry and putting it on a sounder footing? I think so.

Finally, A Smart Alternative to the AP
Breaking Media | June 8, 2010

In 2010, it’s pretty clear that the real associated press is comprised of thousands of strong credible voices breaking news and doing sharp analysis on any topic you can name.

Publish2 wants to take content distribution away from the AP
VentureBeat | May 24, 2010

Rather than purchasing content from the AP, the Publish2 News Exchange connects web publishers with print publishers to distribute content to anyone at anytime. The web publishers benefit by having their brand syndicated in print.

Publish2: Another Online Threat To AP
MediaPost | May 25, 2010

The News Exchange expedites the process by handling the logistics of file transfers, graphics and tailored story formatting. It can also automatically import syndicated digital content to the print editions of newspapers.

Publish2: pivoting, thinking big, and identifying the enemy
Darryl Siry’s posterous | May 25, 2010

I like this move for a couple of reasons. Publish2 is thinking really big. Of course thinking big comes with skeptics who will ridicule the ambitions of the startup, but that is the nature of startups that ultimately disrupt the big incumbents. They are never viewed as a threat when they are starting out.

ClaraJeffery: Congrats to our friends @publish2. They make good things happen.

jayrosen_nyu: You know what Publish2′s News Exchange is, really? An extension into print of “do what you do best and link to the rest.”http://jr.ly/3tvz

erikgable: Intrigued by @Publish2 News Exchange and its potential for making our content-sharing agreements more effective.

Publish2 Aims to Oust the Associated Press
Mashable | May 27, 2010

The News Exchange enables newspapers to replace AP content subscriptions with web content, and in exchange web producers are able to showcase their brands in print. As Karp points out, print publishing and distribution still drive newspaper operations, even its web production, which sometimes is nothing more than a dumping ground for stories from the day’s paper.

emilybell: More inventive than a paywall? @scottkarp on a new model AP http://bit.ly/bueqaD

Publish2 Takes on the Associated Press with News Sharing Service
Folio Magazine | May 25, 2010

According to CEO Scott Karp, News Exchange gives publishers a legitimate content sharing alternative to the AP, a cooperative he calls an “obsolete inefficient monopoly, ripe for disruption.”

stephromanski: Passing on Publish2′s newswire announcement to my publisher.

Publish2 News Exchange Takes Aim at AP
MediaBistro | May 24, 2010

OK, perhaps the new Web-content aggregator’s stated goal of “disrupting the Associated Press monopoly over content distribution to newspapers” is a bit lofty, but hey, might as well aim high, right?

Publish2 aims to supplant the Associated Press, reinvent the news exchange with ‘P2X’
BrianManzullo.com | May 25, 2010

The more I think about it, the more intrigued I am about this development. Why? Not necessarily because of how much money it could save news companies (although that’d be a huge plus, if P2X can develop a thriving web of news organizations and blogs). Instead, I’m thinking about how much more efficient content sharing can be between news organizations, and how much more vibrant their products can be because of that.

jdcoffman: @rbole the Publish2 release today looks to be absolutely perfect for #pubmedia public affairs needs — truly amazing.

Publish2 bids to disrupt content syndication with News Exchange service
eMedia Vitals | May 26, 2010

One feature of News Exchange that fell under the radar at TechCrunch is a story ideas database – basically an RFP for story assignments. Editors can post a request for coverage; other members can respond with an existing article or a commitment to write something.

catecorcoran: Add a payment system, and Publish2 could be a price discovery mechanism for original reporting #sm #media #tcdisrupt

mrosas: I absolutely adore what @publish2 is doing for news … disruption indeed http://tcrn.ch/cQb3PY

This Week in Review: Facebook’s privacy tweak, old and new media’s links, and the AP’s new challenger
Nieman Journalism Lab | May 28, 2010

It’s rare that we see such a bold, explicit attempt to take down such an established news organization, so this will doubtless be a project to keep a close eye on.

***

Thanks to everyone who has asked us great questions and offered their feedback so far.

We want to know what you think! Find us here, on Twitter, or at contact@publish2.com for more information, to send your feedback, or to fire off a few good questions.

New to Publish2? Register here to get started.

With Publish2 News Exchange, we’ve created what the AP should have become, but can’t because of a classic Innovator’s Dilemma. The New AP is an open, efficient, scalable news distribution platform. We’re enabling newspapers to benefit for the first time from the disruptive power of the Web, and from the efficiency of content production on the Web.

Publish2 News Exchange solves the problems that have prevented newspapers from creating an efficient, scalable alternative to the AP. We bridge the gap between print publishing and Web publishing by connecting natively to outdated newspaper print publishing systems. We support the standard formats used by the AP and the technologies that newspapers already use to move content between print and Web systems. Our self-serve permissioning system enables newspapers and other publishers to distribute content to whomever they choose on whatever terms they choose.

With every revolution in production, there is a corresponding revolution in distribution. We’ve had the revolution of the blogosphere’s content production, and the corresponding revolution with search. Recently, we’ve had the revolution of demand-driven content production, e.g. Demand Media, Associated Content, Aol’s Seed, aimed at maximizing the efficient production of high quality content.

Publish2 News Exchange enables the next revolution in content distribution.

We’re enabling newspapers to barter the value of their trusted brands and their print products, which still reach millions of news consumers, to distribute high quality Web content in place of the AP. In exchange, publishers of high quality on the Web can build their brands in print, as the New AP. The result is a new efficient supply and distribution chain for high quality content brands.

And high quality content brands are the key to premium brand advertising.

