My reading recommendation for this week comes courtesy of Amy Webb, head of Webbmedia, the media training company that runs Knowledgewebb, an online training center and resource for journalists.

Webb recently published an updated map of the online news publishing process that’s created quite a buzz. It depicts the processes news organizations use to plan, create and publicize their work.

Although Webb’s map was intended to help staff editors and writers sort through how newspapers and online news organizations operate today, it’s just as applicable to sole proprietors – it’s just in the case of a freelance journalist, all the various jobs are being done by one person.

According to Julie Sturgeon, Knowledgewebb’s marketing director and a freelance writing acquaintance, the map has quickly become the most popular blog post Webb has ever written – and all for something she doodled one day while riding on the subway. It just goes to show – your most popular work doesn’t necessarily have to be the hardest to put together.

WMG_Workflow_2010

Meanwhile, another local news startup launched with a lot less fanfare but a no less ambitious plans.

OpenFile's Craig Silverman

That start up would be OpenFile, a Toronto-based service that’s borrowing innovations from other hyperlocal sites and weaving them together to create an open-source neighborhood news channe.

Journalists can use OpenFile to do the kind of grassroots community reporting commonly found on hyperlocal sites. Like Spot.us, the general public can use OpenFile to suggest stories they’d like reporters to follow up on, a bottom up approach to news that’s getting a lot of buzz. Following yet other online news operations, OpenFile will maintain topic pages, wiki-style entries that serve as backgrounders on specific subjects and act as traffic magnets.

One of OpenFile’s cofounders is Canadian journalist Craig Silverman, managing editor of PBS MediaShift, and author of Regret the Error, a book on newspaper corrections and a blog and Columbia Journalism Review column of the same name.

Silverman, who says he knew he wanted to freelance while he was still in j-school, is committed to using independent writers at OpenFile. He’s equally committed to paying more than the paltry fees content sites offer.

I talked to Silverman recently about OpenFile, the hyperlocal news business and his switch from freelancer to entrepreneur. Our interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What is OpenFile?

It’s very much about local news. We’re focused on getting neighborhood and street level news. We’ll cover city hall but only if it impacts a specific neighborhood and street. It’s also a collaborative news site. Anybody can go to the site and open a file. It could be they want to know why trees on their street are getting cut down. An editor would review it, determine if it’s a valid story, and if it is, assign a journalist to investigate. The idea is for ideas to come from the community and we’ll act on them. There’s another distinguishing characteristic. As a file goes live and the reporter develops their reporting, they’ll share that on the site. We’re opening up the process. Readers can help build out files by submitting a photo or links to city documents. From there it turns into a topic page about that issue, not just a story.

That sounds like the wiki pages journalists such as Robert Niles have suggested news organizations put on their sites to take advantage of stockpiles of information they have and to keep eyeballs coming to their sites.

The idea of topic pages has been talked about and implemented by media organizations going back a few years. There are products like Daylife you can purchase to create and populate pages based on keywords. That’s a model with almost no human interactive. We’re about creating curated topic pages that are good for traffic and good for giving people an overview. Wiki entries have turned out to be tremendously popular backgrounders that constantly evolve. We expect reporters to interact and take advice from people within the community. They can’t take on a story and not listen to what other people are saying.

Are you working with freelancers?

We’re doing traditional pay for writing with a rate comparable to what newspapers in Canada pay, $200 for 400 or 500 words. On top of that, we’ll pay performance based bonuses like the ones that have become popular at places like Examiner and Gawker. Right now we don’t have a performance metric but we will have a bonus based on page views. If we expect freelance writers to constantly update topic pages, we have to give them an incentive to do that. So we’ll pay for initial reporting but we expect them to stay with it and we have a reward stucture for that. Aside from the pay, if we’re going to cover a large and diverse area like Toronto, there’s no way an online-only property could have a staff of 50. But if you look at the way the workforce is changing and the field is changing, more journalists are out there.

Have you had much success finding people?

We have yet to do an all-hands-on-deck freelance call. Between me and the editor in chief we know a fair amount of writers and are going to people we know. We have one intern in our office who started talking to us on Twitter and asked if there was work.  The people who show an interest, who step up and pitch something, that’s who we’re working with. We want to find people who are excited about this. If we need to build a larger pool there are easy ways of doing that. We have a national organization for freelancers in Canada and there’s a popular email list for Toronto writers and editors. There are a lot of places to go.

