If you think reporters, editors, newspaper pundits, Sam Zell and the Sulzberger family are the only ones worried about the fate of the media business, you haven’t spent a Saturday morning with a room full of geeks.

At last weekend’s BarCampPortland III meetup, the assembled developers, programmers and Web 2.0 entrepreneurs were just as concerned about the fate of the news business as the smattering of old-school journalists who dragged themselves out of bed for the bad coffee and good conversation.

The techies wanted to know all kinds of things: Why are newspaper headlines misleading? Will micropayments – the vending machine model for paying for news stories – work? Should bloggers hold themselves to the same ethical constraints as reporters? Just what are those ethical constraints? Should bloggers be reporters? Should reporters be bloggers? Is hyperlocal news making money? And just how hyper is your local?

All excellent questions. The free-flowing discussion that followed touched on a lot of them without providing a lot of answers, at least not any definitive ones. But it was a start.

If the number of tech-slash-news geeks at BarCamp was any indication, Portland is a hive of activity on the hyperlocal news front. No less than three online community news ventures were represented: Neighborhood Notes; OurPDX.com and The Portland Sentinel, a monthly paper in North Portland with a daily news website. In case you hadn’t heard, PDX TV station KATU is looking to hire a Web producer to write, curate and publish local stories on KATU.com.

BarCamp took place the day after The Columbian in Vancouver, Wash., filed for bankruptcy protection, making talk of the future of the news all the more pressing. The Columbian sent a trio of newsroom staffers to BarCamp, including John Hill, the journalist turned journalism IT guy who wrote the ‘how hyper is your local’ blog post I linked to higher in this piece.

Guys like Hill, and Michelle Nicolosi, the executive producer at the newly only-only SeattlePI.com, and Kate Cohen and Donna Wares, co-bloggers at the SealBeachDaily community news site in California could be the salvation of the news business. They and a new breed of hybrid tech-news entrepreneur, like Steve Walling, a Portland writer and consultant who’s involved with projects like AboutUs.org and WikiProjectOregon.

Here in Portland, the conversation that started at BarCamp is continuing. As I write this, Abraham Hyatt, another Portland journalist who’s tracking the online news business, is planning a digital news meetup for sometime in August. Stay tuned for details. And tell a techie friend.

Twice in the last week I’ve encountered writers or bloggers who’ve run into a bad patch in their careers and are wondering if it makes sense to go back to school and get a master’s degree in journalism.

Bottom line: you don’t need a degree to get work as a writer.

Even if you have no professional journalism experience, j-school isn’t the only answer.

I’ve been there. In college I was editor of the student newspaper but my degree was in English literature, so I went to journalism grad school because I thought I needed “real” training. After a year, I realized a masters in journalism was for people who had absolutely no previous experience writing or wanted to be an academic.

I was neither – and struggling to support myself. So after a year I quit and got a job at as a trade magazine writer and editor (there was a recession, entry-level newspaper jobs were non-existent). Many years later, after I’d worked as a weekly and then daily newspaper reporter and then as a freelance writer, I went back to grad school – as the professor. I taught online newswriting to grad students. My only qualifications were those years I’d spent practicing the craft.

So if you’re contemplating going back to school to give your writing career a kick in the pants, there are other ways:

If you’re already writing, stick with it. Find some regular gigs – it is possible in this economy. If you have very little experience, you may need to start small and work your way up – and in these days of Craigslist writing jobs and Web content producers, there are lots of opportunities for starting small.

Blog. There’s no substitute for writing day in and day out. If you don’t want to maintain your own blog, find one on a subject you’re interested in and pitch a few blog posts. I don’t ordinarily advocate writing for free, but if you’re just starting out, you’ve gotta prove to somebody you can do the work – but then move on. And if you’re already established, hunt for paid gigs, they’re out there.

If you’re worried about your skills being out of date, there’s an abundance of non-degree track classes on using multimedia in journalism you can take online or in person. Organizations like the Knight Digital Media Center and News University offer scholarships or cover part of the expense. Take lots of them, and while you’re at it, do a lot of networking so you meet people who could potentially open doors for you.

