The Online News Association is staying true to the times and asking journalists – including freelancers – to help them choose topics for sessions at its annual conference, ONA10, which takes place Oct. 28-30 in Washington D.C. The best part – you don’t need to be an ONA member to have a say.

ONA is the largest professional organization for reporters, editors and other journalists working primarily in digital media, whether on staff for newspapers or magazines or for themselves as freelancers, bloggers or entrepreneurs. Based in Washington D.C., ONA has regional chapters around the country and in recent years has started several international outposts.

The ONA recently asked members to submit proposals for conference sessions. Suggestions poured in, including proposed sessions on teaching writers how to code – and computers how to write – building nonprofit news ventures and thriving as a journalist entrepreneur.

Now the organization’s crowding, asking anyone and everyone interested to vote on which of the 118 proposed topics they’d like to see at the conference. To vote, go to the Session Selector page, and create an account. Each proposed topic comes with a brief explanation, and you can see who the presenters would be. You can give a thumbs up to select as many as you like.

Although it’s still months away, it’s not too early to start thinking about attending ONA 2010. Last year’s conference in San Francisco was a sell out, with guest speakers such as Twitter’s Ev Williams and BlogHer’s Lisa Stone, and close to 750 professional and student journalist in attendance.

For more information on the ONA 2010 conference visit the main registration page. Get conference updates on Twitter at @ONA10 and track conversations at #ONA10.

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 next time you find yourself complaining about the source who didn’t call back or did but then droned on and on when all you needed was one pithy quote, thank your lucky stars that’s all you have to whine about.

National Public Radio reporters covering the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake are sleeping in sleeping bags outside and bringing in their own food and water so they have enough to eat and drink.

You can read the story behind the story of NPR’s Haiti coverage in NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard’s Jan. 15 post on the radio network’s Website.

One of the staffers Shepard interviewed was NPR deputy managing editor Stu Seidel who told her:

“This is a terrible, terrible story. Even though all of us have a lot of experience, we are still making this up as we go along. What’s in my head right now is who will be in the next group that I send in this weekend. This story is going to take a toll on the people we send there if we have them reporting constantly in a relentless way.”

NPR isn’t the only media outlet sharing a behind-the-scenes look at their Haiti coverage. Here are are few other accounts, plus one that questions whether news agencies are doing the right thing by sending so many people into an area with massive travel bottlenecks and limited supplies:

The Miami Herald – In the latest installment of its weekly “Inside the Newsroom” video, Miami Herald Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhall talks about the paper’s quake coverage and “how to do justice to a tragedy of such enormous proportions.” According to Gyllenhall, 10 Herald staffers are covering the tragedy for the paper and its website, Spanish language and mobile editions, focusing on two main themes: how to explain what’s happening, and how the rest of the world can help with the recovery.

The New York Times – The paper used its Lens blog to showcase photos taken by Tequila Minsky, a Manhattan-based freelance photographer who happened to be in Haiti at the time of the quake. According to a post written by David W. Dunlap, Minksy phoned a friend who’d previously been a copyeditor at the Times, who in turn called the paper on Minksy’s behalf offering photos of the scene. Since this post went up on Jan. 13, it’s been updated four times with more images from other Times’ photographers of the earthquake’s aftermath.

The Washington Post – In a Jan. 16 piece, the Post’s Philip Kennicott opines that images coming out of Haiti are more graphic than those of other recent natural disasters. Whether it’s because of the magnitude of the disaster, proximity to U.S. shores, or willingness of news media to present “the full horror” of the situation, media organizations have lifted the veil they once held over especially gruesome photographs of death and devastation, running images so ghastly some require warning labels. He writes:

After years of hinting at horror, the scales have fallen, the camera is unsheathed as a seemingly transparent window on misery, and journalists are allowed to show the worst, and say with the blunt, desperate urgency of the best journalism: Look.

