On October 5, 2007, Microsoft and NBC’s news website MSNBC.com acquired citizen journalism site Newsvine in a merger that promised to “empower Newsvine to become the worldwide mouthpiece of the citizen journalist.” The company blog touted the benifits of the joint venture to its users, like a “bigger, more diverse community,” more staff and resources and, most importantly, more exposure:

“Remember when Killfile broke the news of the Virginia Tech shooting 22 minutes before the Associated Press? What about when Corey Spring got an exclusive interview with Dave Chappelle? When important moments like these occur on Newsvine, why shouldn’t they also be put in front of 29 million people on msnbc.com?”

Of course, MSNBC.com publisher Charlie Tillinghast made clear that Newsvine stories would be verified before hitting the headlines of his website. But otherwise the outlook seemed good for the blogging community: “We see Newsvine as an excellent source of stories for MSNBC.com,” he told Portfolio.com shortly after the merger. Tillinghast also laid down that Newsvine would remain indepent, saying he didn’t have “any agenda.”

Still, Newsvine users questioned the editorial control MSNBC.com might place on their site. Commented user Andy Min, “not to be a pessimist, but is this really a good thing? Now we have all these issues with censorship (Microsoft won’t like us having Linux seeds on the front page).”

How has the relationship turned out? Over a year later, it seems the venture is far from symbiotic. Take a look at the Newsvine homepage and you’ll see an MSNBC.com “Top Seeds,” or links, module placed prominently below their feature story. Doesn’t this seem a breach of Newsvine’s egalitarian ideals of listing wire reports without editorial control? Likewise, the sports page is no longer solely for the users; it’s morphed into Newsvine / NBC Sports, featuring a number of their writers on Newsvine. And unlike most users, who build credibility (called “Vinacity”) through responsible use of the site, MSNBC staff gets their company logo where the “Vinacity” rating would usually go.

So on the Newsvine side, we have MSNBC featured over other sources, a takeover of the sports page and MSNBC exempt from Newsvine’s means of self-government and credibility regulation.

On the other side, Newsvine presence on MSNBC.com is almost non-existent. There’s certainly no featured links from Newsvine module. Whereas CNN consistently notes which users of iReport, it’s user-generated news site, make it on CNN and CNN.com, MSNBC.com seems entirely separate. Wouldn’t MSNBC benefit from linking to Newsvine more frequently and obviously? It seems almost like news giant wants it’s “mainstream” users to have little knowledge of their user-generated subsidiary. And more importantly, it seems that Newsvine’s promises of greater user exposure have not come to fruition.

Questions of censorship remain unresolved. But really, as a subsidiary of MSNBC, can “all editorial judgement” remain in the “hands of the community?” It seems users looking for a totally unfiltered site would do better with a company that is entirely independent and peer-to-peer, like Current, and users looking to break into mainstream media need something more like iReport. Ultimately, it seems the MSNBC acquistion robbed Newsvine of the one thing that made it totally unique: zero editorial control.