Here are some of the content brands that have created newswires for our launch:

Simply put, Publish2 News Exchange is the easiest way to share and distribute content for print and Web publishing.

The next evolution of the newswire will be powered by scalable content sharing networks and a platform that makes it simple to syndicate the best content from across the Web directly to print publishing systems for newspapers.

This week, we’ll launch Publish2 News Exchange, making it available for free to news organizations and journalists around the world.

• Get a quick overview of how Publish2 News Exchange works.
• Read Publish2 CEO Scott Karp’s post on what News Exchange means to the media industry.
• Check out all the coverage of the debut of Publish2 News Exchange at TechCrunch Disrupt today.

The Next Evolution of the Newswire

Newspapers across the country have been trying to find ways to cancel their Associated Press contracts.

They’ve decided the AP is too expensive, too slow to deliver stories from their own state, and too unwilling to unbundle options for news organizations that are moving ahead in a Web-based world, where links, feeds, and subscriptions can be mixed, matched, and mashed up to build a newspaper full of diverse voices.

But there’s a catch.

Until now, newspapers that have tried to reduce their dependence on the AP in favor of a diverse group of news providers have faced a problem.

They haven’t been able to cobble together a diverse group of sources in a way that meets their needs on deadline.

Until now, newspapers in search of a replacement for the AP have been unable to find a platform designed to support their newsroom’s need for content delivered on deadline to their print publishing systems.

Until now.

We’ll be launching Publish2 News Exchange this week, to give newspapers what they’ve been searching for: The next evolution of the newswire.

Scalable Content Sharing Networks

We designed Publish2 News Exchange to serve the needs of newspapers that are already sharing their stories with each other, often by e-mail or a copy/paste routine that costs editors and page designers valuable time on deadline.

Enough of that. We’ve worked in newsrooms and watched busy city editors try to chase down stories from the paper across the state or over the hill, then watched the night copy editors sweat until the story comes through as a barely usable e-mail attachment. It doesn’t work.

But there’s a better way, of course.

Publish2 News Exchange connects directly to print publishing systems via familiar standards and protocols, using FTP or authenticated webfeeds to import and export stories when you need them, where you need them, formatted to flow straight to the pages of tomorrow’s print edition.

What’s a scalable content sharing network?

It’s based on the idea that news organizations have more in common than just location.

The Associated Press draws a line at a state’s border and charges newspapers more to get news from across an entire region, or the whole country. But we know that news doesn’t stop at the state line. With Publish2 News Exchange, newspapers can create their own content sharing networks to cover any region, topic, national issue, or hyperlocal concern.

Publish2 News Exchange gives newspapers back control over their content, allowing them to share a specific feed of stories with every newspaper in the country, none of them, or a specific group of partner news organizations in a cooperative.

The Best of the Web, in Print

What if you could bring your readers the best of the Web, in print? Stories from as diverse a range of sources as exists on the Web, instead of the institutional voice stamped on so much of the commodity content that flows through newspaper pages today?

Now you can.

Publish2 News Exchange allows online publishers what they’ve never had before: A direct line to print editions of newspapers across the world.

A diverse range of voices in tomorrow’s print edition, covering national news, politics, technology, business, personal finance, investigative reporting, sports, and much, much more:

The New Publish2

At Publish2, we’ve long had a simple goal: Provide journalists with the tools they need to bring their readers the best of the Web, in order to better serve their communities with news, context, and content from the wide variety of sources available online.

We built the definitive platform to create link newswires to serve that purpose and pioneered tools for collaborative journalism that allowed news organizations to band together, creating their own cooperative newswires to better serve their collective audience.

We’ve made improvements to the link newswire system as part of this week’s launch of Publish2 News Exchange, including streamlined Newsgroup editorial workflow, OAuth for secure connections to Twitter, and a new search engine you can use to find links, stories, newswires, news organizations, or journalists. It’s never been easier to collaborate across the Web with Publish2.

Find out more about what’s new in Publish2 this week.

Get Started

We’re rolling out Publish2 News Exchange to current users this week. Want to know more? contact@publish2.com

Publish2′s mission and unique tools encourage the spirit of open information and effectively fosters collaboration between teams of journalists and readers. Its link publishing widgets and easy-to-use in-browser tools are designed to fit cohesively into time-pressed journalists’ work days.

Publish2 is a platform for collaborative journalism, and so it’s only fitting to recognize that this award belongs to the collaborators. First, our AMAZING team. If you know our team, you know just how amazing they are. Publish2 is in every way a product of teamwork and collaboration. Here are Ryan Sholin, Daniel Bachhuber, and me after receiving the award (Greg Linch was also there for the awards, but like a true journalist he kept his steady hand on the live stream of the ceremony that he was piloting):

Above all, this award belongs to the journalists and news orgs who have used the Publish2 platform to boldly expand the practice of journalism on the web.

It belongs to journalists like the Northwest News gang — Elaine Helm, Paul Balcerak, Seth Long, Angela Dice, Brianne Pruitt, and many others — who have used Publish2 to trail blaze new models of collaboration across newsrooms and across media companies. Or like the New York Times tech journalists, who understand that curating the web is most powerful when it is collaborative, social, and highlights the judgment of individual journalists who know their beats. Or like the journalists in all of the newsrooms who helped us map our features and design to their workflows, to make it easy to integrate curating the web into everyday newsroom operations.

These journalists are the real innovators. We at Publish2 salute you.

We also thank the Gannett Foundation for creating this award to highlight technical innovation, which is so essential for journalism to survive and thrive in the digital age.

Read more about other startups that were recognized at OJA for their achievements.