"The old model of news is dead: newspapers are dying, journalists laid off, and everything is moving online. This is old news now."

Thus begins the call for journalists from NewsTilt, an online start-up that aims to host journalists on the web and help them create their own brands. Although it's a controversial stance to take when speaking to the kinds of veteran journalists that the site hopes to recruit, the start-up is the creation of two former computer scientists, so it's likely they strongly believe what they're saying.

NewsTilt will host journalists on its network and take care of SEO management, hyperlinking between its member sites, and ad sales. It will allow journalists to interact with their readers, posting questions and getting feedback on their stories, as well as taking story ideas from their online community. Readers will be required to sign into Facebook Connect to access the site, which NewsTilt's creators believe will help to build a lasting community of readers around each journalist.
But not just any journalist can join the site--of the 150 who have applied to be hosted by NewsTilt, only 30 have been accepted. Each journalist goes through screening to ensure that their writing has high editorial quality and skill, and the site will also be monitored by Jon Margolis, former Chicago Tribune National Political Correspondent.

Newstilt's philosophy, according to a press release on its site, is modeled after the success of the Huffington Post and TechCrunch in creating a community around branded journalists.

"The journalist is the brand, and their community tells them directy what to write, and whether they liked it," said Paul Bigger, a founder of NewsTilt's parent company, NewsLabs.

Some journalists may bristle at such a commodification of the news and the journalist, but perhaps news media must take such measures if it is going to survive.

Sources: TechCrunch, MediaBistro