Buzz Newsroom Combines WordPress and Facebook Connect For Tracking News

Like we need another memetracker. Buzz Newsroom came out of beta today to aggregate blogger-moderated headlines and article summaries for entertainment, politics, tech, sports, and geek news. The site describes itself as a mix between the Drudge Report and Huffington Post, but that is purely aspirational. It is more like a Digg-style Techmeme, with photos and more editorial content. (The founders used to work at Digg and Reddit).

All of the headlines are submitted by readers/bloggers, and can be voted up or down. The headlines at this point are not any better than you can find on TechMeme, Digg, Yahoo Buzz, Blog Runner or any of the countless other memetrackers out there.

What is noteworthy about Buzz Newsroom, however, is that it is a collaborative memetracker. You sign in with Facebook Connect, and then can not only vote up or down any story, but write your own entry.

Buzz Newsroom is a big WordPress blog (in fact, it looks like it might be based on WordPress MU, which supports multiple users). You start off as a contributor, which means you can author posts but not publish them. Buzz Newsroom editors review the entries and publish them. Once you become a trusted contributor, your status may be upgraded to “author,” which means you can publish directly.

Each article is its own blog post, even if it only summarizes and links to another blog post or news article. Prizes such as iPods are offered for submitting stories. Buzz Newsroom will only ever be as good as its best contributors. But not everyone can be a buzz hunter. And there is already a lot of competition out there for the best ones.