The future of news is the smartphone because the smartphone is the future of computing.

That fact became clear on Monday as I followed two conferences taking place on opposite sides of the country.

On the West Coast, Apple CEO Steve Jobs used the company’s annual developers’ conference to introduce the latest version of the iPhone.

A phone in name only, the iPhone 4 – which will be out on June 24 – is really a very powerful and very small netbook with a touchscreen in place of a keyboard. Among its new features, the iPhone 4 can record HR video and has a forward-facing camera you can use for video chat. Apple is introducing versions of its existing iBook and iMovie software that work on the iPhone 4, so you can use it to read books or make movies.

Steve Jobs introduces Apple iPhone 4 - Courtesy Gdgt Live

Meanwhile, on the East Coast, online marketers gathered at Federated Media’s Conversational Marketing conference to talk about advances in social media technology, which so many companies are using for marketing that they’ve coined a new phrase, “social marketing.”

One of the day’s more interesting speakers – at least from my vantage point listening in via Twitter – was Mary Meeker, Morgan Stanley’s long-time tech stock analyst. According to Meeker, we’re about to enter a golden age of mobile phones and online advertising.

To drive home the point, here are a few of Meeker’s slides to show you why this is such a big deal:

The first is Morgan Stanley’s projection for the growth of Internet-enabled smartphones through 2013. They see the mobile Internet adoption rate – the number of people using smartphones to go online – growing even faster than the rate at which people bought PCs to access the Internet via AOL or other service providers.

Next, Meeker predicts that by 2012, smartphones will outsell PCs and netbooks combined:

Estimated smartphone v. PC shipments, from Morgan Stanley

Finally, she says each generation of computing advances has led to more users, which is why mobile Internet – not just phones, but tablets, cars, home appliances, anything that can access the Internet – is closing in on 10+ billion units:

These are huge trends, trends that smart writers and other independent creatives simply cannot ignore.

Why? Because if smartphones and mobile Internet are the wave of the future, publications will migrate to those technology platforms if they want to reach readers. Of course that shift has already been happening for the past 15 years. But if the rate at which people are using smartphones accelerates, it’s reasonable to think that the shift from print to online to mobile news apps is going to speed up too. And if you don’t follow suit and learn what it takes to produce content – stories, pictures, videos and the like – you could get left behind.

So what should you do?

Tune in tomorrow for my 5-step plan for taking advantage of the mobile Internet.

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.

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).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which new journalist are you?

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.

Given everything that’s happened, it wouldn’t be surprising to see a lot of doom and gloom at a news industry gathering.

That may be the case at other conferences, but the recent Online News Association annual meeting was anything but gloomy.

In fact, the mood of the 750 or so reporters, editors, website designers, photojournalists and others who made the trek to San Francisco was decidedly upbeat.

They know a secret. The newspaper business is dying – but the news business isn’t. It’s being transformed – and they’re the ones doing it.

It’s ironic to call online news the new direction of the newspaper and magazine industry. After all, some of the people who came to the ONA convention have been in the business of putting news on the Internet for more than a decade.

But as with banking, dating and other services that shifted to the Web, it takes time for cutting edge technology to go mainstream. And so it has been with the news business.

The 2009 ONA conference was equal parts validation of what veteran online news practitioners have been doing lo these many years and a chance for younger techie journalists to strut their stuff and rub shoulders with industry muckety-mucks.

But the two-day event wasn’t all tech talk. It also featured inspired discussions of new revenue models, collaboration, entrepreneurial journalism and how to preserve old-fashioned storytelling in a multimedia world.

Here, in no particular order, are my top 10 takeaways from the 2009 ONA conference:

1. Innovate. Journalists, including freelance writers should be trying out different writing styles, storytelling approaches, and markets to see how they feel. You don’t always need to know what the outcome will be of this experimentation. In fact, chances are you won’t know what the outcome will be. Do it anyway, and worry about how you’ll turn it into a business model later. Those words of wisdom come from none other than Ev Williams, cofounder of Twitter – and look where it got him.

2. Side projects are a good thing. If you can’t afford to work on your dream project full time, make it a sideline affair that you put hours into after your day job. Or if you can swing it, make your dream project your primary gig, but keep enough sideline work to pay the bills until you hit pay dirt.

3. There’s no such thing as an overnight success. Ev Williams and those other Twitter guys, tech radio show host Leo LaPorte, BlogHer women’s blog network founder Lisa Stone – they all worked on multiple ventures for years before hitting the big time. Yes, they got lucky, but not until after a long slog through obscurity.

4. Think application, not publication. The Internet’s taught us that news isn’t static. The age of slapping something up on a page, whether online or in print, is over. As several ONA presenters told the crowd, readers today don’t really think or even care about where they get their news, they just want the information. So instead of thinking of what you do as a publication, think of it as an application and then make it as easy as possible for readers to use you to find what they’re interested in.

