Craigslist Founder's News Venture Named

Jeff Jarvis has at least given a name to an upcoming news venture backed by Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, but developers are still keeping a tight lid on their plans.

In writing about another news site, the recently announced but yet to be launched NewAssignment.Net, Jarvis said, "Daylife will gather, analyze, organize and create a new, distributed platform for the world's news." He also said the site would provide technical and distribution help to NewAssignment, which aims to encourage "smart mobs" of regular citizens to submit ideas and report the news through a process they're calling "open source journalism."

More has been divulged about NewAssignment than Daylife, including the fact that the idea came from Chris Allbritton, a former Associated Press reporter who raised more than $14,000 from readers to report back directly from Iraq. NewAssignment will seek donations and has at least $10,000 from Newmark.

In an e-mail interview Monday, Jarvis confirmed that Daylife is the company that Newmark is backing and touted last year as one new media answer to what's missing from traditional media. Jarvis declined to give a launch date.

"I'm afraid we're not saying anything more about the company quite yet," he said.

The site is under development and not yet open to public view, except one page announcing job openings. Though Newmark has said editors will be involved in the news startup, none of the positions advertised on Daylifeare for editors or news gatherers.

In May 2005, Jarvis said he will act as editor-in-chief of a news startup founded by Upendra Shardanand. It was the first public mention of the site and Jarvis said he jumped at the opportunity to get involved as soon as Shardanand shared his idea.

"I have up plans to start my own blog company," he said. "The start-up remains in stealth mode."

Investor Michael Arrington said this week that he has no idea when the site will be launched or where it is in its development. He and another investor Dave Winer said they decided to invest after seeing mockups.