diff --git a/scrapy/contrib_exp/newitem/serialization.py b/scrapy/contrib_exp/newitem/serialization.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..e22285018
--- /dev/null
+++ b/scrapy/contrib_exp/newitem/serialization.py
@@ -0,0 +1,18 @@
+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)
+