5. Crowdsourcing works. And not just for finding sources for stories. Journalists at ONA talked about using crowdsourcing resources to track news, refine story ideas, share works in progress, get reader feedback and ask for funding. But some (established) news organizations are schizophrenic when it comes to this: on the one hand they’re embracing the new ways, on the other hand, they’re telling reporters not to follow sources on social media networks or tweet too much about the stories they’re working on. (This is why I’m happy I work for myself).

6. Interact with readers. Not just one way but many ways – through blog comments, forums, RSS feeds, hyperlocal blogs that let them help you or your organization report stories. Remember George H.W. Bush’s a thousand points of light? Give readers a thousand points of entry – OK, that’s an exaggeration, but you get the picture.

7. Technology is your friend. The techies are going to save the news. And that’s a good thing. Case in point: the ONA gave one of its 2009 Online Journalism Awards to Publish2, a latform for collaborative journalism based on link journalism.

8. If you don’t know how to do something, work with somebody who does. You don’t need to know content management systems, search engine optimization, and the other Web-based mumbo jumbo in order to make it as a journalist in the 21st century. You do need to know what the technologies are, so you can apply them to the work you’re doing. And you need to know where to find the people who know so you can ask them to work with you, and then speak their language on the project you do together. Not sure where to look? In Portland, I’d go to the Friday afternoon Beer & Blog gatherings, Abraham Hyatt’s Portland Digital Journalism gatherings or any of the other local tech meetups that happen here on a regular basis.

9. Talk amongst yourselves. The open source mind-set that originated in tech circles is slowly making its way to the news business. Nobody’s sharing company secrets, but they are more open about solving problems that everyone has – like how to get more readers to your website, what makes good news design online and how to make the experience easy and fun for readers. Case in point: at ONA, the New York Times demo’d an app called Document Viewer that lets you publish original documents on a website without asking readers to click to open a separate .pdf file. At the meeting, the Times said it will release the app to the public in a matter of weeks. To paraphrase Rachel Ray, how cool is that? Thanks NYT.

10. Don’t be afraid to fail. If you’re not failing, you’re not learning what works and what doesn’t. Nobody wants to fail on an epic scale. So save your innovations for small projects – if they won’t work, it’ll help you figure out why. If they do work, you can apply them to bigger projects.

As you can image, when 750 journalists get together, a lot gets written about what transpired and the 2009 ONA conference was no exception. To read more on the ONA conference, follow the Twitter hashtag #ONA09.

**Erica Smith’s Paper Cuts blog (not to be confused with the New York Times’ blog of the same name that covers book publishing) tracks total U.S. newspaper industry layoffs and buyouts on a very cool interactive Google map. 2009 total to date: 13,668.

Then the computer ate my blog post. Actually, I got busy with some other projects that day, decided to finish the post the next day and shut down the computer without realizing I hadn’t saved all my brilliant work (and apparently whatever auto-save feature WordPress.com uses isn’t available on WordPress.org, or I haven’t activated it yet). All my brilliant observations vanished into the electronic ether. And I haven’t been able to face doing it all over again.

Then it dawned on me. One of the biggest takeaways from the ONA conference was that good enough is good enough. There are some times when anything less than perfect won’t do, like an investigative piece that’s based on number crunching, court documents and multiple interviews. There’s no way to publish that kind of thing before it’s cooked.

But for some things, like blog posts that are observational v. reported, good enough is good enough. Sure it would have been great to have had the complete 10-step manifesto I’d almost finished on what journalists need to do in order to make it in the brave new world of online media. But I don’t.  And I was stuck on not having perfect. So instead of going with what I had, I stalled out, waiting for inspiration to strike, or enough time to materialize on my calendar to write the whole damn thing over again.

Well, that’s not going to happen, thanks to a confluence of work and life events that’s made me busier than I have been in a while.

So I’m going with what I’ve got. And I’m asking readers to make this an interactive experience. I’ll share some of the tidbits I picked up at the Online News Association conference, and you share what you learned. And instead of one big long blog posts, I’ll share my lessons learned in a trickle, with your help, starting tomorrow.

I’m adopting the ‘good enough’ mind set for my paid assignments too. Sometimes if a project is important enough, it pays – literally – to spend that extra day doing additional research or that extra hour or two writing or editing. But other projects don’t call for that kind of meticulousness. I’m not talking about fudging the reporting or failing to live up to the terms of a contract. A 500 word story doesn’t have to be the definitive account of a subject: if you write about something often enough, 500 words might cover one small corner of a topic that you can revisit again and again.

I’m also taking a similar approach to the redesign of this blog, which some of you have already noticed has changed rather dramatically in the past week. Once again, I wanted to wait until everything was perfect before announcing it to the world. Instead I’m taking a page from my techie friends and going with what I’ve got now, and will tweak what needs tweaking as I go.

I’ve been working behind the scenes for the last couple weeks with a very talented Web design partner and fellow freelance writer Ron S. Doyle to give WordCount a look worthy of the subjects I cover. I think he did a splendid job – a round of applause for Ron please. If you usually read WordCount through your RSS feed, come take a look at the site and let me know what you think.

