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.

The Tribune Co., owner of the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, is operating under federal bankruptcy protection. So is the parent company of the Orange County Register. Ditto for the holding company that owns the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Daily News and Philly.com.

When it comes to the newspaper industry, everybody’s a nonprofit. even if they never intended to be – because everybody’s losing money.

In the wake of the disastrous effect the economy has had on the newspaper business and public’s changing appetite for how they consume news, more groups are popping up around the country to offer news on a nonprofit basis.

One of the most well-known to date is the VoiceofSanDiego.org, started four years ago and today 11 journalists strong. Minneapolis-based MinnPost is another. There’s also ProPublica, the investigative outfit headed by former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger. Ann Imse, a former OC Register colleague of mine who was a casualty of the Rocky Mountain News’ closing earlier this year, is working on putting together a nonprofit news venture in Denver. The staff at VoiceofSanDiego says they field calls from journalists wanting to know how to put a nonprofit newsroom together on an almost weekly basis.

That brings us to Portland, where thriving tech, creative and media communities have already spawned lots of local online and hyperlocal news publications, as well as a budding digital journalism community.

Now it looks like the Rose City could be the next metropolis to host a nonprofit news experiment. A group of media veterans have combined forces on a master plan to establish a nonprofit investigative news agency that would cover the greater metro area. The group, which registered the domain name WeMaketheNews.com and put up a website at that address this week, hopes to kick off its efforts with a day-long conference on Saturday, Nov. 21, at the University of Oregon’s Turnbull Center in the Old Town neighborhood in downtown Portland. The event’s being backed by Oregon Public Broadcasting and The City Club of Portland.

Among the minds behind the venture: Ron Buell, the founding editor and publisher of Willamette Week; Oregonian arts columnist Barry Johnson; Digital Journalism Portland conference organizer Abraham Hyatt; OPB news vice president Morgan Holm, and others.

Full disclosure: I’ve met with Buell, and agreed to participate as a panelist at the conference (I guess as a female independent writer who gets the tech stuff and recently attended the Online News Association’s annual confab, I’m a lot of interest groups rolled into one). That’s the extent of my involvement so far.

Does Portland need another news agency to compete against, or work with established organizations including the Oregonian, OPB, Oregon Business, Portland Monthly, the Portland Business Journal and Daily Journal of Commerce, Pamplin’s Portland Tribune and its various suburban weeklies, Portland Mercury, the Portland Sentinel and other print and online papers and blogs that cover the area’s neighborhoods and interest groups? I don’t know. But I’m willing to listen.

The WeMaketheNews.com conference is limited to 200. Tickets are $25. Sign up here.

(Updated with additional info @ 2:11 p.m. 9/23/09)

To say Matt Mullenweg loves WordPress is to state the obvious.

Mullenweg created the widely used blogging software and runs Automattic, the San Francisco company that offers it as a free platform or a software app you can use to run a self-hosted blog. (Disclaimer: I use WordPress.com for this blog.)

Mullenweg was in Portland last weekend to spread some of that WordPress love around at WordCampPortland, one of many conferences for WordPress disciples that’s cropped around the country in the past few years.

Work obligations kept me from going in person. But I listened to Mullenweg over a live stream that WordCampPortland organizers set up so anybody could feel like they were part of the party no matter where they were – except for the beer. Unfortunately nobody’s managed to live stream a keg, but given enough time I’m sure Portland’s developer community will figure it out one day. But I digress. As of Sept. 22, WordCampPortland organizer Aaron Hockley was still working on getting a recording of Mullenweg’s talk and the rest of the live stream online. Check here for more info.

Mullenweg, 25, has obviously talked about WordPress a million times because he’s one smooth presenter. In fact, if you followed my tweets at #wcpdx, you probably read me say Matt Mullenweg is the Justin Timberlake of blogging: funny, smart, cute and a natural in front of a crowd. Again, I digress.