Find someone with the job you’d like to have some day. Follow them on Twitter. Invite them to connect with you on LinkedIn. If they live in the same town you do, invite them to lunch. Ask them to mentor you. Don’t become a stalker. Do soak up as much knowledge as they’re willing to impart – then when you’ve got your writing business up and running pay it forward to some other acolyte.

Yes, getting a master’s degree could give you some official validation in the profession, and not having that might bug you in some deep down part of your being, a lot like the way that it still bothers me. But you don’t need it. Just go do it.

This is the last new post I’ll write in 2008, so it seems fitting to look back at the biggest stories of the year in the digital media business and how they’ll affect on freelancers now and in the future.

I’ll weigh in with my top 10 first. Feel free to send your own suggestions for the trends and events that made the past 12 months the most interesting, albeit gut wrenching, in recent times.

Dec. 26 update: For anyone who read the earlier version, I’ve now added links throughout.

1. The recession – It was a crippling, industry-changing year for newspapers. The double whammy of the recession and declining readership as more people get their news online had devastating effects. Publishers tried anything and everything to cut costs in the face of plunging ad revenue and declining subscriptions: filing for bankruptcy protection, selling or mortgaging properties, slashing jobs, outsourcing to India, folding entire sections, trimming geographic distribution, dropping 7 day-a-week distribution, going online only and teaming up with former mortal enemies.
The take away for freelancers: Though never the highest paying markets, newspapers were reliable clients that could be counted on for a steady stream of work. No more. I know a handful of freelancers who still do regular newspaper work, but by and large this market is a goner.

2. Media industry layoffs – Newspapers laid off 21,000 people during 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But they weren’t the only ones.  By the end of the year, magazines, TV stations, radio stations and book publishers were all slashing employees, many of them long-time staffers whose salaries and benefit packages made them some of those companies’ more expensive workers. That’s a lot of institutional memory down the drain – but when the ship’s sinking, everyone’s expendable.
Take away for freelancers: Be ready for competition. Some of editors you used to pitch are now vying for the same assignments at their old magazines that have been your bread and butter. But don’t sweat it too much. Not everybody’s cut out for the freelance life. If you’re good at what you do, the uptick in self-employed writers shouldn’t affect your business as much as other things (see no. 1).

3. Paid blogging – Blogging’s been around so long it’s regularly written off as passe. Skeptics aside, it is possible to make a decent living as a blogger, either as a gun-for-hire or for yourself. In the case of the latter, it’s possible, but not easy. Running a blog that earns enough to live on from ad sales, affiliate programs or sales of your own editorial products requires equal parts good writing, marketing and networking – not necessarily in that order.
Take away for freelancers: More companies are including blogging in their overall marketing strategy, opening up opportunities for corporate blogging gigs.  Websites like ProBlogger.com do a good job of keeping up with the latest openings. And if you’re blogging for yourself, sites like ProBlogger and Copyblogger have mounds of material on what to do, and what to avoid.

4. Writing for Websites – The media world is turning to the Web, with newspapers updating stories throughout the day on their Websites and more online-only publications starting up every week. Even magazines are getting into the act, albeit more slowly than other types of publications – although some (think Conde Nast) have reversed course and given up on the Web. Also popping up: Web content syndicates that operate like wire services of yesteryear, producing copy that’s posted on the Websites of subscribers such as ISPs, news aggregators and corporations.
Take away for freelancers: Websites are the new newspapers, but not all are created equal. Some pay pennies, others $1/word or more. Writers need to be particular about who they work for. Takeaway no. 2: there’s no longer a stigma to writing stories that go directly to the Web – though it’s still hard to convince PR reps of that. And no. 3:  HTML is your friend. If you want to write for Websites, know at least a little about it and how to add links to your stories pointing people to related material.

