More evidence that the recession is winding down: writers and editors are on the move.

Last year was all about hunkering down, sticking with what you were doing, or taking the gigs you were offered even though they might not be your long-term dream assignments.

But in the past few weeks, I’m hearing from writers, editors and publishers who’re making major moves, all of them positive:

• An editor friend got the offer of a lifetime to run a new nonprofit news daily covering a major metropolitan area.
• An author, blogger and ex-newspaper editor got an offer to run a start up being launched by a major magazine company.
• A former daily newspaper business reporter and editor who’d gone to work for a college communication department after being downsized landed a job at the same start up.
• A West Coast media company is looking to full a junior-level website editor and production position on the East Coast as work for their clients there grows.
• A Rocky Mountain area freelance writer and editor reports being crazy busy with assignments, including a series she pitched to a national business publication.
• A Midwest freelance writer is beginning a publicity project for a well-known media training company

I know it’s only anecdotal, but it’s good news all the same.

One more thing: although I don’t know the particulars of every situation, I do know that for the most part, this work didn’t just fall out of the sky for these people. It happened because even while opportunities were frozen solid they were preparing for the day things would start to thaw. How? By staying in touch with their contacts, present and past. By working their virtual and real-word networks. By tinkering with side projects to learn new skills, even if those endeavors didn’t bring in any income.

What’s your good news? Is your business picking up? Are you seeing cracks in the ice? And if so, what did you do to make them happen?

The no. 1 reason editors don’t respond to writers right away is because they’re too busy juggling the many other demands of their jobs.

That’s what I found when I started a freelance editing gig, and what I heard from other editors after I wrote that post on the subject not long ago.

So, one freelancer wrote in after reading the post, is there anything that would get an editor to respond to me right away?

Good question. I asked some editor friends for their opinions on what it takes to get them to reply immediately to a writer’s letter of introduction, pitch or completed manuscript.

One says the best way to get a fast response from her is to have a killer story pitch, one “that’s so perfectly honed to the editor’s needs it’s irresistible.” Unfortunately, she doesn’t encounter those very often. “Pitches like that are like snow leopards: hard to spot and in danger of extinction,” she says. “But I get them from time to time, usually from people….who completely understand what the publication needs, and with whom I’ve already had discussions that narrow the topic range.”

Fast Cash Freelance addressed the same topic in this recent post, saying it takes more than a good idea for an editor to bite. According to the post, writers are most likely to hear back from editors if they have access to hard-to-reach sources (think celebrities or CEOs), expertise or first-hand knowledge of a particular topic, or can demonstrate their ability to do tough research to back up a pitch. Dependability, clever word crafting, speed and a contrarian streak aren’t bad either.

In the recent past, I’ve had editors say “yes” to pitches in less than 24 hours on several occasions. Once I started following a high-profile management expert and business columnist on Twitter right before the pub date of her latest business book. After she followed me back, I introduced myself and inquired whether she’d make herself available for an interview about the book and herself. When she said yes, I immediately pitched a Q&A to an editor at a business publication I’d started to write for, and got a yes within a day.

Another time I started following a publisher on Twitter, she followed me back, and based on something I’d seen her tweet, I asked if she’d be interested in a pitch on a related subject. She said yes and DM’d me the name and email of an editor to pitch. I sent a query the same day, and wound up with an assignment less than 24 hours later.

There’s something to be said with being in the right place at the right time, or responding quickly when you get even the smallest opening. But that only works if you understand the publication you’re pitching to, or the subject matter, or preferably both. In other words, do your homework. Then follow through by filing your story on time and error free – so the next time that editor sees an email with your name on it in their inbox, they’ll make the time to look at it and reply right away.

When it comes to the media business, the world is flat – and I don’t mean the screens replacing print for reading everything from newspapers to books, though that’s happening too.

I’m talking about flat in the sense that with so many newspaper and magazine staff jobs going by the wayside, publications don’t have as many middle managers or mid-level editors as there used to be. As a result, many publications are farming work out to independent contractors, editors and writers.

With so much in flux, at any given time the hierarchy of who’s working for whom could change, and the editor you wrote for yesterday maybe the writer you edit tomorrow.

It’s happened to me in the past couple months, as I’ve taken on a new editing project. I’ve found myself assigning stories to not one, not two but three freelance writer/editors who at one time or another I’ve written for while they were either staff or freelance editors. Another writer I’m working with is also a freelance editor who may eventually throw some assignments my way.