MedPage – The amount of news media personnel who rushed into the country to report on the aftermath of the quake led bloggers such as MedPage’s Dr. Bjoern Kils to speculate on the advisability of letting news anchors, reporters and videographers take seats that could be going to doctors and aid workers. Particularly disturbing to Kils was an attempt to dig an 11-year-old girl out of the rubble reported live by CNN’s Ivan Watson. Wrote Kils: “I do wonder if this type of reporting is really necessary or if perhaps two more arms – or four or six more, depending on the number in Watson’s crew – could have made a difference in freeing her…”

If you’ve seen other items on the story behind the story of the Haiti earthquake, leave them in the comments and I’ll update this piece in coming days.

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?

It’s been 48 hours since the close of the WeMaketheMedia conference that took place on Saturday, Nov. 21, more than enough time to let the dust settle and see what actually happened.

A crowd of about 150 or so media professionals and just plain folks attended part or all of the conference, which was created to explore the feasibility of starting a nonprofit organization to cover local news. Many of them have already weighed in with their views, which are all over the map.

There are those who thought the conference, put together by a handful of long-time Portlanders with roots in local media and public affairs, excluded – accidentally or otherwise -  groups that are chronically under-served by the state’s existing media, specifically people of color.

There were also those who railed against how it was structured, with participants who didn’t listen to each other and led by a handful of Boomer and older journalists who aren’t as hip to Twitter et al as their Gen Y counterparts, a techno divide that got bigger as the day wore one.

There were also those who’ve made the rounds of local or national digital journalism conferences over the past year or more and are tired of talking about problems and just want to get on with implementing some solutions.

While I started out as one of the panelists, by the end of the day I’d joined “the corner,” a group sitting in the back of the room near the electrical outlets so they could take notes on their laptops and use Twitter to broadcast meeting updates to people who couldn’t be there, and yes, I’ll admit it, crack jokes and grouse about things they heard and didn’t like.

It’s all well and good to argue about who did what at the meeting or who didn’t respect whom. For me, what it all comes down to is the work. As one of those people who’s been going to these ‘future of news’ presentations for the past six months and written about it for the past two years, I too am ready to stop talking about it and get things done.

Which is why I spent the better part of Saturday with the conference goers who wanted to discuss creating a network of independent, entrepreneurial journalism ventures that could collaborate in some way on a regular basis. What this organization could look like, how the participants would collaborate and how it would be funded is TBD. But as discussed by the 20-plus people who spent a couple of hours hashing it out, it could take several shapes, including some or all of the following:

• A loosely affiliated group of journalists and bloggers, each with their own specialty or beat that would run their respective websites, blogs, email newsletters or other publications, and possibly also contribute some or all of their work to a larger online publication or site.
• A physical co-working space specifically for reporters who want to work someplace other than their home offices some or all of the time
• A social support group that would meet regularly to brainstorm, share advice and commiserate.
• A group that could barter editorial services – my copyediting for your videography or Ruby on Rails development.
• A partnership that could compile and sell its work to other news outlets through some type of syndicate.

Exactly how such a conglomeration would be structured, governed, paid for and operate is yet to be determined. But I like the concept. And it’s something I’m willing to pursue.

The group that worked on this idea on Saturday ended up calling it an incubator. For better or worse the name’s stuck. They also decided the city doesn’t need another new journalism group holding another monthly meeting to hash things out. Instead, they’re opting to piggyback onto the Digital Journalism Portland meetings that are already going on.

If you like the sound of a Portland journalism incubator and want to learn more, get involved – especially if you’re already working as an entrepreneurial journalist or have space to offer or some other goods or services to throw into the pot. Come to the next Digital Journalism Portland social hour. That’s set for Thursday, Dec. 3, 7 p.m., at the Rose & Thistle pub on N.E. Broadway. Get more details at the Digital Journalism Portland blog.

Meanwhile, the conversation about an incubator that started on Saturday is ongoing, in a Google Group set up specifically for the purpose. Anybody can join at WeMaketheMedia.