5. Multimedia – Writers are expected to know how to tell a story not just with words but with photos, podcasts and other multimedia elements. And it’s not just reporters. In addition to the editing work she does, one features editor at a mid-sized West Coast daily newspaper that’s been hit by budget cuts and layoffs  also writes stories, shoots her own video for them and records podcasts – and expects anyone on her staff to be able to do the same.
Take away for freelancers: If staffers are doing it, you should be too. Multimedia makes you more marketable. Learn it so you can pitch it. Not a DIY type? Online classes and workshops are everywhere.

6. Writing for exposure free - There’ve never been more opportunities to write for the Web – for free. I’m not just talking about the start ups that advertise on Craigslist who promise to pay contributors “in exposure,” but also some of the biggest blogs around, like The Huffington Post.
Take away for freelancers: Don’t do it. No matter how exciting it might be to see your name on HuffPost, writing for free is not a business model.

7. Social networks – It’s not just about how many friends you have on Facebook anymore. 2008 was the year social networking for work took off. LinkedIn was a huge beneficiary, ending the year with more than 30 million members. Companies large and small ramped up their use of social networks for marketing, recruiting and customer relations.
Take away for freelancers: If you haven’t started, now’s the time to dive in. Wired freelancers are already using social networks like LinkedIn to crowdsource (find sources), get assignments and do their jobs better. Don’t get left behind.

8. Twitter – Yes, lots of people use Twitter to describe what they ate for breakfast or where they’re stuck in traffic. But the microblogging platform also helped reporters quickly spread word of the terrorist attack in Mumbai. More editors, reporters and bloggers are using it to update followers on works in progress or their latest blog posts. As a social network, Twitter feels like an cocktail party that’s still small enough you might just accidentally hit it off with someone who could end up being a source or offering you a job.
Take away for freelancers: Get in on the ground floor – trite but true. It’s still too early to see the difference it’s made in my writing business, but other freelancers swear by it as a way to follow trends, discover publications or editors they want to work with – or vice versa – and find sources on the fly. Caution: it can easily become a huge time suck.

9. Work made for hire – FNASR contracts are going the way of the dinosaur due to the migration of content to the Web (see no. 4).
Take away for freelancers: Reslants are your friend. If you don’t own the copyright to a piece you can’t sell reprint rights to other publications. But you can recast a story written for consumer publication A into a piece for trade magazine B or Website C. Or use research for a piece for trade magazine for Fortune 1000 companies for a piece for a small business Website. Recycle, reuse, repeat.

10. The brand of you – Whatever the specialty – writing, marketing, blogging, Website design, etc. – self-employed workers are figuring out they are a brand and are marketing accordingly (see Julia Allison).  These campaigns include everything from professionally designed Websites, blogs and YouTube channels to email signatures that list the owner’s latest blog posts or book deals.
Take away for freelancers: Take the plunge. Even if you don’t have time or money for the big stuff, tacking your Linkedin, Twitter and blog addresses onto your email signature is a start. Blogging software is free and can substitute for a Website. And if you’re already doing all that, 2009 might be the year to take it up a notch by starting a monthly podcast or e-newsletter to showcase your work.

I’m starting what I hope will become a WordCount Friday feature, a recap of news and commentary on freelancing and the media business as reported by other blogs and news outlets this week. Happy reading:

The case for independent news sites as profit-makers – David Westphal, a senior fellow at USC’s Annenberg’s Center on Communication Leadership, writes on the Knight Digital Media Center’s resurrected Online Journalism Review, that independent, for-profit news Websites like NewWest.net, might be onto something.

Team writing blogs – With traditional print markets drying up, freelance writers are also thinking about new ways to sell their “products,” including LinkedIn member David Hawkins, who proposes creating a team writing blog that individuals could contribute to but eventually the group could market as packaged content to Websites or other clients. Watch out Reuters.

The TypePad Journalist Bailout Program – Speaking of traditional print markets drying up, with so many reporters losing their staff jobs, blogging software maker Six Apart saw an opportunity to do a little good and a lot of self promotion and started offering recently laid off reporters a free blog package normally worth $150/year.