If it’s happening to me, it’s got to be happening to other writers too.

So how do you act when your boss today may be the person reporting to you tomorrow?

1. Quit thinking of writer-editor relationships as ‘us v. them.’ Constantly pitting yourself against editors because of perceived bad treatment – lousy contract language, unreasonable deadlines, crummy editing or late payments -  makes you a victim. If you’re not happy about aspects of a writing opportunity you have the power to make a choice: negotiate new terms, walk away, or accept the fact that the terms are lousy but you’re taking the assignment anyway. Yes, sometimes the editor you’re dealing with is disorganized, mean or incompetent. But in many situations, problems you encounter may be beyond their control. If you run into trouble the best thing to do is talk, via email or better yet, by phone.

2. Approach the editor-writer relationship as one of equals. One’s not better than the other, just responsible for different things. Editors translate ideas into stories suitable for their audience, sit through a lot of meetings, buffer writers from demands – reasonable or otherwise – of editors and other publication staff higher up the food chain and prep articles for prime time. Writers are editors’ eyes and ears on the front lines, keeping tabs on what’s happening out in the world to come up with interesting, relevant stories. If you think of what editors and writers do as being different parts of the same enterprise, you’ll have more appreciation for what the other does, and it’ll show in your working relationships.

3. If you’re a writer, think like an editor. Editors keep track of multiple details for multiple projects for multiple issues simultaneously. Some go so far as to use Excel spreadsheets or project management apps to keep things straight. If you’re a writer, you can help them and yourself by thinking like an editor. Don’t turn in stories until you’ve gone over them with the eyes of a copyeditor. If you’re responsible for turning in elements that run with the story such as headlines, decks, inks, file art, sidebars, subheads, etc., send everything with your original draft – along with your invoice – instead of waiting for an editor to remind you. If you have aspirations to work as an editor, being organized about those types of details is good practice, gets you noticed, and it could pay off if you ever want to ask for a recommendation.

4. If you’re an editor, think like a writer. As an editor, if you say yes to a query, talk through what your expectations are of the writer and for the story at the very beginning so everyone’s expectations are the same. Because of their status, editors often have access to people and information writers might not. Sharing that information with a writer could help them with a story they’re working on, which helps you in the long run.

5. Be considerate in all your business relationships. I write a lot about workplace issues and in the last couple months have done a few pieces of employee rewards and recognition programs. My take away – you don’t have to give people money or stuff to make them feel good about doing their job, or about working with you. A small amount of courtesy goes a long way – an email to say thanks for an assignment, or a Twitter status update on how awesome someone is to work with. When the holidays roll around, you don’t necessarily need to send gifts to editors you work for – though last Christmas I did send something small to editors I’d worked with over the year.

Do you work as an editor and writer? What advice do you have for getting along in a flatter media world?

Now that I’ve had a taste of the editor’s life, I have a better idea of why many don’t respond right away to freelancers’ letters of introduction, queries, follow up emails and submitted manuscripts. The secret: it rarely has anything to do with the writer. Read on.

The top 25 reasons editors don’t get back to you faster:

1. They’re in a meeting.

2. They’re working on next year’s editorial calendar, which is late, and they still haven’t quite figured out what stories they’re doing when.

3. They’re in the run up to a day-long webinar for 3,000 subscribers the publication is hosting and haven’t thought of anything else for days.

4. They’re at a publishing industry convention figuring out how to do more with less.

5. They’re covering a convention.

6. They’re in another meeting.

7. They’re flying to a meeting.

8. They’re editing stories that have to go up on the site tomorrow.

9. Their 2010 budget is due and they’re figuring out how they can get by without having to cut freelance rates or lay someone off.

10. They’re unorganized.

11. They read your story/pitch/letter of introduction and are still trying to figure out where you or it could fit into the general scheme of things.

12. They read your story/pitch/letter of introduction and are still trying to figure out how to politely tell you thanks but no thanks.

13. They read your story/pitch/letter of introduction and are still trying to figure out how to tell you that you or it are fantastic but due to budget cuts they’re only paying 25 cents/word right now.

14. They’re getting fired, quitting or getting downsized out of a job.

15. They’re working on the editorial plan for a spin-off publication the publisher asked them to take on in addition to their regular responsibilities.

