AP chides reporters for tweeting about Occupy news before the news hits the wire bit.ly/rTpLzE So shouldn’t the wire speed up?!

– The New York Times’ (and former Facebook and Twitter product guy) Brian Stelter, in response to an email by Associated Press managing editor Lou Ferrara, reprimanding reporters for breaking news on Twitter before it hit the wire

In the No. 1 spot was the California District Court ruling on gay-marriage voter initiative Proposition 8. Uploaded by GoodAsYou.org shortly after the ruling came out in August, the document was Scribd’s most viral ever. The start-up provided a timeline showing how it was spread (image embedded; click to enlarge).

We should note that Scribd did not provide a list of docs ranked by number of views. CEO Trip Adler said such a list would be dominated by random items that have good search engine optimization, like a scan of an Indian phone book that has long been one of Scribd’s most-viewed documents of all time. Scribd, which now has 60 million monthly uniques, attributes much of its growth to its improvement of social sharing features.

The No. 2 most-shared doc on Scribd in 2010 was the surprising claim of proof of the computer science problem P ? NP from earlier this year. Uploaded by Vinay Deolalikar of HP Research Labs in August, the paper seemed to show that a class of computationally intensive problems could not be solved using simple algorithms.

In the third spot was the Republican political platform “GOP Pledge to America,” uploaded in September by CBS News. The draft lays out policy principles on the economy, healthcare and national security.

I find it interesting that Scribd’s most social documents are more often notable for newsworthiness than timelessness. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard oral arguments earlier this month appealing the Prop 8 decision that was posted on Scribd. And as for P ? NP, while many computer scientists believe the claim in the paper on Scribd is correct, the proof itself is not seen as conclusive.

The rest of Scribd’s 2010 social docs list is a similar mix of newsworthy documents and research, as well as a little levity, including a list of 25 macaroni-and-cheese recipes.

1. California Prop 8 Ruling (Good As You)
2. PNP 12 pt (Angelica Lim)
3. GOP Pledge to America (CBS News)
4. Scribd in HTML5 (Scribd)
5. A Statement to the Viewers of Countdown (Brian Stelter)
6. Marijuana Is Safer (Chelsea Green)
7. Cognitive Biases–A Visual Study Guide (Efern211)
8. Using Facebook to Move Your Business Forward (Facebook)
9. 25 Mac & Cheese Recipes (Gooseberry Patch)
10. Influence and Passivity in Social Media (Hewlett-Packard)

25 Mac & Cheese Recipes by Gooseberry Patch

Remember last week, when Google was forced to explain why it wasn’t single-handedly destroying American newspapers?

Turns out the company is in talks with some of the country’s biggest newspapers to…well, save them.

But, that isn’t exactly the right phrase. In fact, it’s not clear how to describe the talks. But we do know that Google (GOOG) is chatting with both the Washington Post (WPO) and the New York Times (NYT), because that’s what employees of the Washington Post and the New York Times are reporting today.

Here’s the Post’s Howard Kurtz, in a column this morning castigating newspapers for being too slow to react to the Web:

“Post Co. chief executive Donald Graham and Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and their lieutenants have been holding talks about a possible collaboration. This could range from creating new Web pages to technological tools for journalists or readers. Hanging over the talks is the reality that the search giant, while funneling vital traffic to news sites, vacuums up their content without paying a dime.

Post executive Philip Bennett confirmed the discussions, saying: ‘We’re talking to each other about improved ways of creating and presenting news online.’ He calls it ‘an informal collaboration’ that ‘has produced some interesting ideas already. I’d say that on the journalism side of the conversation we’ve learned a lot.’”

Here’s a Google spokesperson’s description of the meeting, for what it’s worth: “This was an informal meeting, and we’re always talking with publishers to find new and creative ways to help them make money from compelling online content.”

I assume that the unnamed spokesperson will also describe meetings with the New York Times, which the Times’s Brian Stelter reported on today–via Twitter–from an internal presentation that the paper’s Web site put on for its newsroom.

Here’s the Tweet: “At a digital strategy meeting at the Times. News nugget: Wash Post isn’t the only paper in talks w/ Google. NYT is, too.”

I’m following up with Times folks about said talks, but it’s no surprise to hear about them. That’s because contrary to what you may have heard during Senate hearings about the state of the newspaper business last week, every sentient Web publisher realizes that Google can be a huge boon, directing a firehose of traffic to their content.

