I attended an interesting meet up in Tel Aviv last night. Speakers at the TechAviv event included Iamnews founder Nir Ofir (we wrote about the company previously here), and WeBook CEO Itai Kochavi.  Both companies are trying to redefine how writers work together.

In the case of Iamnews, the idea is to create an alternative – and less expensive – news distribution network to compete with existing 300-pound gorillas like AP and Reuters. Iamnews will empower editors at newspapers and blogs to set up their own reporting networks through which they can assign and solicit stories. The system will track who wrote what so that contributors get paid.

The company won the “People’s Choice” award at September’s TechCrunch50 conference. Whether newspapers will opt for Iamnews over AP remains to be seen. The service might be more interesting to high profile news-oriented blogs and Web sites. Iamnews also has some serious financial challenges – it is now trying to raise an A round in a decidedly down market.

WeBook is not for newspapers per se; rather it allows writers to collaborate on the creation of books. CEO Kochavi told the audience that in light of the runaway success of Web-based social networking technology, authors no longer want to write alone. WeBook, accordingly, allows authors to post a manuscript and solicit comments from other WeBook members, as well as to collect individual commissioned articles on a theme and digitallly bind them into an anthology. The company promises to publish the best books as in print, eBook, mobile and audio formats.

Truthfully, I thought the idea a bit far-fetched. But maybe WeBook’s “crowdsourcing” concept could be a good add on for citizen journalism projects at newspapers where content is shorter and turned around more rapidly. Maybe there’s even a match with Iamnews? WeBook just raised a $5 million round, so at least some VCs believe in the concept.

Speaking of VCs…the TechAviv meet up also featured a talk by Adam Fisher who represents Bessemer in Israel. Fisher presented an investor perspective on raising money in a time of global financial turmoil. Fisher’s talk was inconclusive. On the one hand, he admitted that startups will need to hunker down and even lay off staff in order to weather the next months or years as VCs will understandably be more reticent in investing.

On the other hand, those same investors whole raison d’etre is to find the next big thing and they won’t be able – or want – to cease investments entirely. Investments will continue, Fisher predicted, albeit in lower amounts and at lower valuations. Indeed, Fisher advised portfolio companies to take “anything” that’s offered to keep their companies afloat including an acquisition at a lower price than the company might have commanded even a few weeks ago.

That potentially represents an opportunity for larger media publishers: If there’s a small company that seems interesting, you might be able to grab it for a fire sale price in the near future, so keep reading our blog and your eyes and ears open.