16. They’re working a column/letter from the editor/feature story and have locked themselves in a room with no phone or Internet access because it’s the only way they’ll ever get any writing done.

17. They’re hosting an editorial roundtable with industry bigwigs for their publications’ annual CEO perspective issue.

18. They’re in a day-long session with the publication’s market research team plotting out what reader surveys they need to do next year and how much it’ll cost.

19. They’re in bluelines.

20. They’re blogging.

21. They’re planning the company Christmas party.

22. They’re planning where they’re going to go over Christmas break.

23. They’re decluttering/cleaning/organizing their office.

24. They’re interviewing candidates for next semester’s internships.

25. They’re in, you guessed it, another meeting.

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal published details of a plan by AOL for a 21st century news system that depends as much on computer algorithms as it does editors to decide which news is fit to print and which, well, isn’t.

You’ll have to subscribe to the paper in print or online or borrow a copy from a friend to see AOL to Produce News, Video by the Numbers in its entirety. But here are some of the relevant details:

• AOL will rely on a new digital newsroom system that uses computer algorithms to predict what types of stories, videos or photos will be popular, then assign articles accordingly.
• Here’s where freelancers come in. Stories will be assigned to freelancers via a new Web site called Seed.com. According to the story, AOL already works with a network of 3,000 freelancers but is looking to increase that number through Seed.com, “which is open to anyone looking to submit a story.” In other words, not necessarily professional writers. Note: The Seed.com website isn’t much to look at just yet, but they will take your email address and promise to get back to you after they launch, if you’re so inclined.
• Under the new system, AOL’s freelance fees will range from nothing up front and a share of ad revenue to more than $100 per story.
• According to the WSJ story, AOL will offer advertisers “the chance to work with its editorial team to create custom content.” In other words custom publishing. While there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s not exactly journalism, and hopefully won’t be labeled as such.

The WSJ story used the recent baby crib recall as an example of how AOL’s new system would work. If the new system had been up and running, according to the article, the company’s number-crunching wizardry would have determined that people were interested in seeing more stories on the subject, which would have prompted editors to assign more stories.

To which I can only say: no duh. Any editor worth their salt would have come to the same conclusion, and wouldn’t have needed a lot of computer algorithms to do it.

All this is being directed by Tim Armstrong, the former Google advertising exec who’s slated to take over as AOL’s CEO when Time Warner completes spinning off the Internet company in December.

Some of my freelance friends are already up in arms over the whole situation. They’re ready to put AOL into the same group as Demand Studios, Associated Content, Helium, Studio101 and other sites that I’ve called content aggregators but other freelancers have dubbed content mills for the paltry amounts they pay, whether to professional writers or hobbyists, to churn out how-tos and other articles based on topics that are more prized for how high they’ll turn up in keyword searches than for their reportage.

But other freelancers I know who work on AOL’s blogs and other news enterprises have nothing but good things to say about the working conditions, including friendly editors and decent money.

For now, it remains to be seen whether AOL’s new endeavor will turn out to be a legitimate new market for freelance work, or give new meaning to the term bad seed.

Whatever happens, it’s also worth noting that AOL is the latest in a string of companies that most people would identify as technology ventures getting into the media business, a growing list that includes Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. As newspapers continue to struggle, are these tech giants the real future of the news?

I’ve talked the talk.

Now it’s time to walk the walk.

After preaching to everyone who visits here about the need to innovate during an era of unprecedented industry change and try new things, I’ve taken my own advice and accepted an assignment to do something I’ve never done before.

What will I be doing?

Here’s a hint:

You know all those things I’ve written about editors – what makes a good one, how to tell a bad one when you see them, how to pitch, how to keep them updated on what you’re doing?

Well, I’ll be taking my own advice as, like Alice, I go through the looking glass and say goodbye freelance writer, hello freelance editor.

I’ll save all the details for another day. But generally speaking, I’ll be helping bring an online-based project from concept to launch, including mapping out timelines and editorial calendars, securing writers, lining up assignments, editing copy and working with what seems like an enormous team.

Am I excited? Of course.

Am I nervous? Of course.

