diff --git a/scrapy/newitem/serialization.py b/scrapy/newitem/serialization.py
deleted file mode 100644
index e22285018..000000000
--- a/scrapy/newitem/serialization.py
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,18 +0,0 @@
-import simplejson
-
-from scrapy.utils.serialization import ScrapyJSONEncoder
-
-
-def item_to_dict(item):
-    """Returns a dict representation of an item"""
-    res = {}
-    for field in item.fields:
-        res[field] = getattr(item, field)
-        
-    return res
-
-
-def item_to_json(item):
-    """Returns a json representation of an item"""
-    return simplejson.dumps(item_to_dict(item), cls=ScrapyJSONEncoder)
-