John Battelle’s FM Publishing scores angel funding

John Battelle, who has become somewhat of a guru on the search engine industry, while writing a must-read blog about that sector, has raised a round of angel money for his new company, FM Publishing. Battelle previously founded The Industry Standard, and prior to that was a co-founding editor of Wired magazine.

Omidyar Network led the round, with The New York Times Company and Mitchell Kapor, Andrew Anker, Mike Homer, and Tim O’Reilly also participating, in what Battelle crows is an “extraordinary” lineup.

The company is helping top-tier blogs with marketing. More is explained at Battelle’s on-going blog about the company, and also here.

For what it’s worth, Kapor and Omidyar Network were also backers of Dan Gillmor’s company, Grassroots Media Inc, which publishes what is now called Bayosphere.

Omidyar, in particular, has a thing going for new media, including investments in Feedster and Socialtext, among others. Note that these are all Silicon Valley-based projects. Pierre Omidyar, founder and Chairman of eBay, and CEO of Omidyar Network, is proving to be a quite a devoted local servant.