I’ve worked as a business publication editor before, but it’s been awhile. In fact, it was so long ago the publication I was responsible for came out once a month, in print and the Internet was still a twinkle in ARPANET’s eye. In those days, marketing a publication consisted of printing extra copies to take to conventions and trade shows. This project will live online, and once we’re live we’ll let the world know through Twitter and Digg. Times, they are a changing indeed.

I’m not saying goodbye to writing altogether, especially not here. But it’s going to feel good to exercise a few different creative muscles for the time being.

Wish me luck!

In honor of Halloween, here are my list of the top 10 things that scare freelancers:

1. An empty mailbox – No checks for you!

2. A reply from an editor that arrives a minute after you sent in a pitch – Inevitably means “Thanks, but no thanks.”

3. Email to your favorite editor that bounces back with the message “Address can’t be found.” – Oops, looks like a layoff!

4. @themediaisdying and Mediabistro’s The Revolving Door newsletter – Twin harbingers of newspaper and magazine industry doom and gloom.

5. Content sites. ‘Nuf said.

6. Magazine editors who say they want you – But don’t have a freelance budget right now, could you do it anyway for free as a way to build a platform for your next book project?

7. Realizing you hit the “Reply to all” button instead of “Reply” on a snarky comment about a fat-head editor you intended to share only with a fellow writer that instead every staff writer and contributor is going to see.

8. Rewrites!

9. Answering questions an obviously newbie associate editor inserted into your text not because the story needs it but because she has no clue what you’re talking about and is too lazy look it up for herself.

10. Editing by committee – Wherein a story your immediate editor signed off on with nary a peep gets kicked back to you once, twice, three times from editors higher up the food chain with so many requests for revisions or “fresh” angles you no longer recognize it as your work.

Trick or treat everyone!

When it comes to online news, are you a Digital or a Turn Back the Clock?

Those are two of six types of new journalists Northwestern University’s Media Management Center identified in a recent report, Life beyond print: Newspaper journalists’ digital appetite.

The Northwestern team surveyed 3,800 journalists working at 79 newspapers about their digital habits, “where they want their newsrooms and careers to go, and how well their leaders are doing in managing the tumultuous changes in the news industry.”

Based on their finding, the report placed journalists in one of six groups based on their desire for digital change. While the survey covered only journalists working at newspapers, I’ll wager the categories apply to freelancers as well. They are:

Digitals – Spend a majority of their time online. These are the Web rats who ruled at the recent Online News Association conference, 20somethings who dropped out of j-school to run an online news start up, coding whizzes who win awards for their news-related content management systems, and guys (and girls) who never worked in print in the first place.

Major Shifters – Spend lots of time online outside work and are frustrated they don’t do more online when they are. Think newsrooms need to “get on it and make a more ambitious shift” and would devote heaps more time toward that end if they felt it was worthwhile.

Status Quos - Like the little bear in Goldilocks, find the 30 percent of their time spent producing online news is just right.

Turn Back the Clocks – Long for a return to print. Represented 6 percent of journalists surveyed (good thing, cuz face it, it ain’t nevah coming back)

Moderately Mores – The largest contingent – 50 percent of total surveyed. Would like to double their current digital activities to get to an even split between working online and in print.

Leaders – High-level publishers and editors who typically spend more time focused on print but would like to shift more of their attention to online operations.

The survey results show a need for a reorganized hierarchy of talent, writes Alltop blog curator (yep, that’s her title) Noelle Chun. She observes:

While newsroom veterans provide invaluable editorial instinct and experience, young upstarts tend to bring the digital skills and fresh ideas. How can we soundly lead newsrooms in ambitious new ventures with diverse leadership and colleagues?

I’m not certain where I fit into this group. I’m no digital native, but I spend an overwhelming majority of my work day producing articles that will appear only online, online and in print simultaneously or first in print and then online. None of the publications I write for are print only (are any?) Some of the publications I write for have print issues but the work I produce is for their websites. Guess that makes me a Digital Status Quo.

Which new journalist are you?

Care to guess what freelance technology innovation I could not live without?

It’s not Twitter or even Microsoft Outlook – those I use both of them all day, every day.

It’s the Track Changes feature in Microsoft Word.

OK, you didn’t have to work very hard to guess that because I put the answer in the title of this post.**

Little old Track Changes. Do you know how hard it would be to do this job without it? It’s the handiest way I know of editing copy when more than one person is working on a document. It’s the shorthand of choice between editors and writers to communicate what’s good and what’s bad in a piece, to ask questions and to make comments.