Since you’re in the hyperlocal news business, what’s your take on Yahoo’s deal for Associated Content?

The first thing I thought was it was defense against AOL’s Patch and Demand Media. For a while there was debate about whether content mills were for real, whether the business model was sustainable. A lot of people in the industry looked at this deal and thought, I guess it is for real. You’ll see Demand, Yahoo and AOL battle it out for that place where content is produced quickly and cheaply to draw in search traffic.

How can a site like Open File compete? Do readers even care about superior content any more?

There is an argument to be made for quality. But just because you have a professional write something doesn’t mean it’ll be better off than a hobbyist writing for Demand or AOL. They have to deliver value in what’s there. When it comes down to neighborhood level news, I don’t see these guys, except for Patch, playing in that area. They’re going after web surfer traffic. But when it comes to bike lanes in a specific city and how they affect  streets, I don’t see those sites scaling down to that level. For us, we’re doing is location. We’re geotagging everything on the site. The idea is for a reader to have a customized page based on where they live or work that shows everything going on around them: local news, crime. What you see on Open File today is a beta, and in three or four months the site’s going to change fairly dramatically.

You’re a long-time freelancer. How did you decide to help start a media company?

I’ve always viewed myself as an entrepreneur. I tell people I run a freelance writing business. Writing’s great, that’s the reason I do it, but I’m a businessperson. As a freelancer, you won’t be successful if you can’t get your mind around the fact that you’re running a business. That said, my involvement with OpenFile represents a major shift. I’ve always run my own thing and now I’m on a team running a start up. The plan is for me to transition to be a full-time person, so it represents the end of my freelance adventure. I might have to have a bottle of wine one night and come to terms with that. It’s so much your identity. I chose freelancing, it didn’t choose me. I didn’t suddenly lose a job. Back in journalism school I liked the idea of being a freelancer. The chance to do this start up was the one thing that could have made me want to leave. As of right now, I work part-time for OpenFile, part time for MediaShift and do a bunch of other freelance. Over six or eight months, I’ll start dropping more and more things until I get to the point I’m full time at OpenFile. Or things could go insane at the site and it’ll be four months. But it’s going to happen.

How can other writers make the jump from freelancer to entrepreneur?

If eventually you’ll be in an office, you need to find people you could see yourself working with all the time. You also need to find people who rather than just offering financial backing or branding have a hunger and passion for whatever you’re doing. That’s also what I tell people when they’re considering freelancing. You have to be passionate about it or you won’t be successful. If you’ve been a freelancer and you’re passionate about it, you have to do an internal check to find out if you’re passionate enough about a new project to leave freelancing. For me, this is an ideal scenario. We raised the money roughly around Christmas time, so I knew as of New Year I would be in transition to working there. Right now it’s a period of leaving things off nicely with editors I’ve worked with for a long time. That’s so frightlening as a freelancer because you work so hard to build up relationships and you want there to be those connections because, who knows what could happen.

For me the new job is fun because it’s  very much linked to freelancing and that’s why I’m working with them. They realize the importance of freelancers and have tried to make sure there’s someone on staff looking at the contracts we’re creating with them in mind. I helped devise the way we’re paying people. In our contract, we’re not taking all rights in all media. We’re asking for a small window of exclusivity for online and mobile rights. We encourage writers to do what they want to do in print and if they think a story could turn into a feature of a couple thousand words, do it. We hope they’ll come to us first and in some way incubate the idea. We’re trying to be freelance friendly in a world that’s going in the other direction.

The industry

The pitfalls of collaborative news – The Chicago Reader reports on the deals the just-launched San Francisco-based Bay Citizen is trying to strike with hyperlocal sites. The piece also compares that nonprofit news operation with the Chicago News Cooperative, which like the BC has a content-sharing deal with the New York Times but also a six-month headstart. Guess which effort the Reader thinks is more laudable?

Bay Citizen embraces 4 trends among news startups – More on the much-discussed nonprofit news venture, which is backed by $5 million from a local investor and headed by Jonathan Weber, late of NewWest.net and previously EIC at The Industry Standard (Disclaimer: I’ve known and worked with Weber at a number of publications over many years.)

Speak at BlogWorld Oct. 14-16 – Got an especially rockin’ blog? Share your success with the world at this year’s BlogWorld, Oct. 14-16 at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Applications for speaker spots at the self-proclaimed “first and only industry-wide conference, trade show and media event for all new media” are due July 1.