What is Digital Journalism Camp? According to Abraham Hyatt, a friend and fellow Portland freelancer who’s organizing it:

This isn’t about bloggers vs. reporters, or old media vs. new media. We’re all on the same team. And this conference is about how we, as journalists, are innovating right now — what’s working, what’s not, and how we can get better at what we do.

As of this afternoon, close to 120 reporters, writers and other media types were registered – good for networking!

I’m will be moderating a 10 a.m. panel on hyperlocal news with panelists from The Portland Sentinel, NeighborhoodNotes.com and CapitolHillSeattle. Then at 11 a.m., I’ll be teaching a class on journalism basics, including finding sources, fact checking and making corrections.

Because this is a camp style conference, and because it’s Portland and even the journalists here are tech geeks, there’ll be an unconference going on in one of the rooms all day – which means in the morning, everyone who’s there will collectively decide what topics will be covered in that space.

• Here’s the complete schedule.
• Here’s a list of speakers, panelists and moderators.
• Here’s where to sign up.

If you can’t be there, you can follow along on Twitter using the hashtag #journpdx – I’ll be tweeting from the conference, though not during my own presentations.

You can follow @journopdx now for updates in advance of the conference.

See you there.

Hyperlocal news is a catch-all phrase that describes websites or blogs devoted to covering a city, town or neighborhood, or a specific beat within a city or neighborhood like biking, books or tech start ups. Think of them as the 21st century equivalent of the neighborhood paper you used to pick up on the street corner, or the weekly paper your parents subscribed to so they could read about your high school sports teams.

Hyperlocal news ventures have popped up around the country, and I’ve mentioned several successful ones here before, including SealBeachDaily.com and NewzJunky.

If you’re interested in learning more about hyperlocal news, and you live within driving distance of Portland, plan now to attend a panel discussion on hyperlocal news I’m moderating at Portland’s Digital Journalism Camp on Saturday, Aug. 1.

Digital Journalism Camp PDX is a free one-day conference on the future of journalism and what it means to media practitioners. To date, close to 85 journalists, bloggers and freelance writers have signed up to attend.

Camp-style conferences - very popular right now in tech circles – are less formal than traditional conferences and normally include a mix of sessions on pre-determined topics along with sessions conference goers choose once they get there.

Organizer and Portland freelance writer Abraham Hyatt is still putting the finishing touches on the Digital Journalism Camp agenda. But the day is likely to include discussions of digital storytelling, podcasting, SEO for journalists, new media revenue models and more.

The hyperlocal news panel I’m moderating will feature proprietors of three ventures in Portland and Seattle:

• Cornelius Swart, publisher and managing editor, Portland Sentinel, a neighborhood newspaper in North Portland with a strong online component.
• Ken Aaron, co-founder, Neighborhood Notes, a news and entertainment site that covers Portland’s four quadrants.
• Justin Carder, Neighborlogs, a Seattle hyperlocal news site.

For a little preview of what we’ll be talking about, here’s Justin Carder’s analysis of how much money he thinks he’ll make this year at Neighborlogs, roughly $14,000.

Digital Journalism Camp takes place Saturday, Aug. 1, 9:30 a.m. to mid-afternoon and will be held at The Oregonian (yes, we get the irony too), 1320 SW Broadway, Portland, Oregon 97201.

Even though it’s free, space is limited, so sign up early.

I’ll be posting more information about the camp as it’s available. You can also follow camp news on Twitter at @journopdx.

The tech crew behind BarCampPortland is doing its part to get the conversation rolling by extending an open invitation to local reporters, writers and bloggers to attend the city’s annual tech industry meetup, which takes place this Friday and Saturday, May 1-2, at CubeSpace, the S.E. Portland shared work and meeting space.

According to BarCampPortland cohost attendee Aaron B. Hockley, while many old-school news types still don’t get the whole RSS, Twitter and Web 2.0 ball of wax, “There are a lot of folks in the digital world interested in helping journalists understand the new media.”

Hockley and company are hoping to continue the discussion about the future of local journalism that started at the recent City Club Forum presentation on the same subject.

If you haven’t been to a BarCamp before, think of it as an unconvention. Unlike meetings where every minute is tightly scheduled in advance, BarCampPortland will have a general agenda but participants will decide exactly what gets covered when, basically making it up as they go. Here’s a video that explains how it works.

According to Hockley, the news industry discussion will most likely take place on Saturday, May 2, between 9 a.m. and noon. In the weeks leading up to BarCamp, announcement of the discussion already has local journos sharing their thoughts on the future of news, including opening up the news gathering process to the community.

BarCampPortland III runs Friday, May 1 from 6 to 10 p.m. and Saturday, May 2 from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. and admission is free. CubeSpace is located at 622 SE Grand Ave, Portland, 97214. Register here.

If you can’t attend but what to follow what’s happening, use the keyword BarCampPortland to search for blog posts, pictures and Twitter feeds.