“When editors are going to assign a story we typically think about different elements that go into it; who is the writer, who is the photographer, do we want a video or a podcast or any kind of poll? Now we ask an additional question: what is the community aspect?”

I met Ed Sussman briefly at the Networked Journalism Summit where we talked about Drupal, a subject I’m fond of. I didn’t know it at the time, but Ed, along with Lullabot, was working on a massive relaunch of FastCompany.com using the open source content management system Drupal.

If you haven’t checked out the site - you should. It is one of the most sophisticated implementations of Drupal I’ve seen. The NY Observer, for example uses Drupal in a very sleek manner - and while the site looks great, the social networking capabilities aren’t there. Fast Company, however, is trying to leverage the networking aspects of Drupal in every way possible - from user-generated content blogs, to bookmarking, crowdsourcing questions and letting people make business contacts. They’ve spread their arms out pretty wide in the hopes that they caught something interesting for everyone. I think they are about 3-5 years ahead of their time in terms of internet publishing with a major magazine.

I caught up with Ed briefly to talk about the new site and what lessons there might be for beat bloggers. I think Fast Company is moving more and more in the direction of beat blogging - and their website is about 3-5 years ahead of their time in this respect. If you have any doubt about their intentions - just consider their recent contract with Robert Scoble, one of the original great bloggers period, who today literally broadcasts moments of his live in streaming video via Qik, Twitter, Facebook and whatever means he can, to connect and chat with viewers in real time.

So, without further adieu - here’s the interview.

This site is more than just “beat blogging” - it’s creating a network for your site. You have dived head first into the deep end. Why?

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