Technonomy – Another online news and conference start up, this one on tech, launching with this classy black and white video of the three founders, all former Fortune editors. However successful start ups like Technonomy are, aren’t they nicer to read about than the magazine closings and layoffs?

The practitioners

50 women bloggers you should be reading – It’s easy to fall into the trap of visiting the same blogs every day/week/month. This list features a bunch I’d never heard of before – including several I’ll definitely be adding to my blog reader.

The tools

Three essential but underrated skills for journalists – I’ll save you the suspense and just tell you what 10,000 Words blogger Mark Luckie thinks are indispensable skills: – math, design and interpersonal communications. But read it anyway, he makes some good points.

iPad’s killer app for the enterprise – If you edit or write for trade magazines, have you started thinking about how to create content for the iPad? You better because your competitors are.

Being #1 on Google doesn’t matter: 5 unconventional search marketing tips – Another article that wasn’t intended for writers but is useful just the same. A sample tip: don’t be too worried about scoring No. 1 spot in Google searches, if you’re in the top 10 you’re covered.

Publish2 wants to disrupt the Associated Press with an online news exchange – According to this TechCrunch report, Publish2 wants to play David to AP’s Goliath.

The rest

How we write: The phases of the writer – Sadly, I can relate.

In light of this week’s announcement that Yahoo is buying Associated Content, today’s Best of WordCount edition is a collection of posts I’ve done over the past year on content aggregators and hyperlocal news ventures:

On content aggregators:

• What Yahoo’s deal for Associated Content means for writers
• Suite101 CEO Peter Berger and a question of quality
• The great rate debate continues
• The race to the bottom
• WordCount Q&A: Helium CEO Mark Ranalli
• Writer games Examiner.com to make point about writing for content aggregators
• Counterpoint: Yes, freelancers should write for Helium
• Freelancers, don’t write for content aggregators

On hyperlocal news:

• AOL’s news initiative – freelance friend or foe?
• A guide to hyperlocal news
• Novice freelancers, instead of Helium, try hyperlocal

You can take the journalist out of the newsroom, but can you take the newsroom out of the journalist?

Perhaps not. As anyone who’s worked at a newspaper or other media organization realizes, there’s a certain energy found in professional newsrooms. When journalists strike out on their own as freelancers, though, replicating that energy in home offices, clamoring coffee shops and public libraries can be difficult. Do you ask your dog to help you track down that hard to find source? Can you get a barista to help you write a Freedom of Information Act request? Will the librarian crack jokes about the ridiculous press releases  you keep getting?

These are the sort of questions driving the Oregon News Incubator. Our mission: advance entrepreneurial journalism by providing support structures, tools and collaborative space for independent and emerging media producers.

Journalist and Oregon News Incubator co-founder Bill Lascher

Last November, journalists from across Oregon gathered at the We Make the Media conference to hash out a future for our profession. The at-times contentious event was focused on developing a non-profit news source for Portland.

But a scrappy bunch of independent journalists at the event saw things differently. As we got to know one another, we realized journalism’s future lay not in one new institution, but in multiple endeavors, some overlapping, some independent efforts. Entrepreneurial journalism done by hardworking individuals and small groups will continue to thrive. But it will best be able to do so if it is nurtured. As new journalism efforts get off the ground, we wondered: where will reporters work? Was there a way for journalists working on their own to tap into the community and social connections, as well as professional support, found in a newsroom?

In the simplest terms, the Oregon News Incubator provides co-working space for journalists. We plan to offer four basic services for freelancers and independent journalists:

• A physical space
• Mentorships
• An equipment and resource library
• A skill-swap system

Our goal isn’t to produce the next Pulitzer prize winning investigation, recreate a web-centric, Portland-based version of the New York Times or even to be a vigilant watchdog for the state, though all of those things could happen within the umbrella of the ONI. We are trying to create the space in which any of these efforts – and so many more – could take root and thrive.

This isn’t just an idealistic goal. Since early March ONI has had a home at the Portland Sentinel, the news service focused on North and Northeast Portland. In exchange for a space for us to do reporting, share tips and maintain a resource library, we provide content to the Sentinel.

Still, producing independent work is our primary goal, and the space gives us an opportunity to continue working as independent entrepreneurial journalists. You can learn about some of the freelance projects we’ve already done at newsincubator.wordpress.com (a new, permanent site is coming soon).

