msnbc.com and NBC News have expanded its relationship with MySpace with a new initiative to find "citizen" journalists from MySpace to cover the presidential conventions.

MSNBC on-air talent, along with MySpace executives will select the journalists.  The judges are Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist from MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
program, along with Tom Anderson, President and co-founder of MySpace, and Lee
Brenner, Director of IMPACT and Executive Producer of Political Programming at
MySpace.

Through the selection process, two MySpace members will be selected to cover the conventions and will contribute to MSNBC.

Expanding Relationship — Brian Williams is Very "Friendly"

Beginning in May, MSNBC and NBC video clips have been prominently placed on MySpace.  Several NBC and MSNBC journalists have been actively participating on MySpace with their own pages and have been building networks.  Brian Williams has over 2000 friends and Chis Matthews has just over 1800.  Andrea Mitchell has gathered over 1200 friends, Beet.TV has determined.

For an explanation of the collaboration with MySpace, we interviewed Mark Lukasiewicz, Vice President of Digital Media at NBC News in the MSNBC/NBC newsroom at 30 Rock.  (This interview was originally published in May.)

Find more details on the campaign from Caroline McCarthy over at CNET News.com.

— Andy Plesser, Executive Producer