Indeed, a lot of the gripes you’re hearing about from publishers are really just pleas for Google to please direct more traffic to their sites. That’s the gist, for instance, of NYT digital boss Martin Nisenholtz’s anecdote about typing “Gaza” into the search engine and getting Wikipedia and Twitter messages, before he sees a Times story.

Google’s argument is that it is a neutral arbiter when it comes to this stuff and simply provides links based on the results of its black-box algorithm. So, it will be difficult for it start giving newspapers–no matter how august and important–a leg up when it comes to search results, because everyone else will want in too.

Then again, Google is facing the increasingly likely prospect of antitrust charges over the next few years. Some of the pressure is coming from Microsoft (MSFT), which is working as hard as it can to beat that drum. But the search giant is certain to face suits from the struggling newspaper business as well.

Thus, cutting some deals in advance may not be the worst idea.

Side note: Kudos the Times’s Web-savvy Jennifer 8. Lee for providing a comprehensive Twitter stream from her company’s meeting. Well worth checking out.

UPDATE: Here’s a guess–perhaps Google has been talking the papers about a new, automated filter that will fetch news for users without asking them what they want.

Google does have plans for a solution. In about six months, the company will roll out a system that will bring high-quality news content to users without them actively looking for it. That’s what TheWrap.com’s Sharon Waxman says Schmidt told her he was working on last month:

“Under this latest iteration of advanced search, users will be automatically served the kind of news that interests them just by calling up Google’s page. The latest algorithms apply ever more sophisticated filtering–based on search words, user choices, purchases, a whole host of cues–to determine what the reader is looking for without knowing they’re looking for it.

And on this basis, Google believes it will be able to sell premium ads against premium content.

The first two news organizations to get this treatment, Schmidt said, will be the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Does the New York Times make more money from this arrangement, I asked? No, Schmidt confirmed, it won’t. But by targeting the stories that readers will want to read, it will get more hits out of the stories it has, which will drive its traffic and ultimately support higher advertising rates beside the stories.”

It’s worth noting that a “source close to Google”–who might possibly be someone on Google’s public relations staff–dismissed Waxman’s report, without saying which part was inaccurate, according to VentureBeat: “A source close to Google has raised serious questions about the veracity of Waxman’s claims about Schmidt’s comments. The company has not confirmed any of her post’s content.”

He’s right. But Stelter’s piece doesn’t mention one of the publishers that has been increasingly vocal about aggregators–his bosses at the New York Times.

Over the past few months, the paper has reached out several times to aggregators for a variety of offenses, and asked them to cut it out. To date, the Times hasn’t done anything more threatening than mailing a formal letter. But some other publishers, who see the Times as a leading voice for “old media” institutions on the Web, are hoping they might.

• In November, Times officials angrily complained to executives at the Huffington Post after that site republished a complicated graphic the paper had created for its coverage of the 2008 elections. HuffPo CEO Betsy Morgan says the issue was resolved, and that she considers the paper an “important partner.”

• The paper has also complained to Silicon Alley Insider editor Henry Blodget this year after he excerpted one of its stories at length. Blodget refers to the incident in a post he wrote today about the site’s excerpting policy: “We have been publishing for 20 months now–more than 25,000 posts–and we have been asked to shorten excerpts only twice. (We did so immediately.)” (Disclosure: I am a former employee of the site’s parent company, Silicon Alley Media, and own a small number of shares in the company.)

• In February, the Times complained to Michael Wolff’s Newser aggregator about the site’s use of a Times photo and its continued use of the paper’s iconic “T” to identify Times stories it summarizes. Wolff says he’ll stop using the logo if the paper insists.

Does any of this represent a concerted effort by the Times to dissuade sites from linking to and excerpting its copy? I asked spokeswoman Catherine Mathis this last week, and she demurred: “We are not taking a different stance toward aggregators,” she said, via email.

That hasn’t stopped other Web publishers from wishing the paper would do so. They’re hoping that the Times, which publishes the world’s best-read online newspaper, will somehow lead a charge to make it harder for aggregators to use their work.

Keep dreaming. Even if the Times wanted to do bottle up its content, it couldn’t–like it or not, information really does want to be free on the Web, no matter how much it costs to create it. And I get the impression that the paper’s executives, who are frequently lampooned as clueless dinosaurs who “don’t get” the complexities of the Web, understand that.

You can, however, effectively control how quickly the bulk of your proprietary stuff gets released to the public, if you really want to. That’s what The Wall Street Journal (owned by Dow Jones, the News Corp. property that also owns this site) has effectively done so far with its free/pay hybrid model. And the Times may one day try a version of that–again–itself.