A bailout plan for U.S. newspapers – Hey, Uncle Sam is giving money to everybody else, why not newspapers too?

PC Magazine goes online only – January will be the last dead-tree issue of Ziff Davis’ venerable computer magazine – and can we say, for a publication that writes about all things digital, what took you so long? PC Mag joins US News & World Report and the Christian Science Monitor, which have both announced plans to go online only in 2009.

College media has come a long way – I was the editor of my college newspaper and I can tell you, way back when, we were happy with the outdated typography equipment and darkroom gear we could scrap together. That’s not the case with today’s college papers, which according to Brian Mulrey in this PBS MediaShift story, are leading the charge in innovative interactive storytelling.

What’s your least favorite part of being a freelance writer? – Even if you love working for yourself, there’s bound to be one or two things about it you don’t care for or aren’t good at. For Jennifer Mattern, author of the All Freelance Writing blog, it’s bookkeeping. What’s your least favorite part of freelancing?

Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia Journalism School gave the commencement address at the college’s 2008 graduation ceremony on May 21. It’s interesting reading for freelance writers contemplating where they fit into the increasingly digital world of news gathering and writing.

As Lemann’s address makes clear, this year’s crop of journalism graduates is leaving school with 21st century skills that reporters even five years ahead of them didn’t pick up during their academic careers. Lemann also points out that because graduates are so well prepared, a lot more are headed straight into good jobs, even if fewer of those jobs are in traditional daily print newspapers:

Today, more of you have definite plans that entail paid employment in journalism than had such plans when I first stood at this podium five years ago. How can that be? Much of the credit is due to the great work our Career Services office does, but it’s also that employers want you because you’re energetic, because you have skills that people already in newsrooms don’t have, and perhaps also because you aren’t so wedded to doing things the way they’ve always been done in journalism.

As I’ve written before in posts like this, this and this, if freelance writers want to remain competitive in today’s writing marketplace, they must adapt, and that means learning some of the skills these graduates picked up in school: multimedia reporting, photography, videography, blogging, Web tools and the like. You can’t pretend these things don’t matter. They do, and if you think otherwise, pretty soon you’ll be the one that doesn’t matter.

Read the entire transcript of Lemann’s commencement address here.

How does someone go from mild-mannered print writer to multimedia maven?

It’s the question of the day given the direction the U.S. publishing industry is taking – and if you’re not asking it, you should be. That goes for freelancers as well as staff writers.

To shed some light on reporting and writing in the age of News 2.0, I turned to a pro who has transformed her own career. Michele Nicolosi is a long-time journalist and current assistant managing editor at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, where she oversees the paper’s expanding stable of Web properties, including www.SeattlePI.com.

Way back when, Nicolosi was a run-of-the-mill reporter, working as a stringer or staff writer for papers such as the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Register and Times-Picayune in New Orleans. Well, maybe not so run-of-the-mill. Nicolosi was on an Orange County Register news team that won a Pulitzer Prize and other awards in 1996 for uncovering fraud at a local fertility clinic. In 1999, after nine years at the Register, she heard the Internet’s siren song and jumped ship for a startup, and when that one went under, another. After that folded too, Nicolosi landed at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication, where she ran the Online Journalism Review, started the Japan Media Review, taught classes and helped the school reshape its curriculum to embrace digital storytelling. The P-I hired her from there to be an investigative reporter, which led to her current position, which she’s held since 2005.

What motivated you to switch from working in print to online news?
After I’d been at the Orange County Register for nine years, it started to feel like all kinds of cool stuff was going on online and I was missing it. I felt the same way years before as I watched the Berlin Wall come down on TV. I felt like I should buy a ticket and fly to Berlin that night. I wanted to be there, in the middle of that incredible change. That’s how I was feeling about the Internet in August, 1999. I was burning to hop in and learn all about it. Luckily, a friend and former boss called and asked if I wanted a job at a startup. Perfect timing.