The incubator wasn’t the only idea to bubble up from Saturday’s gathering. According to meeting organizer Ron Buel, separate groups will be working in coming weeks on initiatives on investigative reporting, preserving traditional journalism values, and possibly, creating an agency to disseminate Oregon state public records to media organizations in a more timely fashion that exists today. To find out more or get involved with those groups, contact eharris@opb.org or ronb@donavoncards.com.

It’s not too late to attend the WeMaketheMedia.com conference, which takes place tomorrow, Saturday, Nov. 21, at UO’s Turnbull Center in Portland’s Old Town neighborhood.

You may be too late to order a box lunch. But you aren’t too late to show up for the all-day discussion of what it would take to create a new, non-profit news organization covering Portland and Oregon. Tickets are $25.

If you attend, you’ll be among 100+ practicing journalists, community activists and plain old citizens expected to be there. I’ll be one of them.

Portland is one of dozens of cities where hyperlocal news sites have started or are being started as newspapers and TV news lose readers and ad revenue. Just this week, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar announced plans to launch a local news service in Hawaii in early 2010. In recent weeks and months similar enterprises have been launched in Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago and elsewhere.

If you can’t make it, you can still read the working papers the group published in advance of the conference to set out its thoughts and hopes for what a Portland nonprofit news site could be.

You can also follow the conference on Twitter at @wemakethemedia or #wemakethemedia.

Newspapers like the Oregonian may never reach the same level of readers or advertising they once had. But that doesn’t mean the news is going away.

Around Portland and the state, hyperlocal news sites, blogs, and other fledgling news efforts are popping up to take over where traditional media outlets have left off.

That’s the message that came through from journalists – including me – who discussed about the local media scene on this morning’s installment, Rebirth of Local Journalism, on Think Outloud, Oregon Public Broadcasting’s morning public affairs show.

In case you missed it, here’s a stream of the complete, 60 minute broadcast. Yours truly comes on at about minute 37 (give or take a minute or two).

Oregon Public Broadcast’s morning talk show, Think Outloud, is rushing onto the air a segment on the future of local journalism in light of the WeMaketheMedia.com conference this coming weekend.

The show, called “The Rebirth of Local Journalism,” airs live tomorrow, Tuesday, Nov. 17, at 9 a.m.

I’ll be one of the guests on the show, along with several other Portland and Oregon journalists who’ve made it their business to keep tabs on the local media scene.

The WeMaketheMedia. com conference, which takes place at UO’s Turnbull Center in downtown Portland on Saturday, is looking at what it would take to start a non-profit investigative journalism initiative in the area. Even if you can’t attend, you can get a taste of what they’ll be discussing by reading these working papers the group’s organizers have put together in advance of the event.

If you miss the OPB live broadcast, you can catch a podcast of the segment after it airs. Once a link’s available I’ll include it here.

Here’s what I’ve been reading this week:

What do established writers need? – On her There Are No Rules blog, Writer’s Digest Publisher Jane Friedman asks veteran writers to tell her what’s missing from the pages of WD as she contemplates developing a new periodical specifically for long-time professional writers and authors.

Five ways to find revenue sharing opportunities – Revenue sharing isn’t limited to ad networks and affiliate marketing programs, as this post from the Freelance Folder blog explains.

It’s now or never for citizen journalists and federal shield law – PBS MediaShift weighs in in support of a federal shield law protecting bloggers, even the unpaid ones.

Gresham’s Law of the Internet: Crap Content Quashes Quality – From the always smart Erik Sherman, yet another look inside Demand Studios’ content factory.

Should you incorporate? – While it’s not new, this short piece from publishing lawyer Daniel Steven on the pros and cons of incorporation for non-fiction writers and other freelancers is definitely worth checking out if this question has ever crossed your mind.

The basics of freelancing on the go – Another good one from Freelance Folder, on the essentials you need to work from anywhere.

That’s it for this week. Have a great weekend everyone, I’ll see you back here on Monday.