In an extended Q&A session with the WordPress faithful at the two-day meeting, Mullenweg touched on a number of issues of interest to writers who blog and bloggers who write. Here’s a quick summary:

Blogs as websites – More people are using blogging software such as WordPress as a content management system. That’s a fancy way of saying they’re using a blog as a Website. When Mullenweg asked for a show of hands, about 90 percent of the people at WordCampPortland indicated that’s how they use WordPress. The number of freelance writers using blogs as websites might not be as high, but my guess is it’s large and growing. Here’s an example of what a blog doubling as a Website could look like, this brochure site for pianist Jane Coop.

Word and Wordpress – I write posts in the editor built into WordPress.com. It works for me. But I know other writer-bloggers who prefer Microsoft Live Writer or another editor. I didn’t realize until Mullenweg mentioned it that it’s also possible to write posts in Word. Possible, but messy – unless you use a tool on the WordPress editor to delete a lot of extraneous code Word adds when you copy and paste text into the WordPress.com editor. You’ll find instructions explaining how to fix that in a post on the WordPress.com Support forum called Microsoft Word. Thanks to fellow freelance writer @JaneLangille for finding that and sharing it with me.

One-button upgrades – With a little coding, it’s possible to upgrade your self-hosted WordPress blog to the newest version of the software with a touch of a button. True confessions: I didn’t take notes fast enough on this topic. If there’s anyone out there reading this who caught this part of Mullenweg’s presentation or knows more about this, please leave a comment and I’ll update this portion of the post with the info. Update: The latest version of the WordPress.org software allows for one-click upgrades. See explanation from @verso below.

You can hear from Mullenweg on WordPress and related subjects in an interview he did on the local Strange Love Live podcast radio show between WordCampPortland sessions.

Never been to a WordCamp? You can read first-hand accounts of two people’s experiences here and here (caution, technical language ahead), then check out WordCamp Central’s upcoming events to check if there’s one scheduled for your area soon, or here to organize your own.

You’ll probably see more from me about WordPress in coming weeks as I move this site from the free Wordpress.com service to the hosted WordPress.org service. Actually, I’ve hired someone else to do the heavy lifting – thanks Ron! – but I’ll be doing a fair amount of work as well. Cleaner design, same content.

Got your own WordPress love story? Do share.

Following his very successful Digital Journalism Camp in August, Portland writer Abraham Hyatt has teamed up with the Society of Professional Journalists Portland and SW Washington chapter to launch a monthly meetup for area media people.

The first Digital Journalism social hour takes place Thursday, Sept. 24, at 7 p.m., at the Lucky Lab pub in S.E. Portland. See this post on the Digital Journalism blog for an address, map and more details.

Hyatt had been searching for a way to keep up the momentum created by the inaugural Digital Journalism Camp, a day-long conference with sessions that covered multimedia story telling, hyperlocal news and more and was attended by about 150 local reporters, editors and other media types.

According to Hyatt, the SPJ was interested in getting into the picture and wanted to start sooner rather than later, thus the short notice for the first gathering.

The Sept. 24 social hour will feature a presentation on Portland Media Lab, a digital journalism venture started by Portland Sentinel publisher Cornelius Swart. Hyatt and SPJ’s Libby Tucker are lining up guest presenters for later meetings.

In case you can’t make it next week, mark your calendar for the next meeting, which is slated for Thursday, Oct. 29, at the same time and location.

Between meetings, follow Digital Journalism news and happenings on Twitter at @journopdx.

The 2009 Online Journalism Awards finalists were announced yesterday and a glance through the list shows the many ways news and the news business are being redefined.

Many finalist projects are the work of traditional newspaper companies that have invested major time and money into their digital news efforts. As you would expect, the New York Times, Washington Post Digital, BBC News and other big-time publishers are well-represented, along with a handful of small and medium-sized papers – including two here in Oregon, the Oregonian for its poignant series on a pregnant woman’s battle with cancer, and the Daily Astorian for its breaking coverage of a plane crash in a nearby beach town.

But many finalists are online-only publications that aim to pick up where cash-strapped newspapers have left off, especially on investigative news. One of the most ambitious is The Chauncey Bailey Project, a collaboration between more than two dozen reporters, photographers and editors from 23 Bay Area print, broadcast and online news organizations. They worked together to investigate the Aug. 2., 2007, shooting death of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey while he was investigating suspicious activities at a local business. Back in the day, competitive news organizations wouldn’t have dreamed of voluntarily entering into such a collaboration, which goes to show just how much times have changed.