Yet, not a month goes by where I encounter someone who hasn’t been introduced to it, or worse, refuses to learn.

Just this week, a fellow freelancer complained about a book editor she’s working with who had printed out pages of her manuscript to edit an was going to scan or photocopy the materials to send back to her. Talk about living in the past.

Most full-time professional writers I know are on intimate terms with Track Changes and have been for a long time. The same goes for editors – well, most of them.

But I do a lot of sideline work on marketing and communications projects for nonprofit groups and inevitably helping with one of those I run into someone who’s never heard of Track Changes. Or they know about it but haven’t ever taken the time to figure out to how make it work.

To them and anyone else who still hasn’t figured it out I say, get over yourself. If you don’t understand how to use it, ask someone – heck, ask me. In fact, here’s a straightforward explanation straight from the Microsoft Word website:

Open the document you want to revise.

On the Tools menu, click Track Changes.When the Track Changes feature is enabled, TRK appears on the status bar  at the bottom of your document. When you turn off change tracking, TRK is dimmed.

Make the changes you want by inserting, deleting, or moving text or graphics. You can also change formatting.

If more than one person is editing a document, each person’s suggested edits will appear in a different color, making it easy to track which person is proposing what changes. That’s a handy feature if your editor’s editor likes to go over your copy and make suggestions for changes – don’t you love it when that happens?

We’re in the 21st century. Microsoft Word’s been out in one or another form for more than 20 years. There’s no excuse for not using it. If someone’s still making writers  look at edits in hard copy it isn’t a style thing, or a fear thing, it’s an ego thing.

** I learned the headline writing trick at a Web-writing class I took at the 2009 Online News Association conference. In blog post titles, forget puns and cutesy headlines and stick with keywords related the subject you’re writing about – your posts will show up higher in search engine rankings for that subject.

Newspapers maybe on the way out, but news isn’t.

The shape news takes, not only the way it’s delivered but what actually constitutes news, is changing.

Those were two of the major takeaways from the first day of the the Online News Association 2009 conference going on in San Francisco.

A sold-out crowd of more than 650 reporters and editors from around the world – mostly the U.S. but also from Canada, Colombia, Norway and elsewhere – packed into meeting rooms at the San Francisco Hilton Hotel to heard Twitter CEO Ev Williams, tech radio host Leo LaPorte, essayist Paul Saffo and others share their views of what lies ahead for the news business and the technology that’s used to produce it.

Because whether you like it or not, the news business is turning into the technology business. That was blindly apparent in a lightening-fast 60 minute presentation on tech trends journalists should know about given by media consultant Amy Webb, head of Webbmedia in Washington D.C. Twitter, Facebook, blogs – it’s just the beginning of a landslide of widgets, apps and other tools reporters, editors and Website managers can and are using to better bring information to their constituencies, and vice versa.

Twitter’s Williams didn’t share much about the little company with the big social network the assembled crowd didn’t already know, with a few exceptions. One: think of Twitter as a network, not a destination, Williams said. In the future, services will be built on top of Twitter so people won’t necessarily realize that it’s what they’re using. Another item of interest for anybody who uses Twitter now: the service is beta testing a lists function that will make it easier to segment groups of people you follow. If anyone reading this knows how to get me into that beta, ping me – I will trade 15 minutes of free social media or editorial consulting in return.

LaPorte, the tech radio guy, has been around the tech industry since the early days of the personal computer. He started out as a radio news reader and wound his way through various radio- and tech-related ventures before starting a network of tech radio show podcasts including This Week in Tech. LaPorte’s story should hearten aspiring news entrepreneurs; after years of pitching shows to radio, TV and publishing companies, LaPorte used the advent of relatively cheap podcasting technology to do his own thing, and it’s paying off. He’s currently pulling in approximately $1.5 million a year in advertising for shows that cost $350,00 to produce (which he does with a staff of seven).

Saffo, a Stanford professor who’s spent his career studying and talking about technological innovation, told the crowd to embrace the uncertainty they face as the media business changes. “The waves of creative destruction are tunneling through every corner of your industry,” Saffo said. “The only strategy is to flee into the future as fast as you can, and avoid the mistakes of the incumbents.”

Stay tuned for more from the Online News Association conference.