Our arrangement with the Sentinel lasts until Aug. 1. We’re putting the pieces together now for a long-term home and are welcoming offers and ideas for creative collaborations. That space might be a similar partnership with local companies and institutions that want to support the next wave of local journalism while tapping the energy, expertise, skills and maybe the cash of a diverse and growing network of writers, editors, photographers and programmers. Or it might be a low-cost space of our own.

Meanwhile, perhaps you’re one of those skilled, energetic, expert writers, editors, photographers or programmers. We’re always looking for new members and participants. Anyone interested in finding out how to work with us should visit our Web site and get in touch. We are excited to work independently on the projects we’re each passionate about, while we enjoy the chance to maintain connections to the community, support and entertainment found in a newsroom environment.

In addition to our Web site, you can find ONI on twitter at @newsincubator, follow the hashtag #oni, or follow me at @billlascher, as I often tweet about ONI projects and ways to get involved with the group.

Eat My Shorts – This week the tagline I use for this standing Friday feature – to do great writing read great writing – is slightly misleading because some of the great writing I came across I didn’t read, I listened to. I’m referring to a segment on last week’s edition of PRI’s This American Life radio program. “Eat My Shorts,” co-produced with ProPublica calls into question the excuse heard a lot on Wall Street and in government hearings that nobody saw the financial meltdown coming. The piece does so by examining the actions of a hedge fund named Magnetar that figured out how to game the system – and made a mint doing it.

TAL fans will recall that Alex Blumberg, one of the investigative reporters on the project, also worked on the show’s now famous May 2008 segment, The Giant Pool of Money, which NYU recently called one of the top 10 journalism projects of the past decade. This 40-minute program is riveting, as fine a piece of explanatory journalism as you’ll get. It’s also a great example of how dramatic, influential, and dare I say even sexy, good business journalism can be.

ProPublica and the 2010 Pulitzer Prizes – Speaking of ProPublica, the five-year-old nonprofit investigative news agency walked away with the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. ProPublica reporter Sheri Fink took the award for her story Deadly Choices at Memorial, on life-and-death decisions made by doctors at one hospital during Hurrican Katrina. Fink won the honor in conjunction with the New York Times Magazine, which ran her piece.

ProPublica’s win marks the first time a nonprofit news organization has won a Pulitzer, recognized as the highest honor in U.S. journalism. It’s a big step for the New York-based outfit, and for the dozens of other nonprofit news organizations like it that are forming all over the country. Look for those organizations to use this a rallying cry for assistance, both from experienced journalists they hope will come to work for them as well as donations they hope to attract.

Read the entire list of 2010 Pulitzer Prize winners here.

Introducing Inside Edge, an online magazine on corporate finance for midsized companies sponsored by American Express and Federated Media.

The site’s still in a soft launch, which means it’s up and running and the sponsors are cranking up their own marketing machinery to formally announce it soon.

But I couldn’t wait any longer to share what I’ve spent so much time working on over the past five months. You can access it at www.GetTheInsideEdge.com or www.americanexpress.com/insideedge.

In addition to providing the team from American Express and Federated that developed the site with direction on editorial content, my main role has been as features editor, planning, assigning and editing stories in the Articles section. The site’s launching with several of these, and you’ll see more added each week.

The site’s still in the early stages and lots more bells and whistles are on the drawing board, including interactive elements that will let readers share stories they like on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Amex you probably know. If you don’t know Federated Media, it’s a five-year-old San Francisco digital media company that runs ad networks for 100 major blogs including Dooce, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb and VentureBeat. One of Federated’s cofounders is John Battelle, who started The Industry Standard, an Internet industry magazine I wrote for in the late 1990s before the dot-com bust.

American Express hopes the site will gain the same kind of success it’s had with OpenForum, a website for small business Federated Media helped the financial services company launch three years ago. OpenForum runs original stories and videos, content from influential small business and finance blogs, an active community forum and attracts close to 830,000 visitors a month.

Both Inside Edge and OpenForum are what the media industry calls custom publications, that is, magazines – in this case online magazines – produced by a company for its customers. Though not journalism in the strictest sense, at Inside Edge we’re trying nonetheless to provide timely, informative stories on financial matters that midsized companies care about, including expense management, cash flow, credit, and more.

Visit InsideEdge and find out for yourself. I’ll see you there.

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.

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?

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.