Some other finalists projects from online-only publications:

• Women.Children.Crisis – An online “gateway” run by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting that compiles stories from multiple international sources about the adversities and dangers faced by women and children in crisis situations.
• Muckety – A daily news and information site based on online databases, research and old-fashioned journalism that maps “the paths of power and influence.”
• A staggering swindle - A multi-part, mulitmedia investigation of how a local man used the “easy money excesses of the housing boom” to scam $12.5 million from fake condo sales, by VoicesofSanDiego.org, an independent nonprofit hyperlocal news site.

2009 Online Journalism Award winners will be announced on Saturday, Oct. 3, at the conclusion of the Online News Association annual convention in San Francisco.

From what I’ve heard, the last few ONA conventions have been well worth attending, but I’m predicting this year’s will be the best ever. The pace of change in the news business has accelerated. More laid off reporters and editors are looking for ways to reshape their careers in an online mold. Content management systems, mobile apps and other tech tools have reached a level of maturity and cost that makes them manageable and affordable for even the smallest online publisher. I’m excited to be making the trip – and while I’m there I’ll reporting on what I learn.

If you’re going to ONA let me know – I’d love to host a meetup of fellow freelancers to talk about how independent writers fit into the new world of online news.

You should have been there.

A crowd of more than 100 reporters and bloggers showed up for Digital Journalism Camp in Portland on Aug. 1. Everyone was there to figure out how they fit into a media industry that’s shifting away from old revenue and distribution models to new ones that aren’t yet clearly defined.

While the publications are changing, the basic tools reporters use aren’t. Here are some favorite reporting tricks of the trade I shared with a group of journalists, bloggers, consultants, PR reps and others at session called Journalism 101. You can see a slightly different version of this on the conference wiki here.

Read other coverage of Digital Journalism Camp on Oregon Media Central and Burnin’. (Note: I’ll add a link to a video replay of the conference once I find it – if somebody has this info, please ping me.)

Journalism Basics – Research, Interviews and Crowdsourcing

1. RESEARCH

What to do when you get an assignment -

• Familiarize yourself with the subject – do background research , talk to people
• Read what else has been written about it.
• Step away from the computer – go, see, do – and take lots of notes.
• Find the best sources – have one source lead you to others.
• Use public records – Find these online but also courthouses, etc.

What to do when you’re researching story ideas –

• Go through the same processes you’d use to research an assignment.
• At interviews, ask extra questions that could lead to insights into new topics.
• Develop your news sense – tune into what’s happening around you.
• Read: 10 places to find story ideas.

2. INTERVIEWS

Do your homework

• Read up on subject first so you’re not wasting time asking about things you could have found out in your research.
• Always double check name, age, title, etc.
• Write down questions – Even Oprah and Barbara Walters do it.
• If you feel prepared you won’t be as nervous.

Don’t be afraid to look stupid

• Ask “Can you explain that to me?” – If you don’t get it, your readers won’t either

Don’t let your subject off the hook – If they’ve evasive:

• Call them on it – Say “That didn’t really answer the question” and ask again.
• Move onto something else and come back to it later.
• Don’t take no for an answer. Ask, “Why don’t you want to discuss that?”

Get more details than you think you need

• Your editor is bound to ask about the things you didn’t
• You never know what detail you’ll need when writing
• It could lead to another story

If you’re pressed for time, ask the most important stuff first

• Highlight any must-have info before you pick up the phone.
• Don’t hesitate to ask for more time – if they’re already on the phone, they might be more willing to keep talking.

Call or visit sources multiple times if you need to

• For longer pieces you might not be able to cover all the material in one shot
• To get the facts straight
• To get reactions to info you got from additional reporting

Read:

• Asking the hard questions: top 10 interview tips
• Prepping for the big one – A dozen ways to ace a VIP interview.
• Keeping sources on the subject
• Stalking the reluctant source – 10 secrets to get anybody to talk
• Prep work is key to conducting successful phone interviews

3. CROWDSOURCING

Sign up for Twitter and use it to find sources

• Follow people involved in things you write about, then DM them for an interview.
• Ask them questions directly, or tweet questions to your Followers.

