I did an IM interview with Bite PR, it's up here ....from it:

Bite: As a publisher, you must have a unique perspective on the new media movement. How would you characterize your viewpoint?

Battelle: Federated Media is an expression of my viewpoint. I started it because, well, I needed it.

Bite: What do you mean?

Battelle: Well, the cost of capital is lower. Barriers to distribution are pretty much gone. What matters are voice and conversation, as well as the community that voice and conversation gathers. How can someone who has a one or two or five person shop (like Boing Boing, Metafilter, Digg, Searchblog, Om Malik, etc.) make a go at being a real business? Where they can do their own thing, but not have to hire ten folks to do ad sales, tech support, biz dev, etc.

That's where FM comes in. This is a new model for publishing, in a way, but it's also a mashup of a lot of old models. Book publishing (we don't own intellecutal property), music labels (we help promote and provide studio time, so to speak), talent agency (we represent authors/sites to the rest of the world). But the key difference is we are not the Boss. We are the partner.

Bite: As a partner, how do you go about expanding your “network” of talent?

Battelle: We look for it all day. We ask our authors for their favorites. We're always looking!