What responsibilities do you have related to online news?
I’m responsible for every aspect of running our Web sites: what’s on the front page right now, which 10 new online-only magazines and products we will launch this year, what the production schedule for that is going to be, and what the other things are that we need to do this year to help our site go from 16th most popular American newspaper site to 10th.

It’s a “Dream big, plan long-term” job, and it’s also a “Can you fix my headline?” job. The tasks I handle on a daily basis are non-stop and really varied. We’re constantly inventing new sections to spin off online and I love that work of thinking about who the audience is, what content and tools they want and how to put it all together.

I spend quite a bit of time talking to staff about changes in the industry, how we’re going to overcome those changes, why we do things the way we do online and seeking input on how we can get better. The word of the day in all newsrooms is Change and managing that change is a big task. I’m lucky to work with a great and understanding staff that really wants to play ball and figure out what success in today’s and tomorrow’s newsroom looks like. There are bumps along the way, but I’m so amazed at how far we’ve come and how much we have changed in the two years since the P-I went Web first.

The overarching goal for me is to grow the site’s popularity, readership and page views by providing more and better content – with a limited staff. The end goal of the push for more readers and page views is to make more money so we can afford to pay more journalists and support more journalism.

What new media skills should a a journalist have?
Laura Ruel posted a great set of recommendations in this column at Poynter Institute. I responded to her story with this comment:

When I’m screening multimedia interns, I look for people who know how to write, plus. The most important pluses, in some order of importance:
1. Can shoot photos and do basic Photoshop.
2. Can edit audio and create Soundslides.
3. Knows how to handle a video camera and can edit video.
4. Has good blogging style.
5. Can speak a foreign language in the community.

Overall, I’m not as interested in knowing that they’ve mastered any particular piece of software, but that they can learn new software quickly. People who have learned Blogger and WordPress and Soundslides and audio editing can certainly learn my site’s content management system. People with no tools under their belt will likely struggle to learn the CMS.

I screen differently for people applying for a reporting job. Skills I’m looking for there: audio and Soundslides for the occasional multimedia piece. Video camera and editing experience is a plus. I don’t really expect or need anyone coming in the door to know Flash. The fact is, most multimedia projects — video, audio, flash — take huge amounts of hours and are hardly looked at by the readers. I know it’s not a common view, but I think we should do less of this stuff if the readers are showing us they have low interest in them.

I wish all the candidates I see had more curiosity about what’s on the Web and more familiarity with trends in online news. Many journalists don’t feel any responsibility to familiarize themselves with the Web. I think everyone should have at least spent a couple hours each on MySpace, Facebook, etc., trying out the things that are sucking away our readers so they’ll understand this Brave New World a little better. It seems like it would be easier for everyone to compete if we were all a little more familiar with the competition.

Print newspapers jobs are getting cut left and right, what’s the job outlook for online journalists?
In the very near future, we will all be online journalists in some way or another. The outlook for online journalists — those that play well, learn about and care about the online publication as much as we all cared about the paper 15 years ago — is much, much better than it is for people who are dragging their feet, refusing to change the way they work to accommodate the new needs of the online product.

Why is it important for freelancers, bloggers and other journalists who work outside the traditional newsroom environment to have the same type of skills?
Any plus you can offer puts you at the front of the line in a very competitive field.

How can freelancers and independent writers get those skills?
You could take classes if you wanted, but they’re expensive. Why not sign up for Blogger, WordPress, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and play around in those sandboxes? Challenge yourself to start reading Paidcontent.org, EmediaTidbits and other publications that tell you about industry trends, new cool tools and ways of doing things. Month two: Download a trial of Photoshop, and take the tutorial that comes with it. I believe the program’s free for 30 days. Same for Dreamweaver. Get better at using Google and other search tools. If you spent an hour a day exploring and learning, you can get there on your own. Go to Webmonkey.com for lots of cool tutorials.

I’ve posted a tip sheet for people looking to gain new online skills.