If you report on business, use LinkedIn

• Use LinkedIn’s Answers section to find subject matter experts
• Post questions in the Answer section to find sources – always identify yourself as a reporter
• Use People and Companies sections to find sources

If you have a blog

• Post questions on blog posts as you would on LinkedIn.
• Create polls.

Read:

• A writer’s guide to getting the most out of Twitter
• How writers can use LinkedIn (Part 1)
• How writers can use LinkedIn (Part 2)
• The secret to my LinkedIn success
• New ways to used LinkedIn to find story sources

4. WRITING SHORT

• Leave in only the best stuff.
• Use lists, bullets (like these!) and other short cuts to tighten up copy.
• Write from the top down, cut from the bottom up.
• What can you cut? Read your story out loud to see.

Read:

• A few words about writing short
• 7 ways to cut a story that’s too long

Here are links to other posts on freelance writing basics:

• Freelance 101: Getting started as an independent writer
• 25 tips for better freelance writing
• What editors want from freelance writers
• Why freelance queries get rejected

Hyperlocal news is hot.

As newspapers shrink, more people turn to the Internet for information and easy-to-use online content management tools flourish, hyperlocal news ventures are popping up everywhere.

In advance of my presentation on hyperlocal news at Digital Journalism Camp tomorrow in Portland, I’m putting together a list of resources that might be helpful if you’re contemplating writing for one of these ventures, or starting one yourself.

What is hyperlocal news? It’s coverage of current events happening in a community written and published entirely online. How you define coverage, events and community varies. Right off the bat I can think of hyperlocal news ventures that cover:

• A city or town
• Individual neighborhoods within a city or town
• A specific industry, topic or subculture within a given city or community
• A multi-state region

The “news” part of hyperlocal news also varies. Some hyperlocal ventures operate like newspapers, covering local government as a civic watchdog, as well as publishing other news, features, entertainment and sports. Other hyperlocal ventures zero in on a specific topic, like biking or books.

Some hyperlocal ventures are hybrids, like The Portland Sentinel, which will be represented on the Digital Journalism Camp panel. The Sentinel publishes news about North and NE Portland daily online and puts out a print edition once a month.

Some hyperlocal news sites are one-person operations that look, read and act more like blogs than newspapers, with stories and posts that with a strong opinion and point of view. Others adopt a more neutral tone and look more like traditional newspaper Websites.

Here are some resources for starting a hyperlocal news site:

• GrowthSpur – A just-announced venture started by journalist, entrepreneur and WashingtonPost.com co-founder Mark Potts. The start up will provide tools and services to “that will take a lot of the guesswork out of starting or running local sites and turn them into successful, sustainable businesses,” according to Potts’ July 30 announcement.
• Outside.in – Another start-up, with a tool called Outside.in for Publishers that creates “an out-of-the-box hyperlocal news section for your website.”
• EveryBlock – Hyperlocal news blog operating in 11 major cities, with four more in beta tests.
• Placeblogger – Blog platform and directory.
• Patch – Hyperlocal blog platform builder created by team of media industry veterans.

Here are some resources for keeping tabs on hyperlocal news ventures. If you know of others let me know and I’ll add them.

• Knight Citizen News Network Directory of Citizen Media Sites – Listing of 800 hyperlocal news sites in the United States, with an interactive map and downloadable Excel spreadsheet. (This is not up to date because there’s nothing listed in Oregon.)
• HyperlocalBlogger.com – Covers developments in the hyperlocal news business. Check out their series, Starting a hyperlocal blog.
• Hyperlocal news sites listing – From Hyperlocal World, British-based blog that tracks all things hyperlocal.
• WikiCity – The city wiki project hopes to create a location-based blogroll directory to will serve as a list of hyperlocal news sites.
• BlogCatalog – Lists about two dozen hyperlocal blogs.

You can follow the hyperlocal news panel discussion and other sessions at Digital Journalism Camp on this conference feed.