I woke up yesterday to find out Reddit was bought by CondeNet. It seems every week something new is a happening in social news sites. So when Netscape relaunched four months ago to become a Digg-like site with a mashup front page of news stories submitted and voted by members, I yawned it off.

Jason Calacanis: Photo credit: JD LasicaBut Netscape took it one step further than other social news sites by hiring anchors, paid journalists, to add to those stories in real time.

Anchors react to their audience and feed their desire for specific information – something Netscape calls “meta-journalism,” or “metaj.”

“The whole concept of social news is not that big of a deal,” said Jason Calacanis. “Voting on stories is not that revolutionary to a certain extent; people blogging every day is the same as voting on stories, the big thing is if the wisdom of the crowds can be matched with the wisdom of the individual.”

The social bookmarking site Del.icio.us, one of the grandfathers of Web 2.0, was actually the inspiration for Netscape’s shift according to Calacanis, who immediately shrugged off a comparison to Digg.

By letting users share their bookmarks, pointing to interesting conversations on the web, Del.icio.us was the birth of folksonomies, and a new way for people to get information – by relying on each other.

But content shared on Del.icio.us is static. What social news sites did according to Digg CEO Jay Adelson was focus on “dynamic” content. While links on Del.icio.us can stay relevant for months, even years, a testament to the long tail, links on Netscape, Reddit Digg, and Newsvine have a shelf-life of a few days.

The potential for dynamic content was revealed with Memeorandum, which would find hot topics in the blogosphere by counting blog links as a vote. Memeorandum was one of the first sites to tap into the wisdom of the crowds to discover ‘dynamic’ content.

“It’s a news page for blogs. It tells you what bloggers find important. Right now,” said Robert Scobliezer.

Social news sites like Digg and Reddit followed Memeorandum’s lead but opened the voting to anyone blog or not. It was the dawn of an open source newspaper, where a page editor’s duties were picked up by the wisdom of the crowd.

What Calacanis envisioned for Netcape was something more robust; a social news site that reacts to what members vote on by doing follow up journalism. When a story hits the front page one of Netscape’s eight anchors, who work around the clock, will dig up more information, even original reporting, to paint a deeper picture for those stories, which the audience has already declared is important to them.

“If you look at social bookmarking sites you realize that something has to come after having just links. You have a ranking of stories there, but what do you do with these links?” asked Calacanis.

That’s when the anchors go out and “do journalism.” This can be as simple as adding extra information to round a story out, but can also include corrections or be as in depth as an independently researched article.

Meta-journalism seems like a natural step for social news sites, which like anything else in technology media is constantly evolving.

With a background in both journalism and Internet start-ups, Calacanis has the background to force open source journalism into the mainstream. He rose and then fell during the dotcom bust with the Silicon Alley Reporter only to rise again when he created Weblogs Inc, one of the first blog networks to pay contributors.

In paying bloggers at Weblogs Inc. Calacanis was a pioneer in the blogosphere and now he is trying to do the same thing with Netscape by creating a new Internet profession – social bookmarking.

Anchors don’t have a job unless members are constantly submitting and voting on stories to hit the front page. Some of these members have become “Netscape Navigators,” and are paid $1,000 a month to contribute a minimum five stories a day, delete spam and weed out sock puppet submitters.

While this frees up more time for the Anchors to do metaj, it has also been the most controversial move Netscape has made. Jay Adelson, CEO of Digg, for instance, says that paying their contributors would ruin Digg.

In some environments which create an editorial hierarchy, I think yes, it makes a lot of sense. When you pay a reporter or editor, you pay them for their opinion and talent and I think that really someone who has an eye for information is a lot like an editor and in some business’ it makes sense to pay them. Not Digg though because Digg is so dependent on everything being equal and a level playing field.

Calacanis has stuck to his guns, however, and has since doubled the number of paid Navigators.

These folks are doing an AMAZING job of not only putting in good stories, but they are building the community by *teaching* and *showing* folks how to be good citizens on a social bookmarking site.

As an active member of these communities I have spoken with many “Netscape Navigators” and “Top Diggers.” (I’m hoping some of them will contribute to this blog). Their passion is in sharing information, getting paid is a second. Those who are not paid view submitting to be not only a type of journalism, but a public service that keeps journalism to higher standards.

“It holds editors responsible for their content, its accuracy and its significance,” said Curtis Thompson one of Digg’s top contributors. “Consider social news a filter to show you what’s good, what’s important, and what’s accurate.”

In the four months since its re-launch Netscape has grown but not enough to get the critical mass needed to make the first half of meta-journalism rolling -– the members to vote on stories for Anchors to report on.

Calacanis, the skeptic, is hesitant to even call meta-journalism a new trend. To be more accurate he took offense at me calling it an emerging trend and referred to me as a “dreamer.”

He sees Netscape as “just beginning to dip its toe into the pool of open source journalism.” And as part of an 18,000-person company (a division AOL/Time Warner), his having eight editors at the end of the day is proof that no large media company is about to dive in. Then again, it looks like Conda Net just put on their bathing suite.

To be truly effective Nestcape still needs to attract a large user base. Critics have noted that this will be difficult because Netscape is a tired brand in a crowd of fresh young Web 2.0 startups.

While Digg, has a strong user base that, in theory, would push better content to the front page, as I’ve said before, members are limited in how they can engage with those stories. And this is where Netscape wants to pick up and build on open source journalism.

“What you have there is a pure ranking of stories, but what do you do with that? Some look at that as the end of the rainbow, I look at it as the start.” said Calacanis.

Right now there are various fronts of open source journalism, which as a concept has yet to be defined. While NewAssignment.Net focuses on the horizontal, using crowds to do network reporting, we will be keeping an eye on how Netscape progresses (hopefully from the point of view of some Netscape Navigators) with their approach – using the bottom to tell the top exactly what to cover.