It was the year reporters and editors said goodbye to thousands of staff jobs at newspapers and magazines that downsized or folded.

It was the year conferences went digital, Twitter went viral and the bad economy made every writer a business reporter.

It was the year phrases like hyperlocal, meetup and content aggregators entered freelancers’ lexicon.

It was the year of the mobile app, the multimedia story, SEO tags and crowdsourcing.

It’s only fitting that as we say goodbye to 2009, and with it the first decade of the 21st century, we also bid farewell to journalism practices of yesterday and embraces those of the future as the media business leaves print behind (more or less) for an online-only world and all the changes, risks and opportunities that come with it.

With that in mind, here are my picks for the top media trends of last year, and what they mean for independent writers in 2010:

Content aggregators – They’ve been called mills, farms, and in one case even demonic. I’ll stick with the more neutral-sounding content aggregators to describe sites such as Demand Studios, Associated Content, Helium, and possibly AOL’s new Seed.com. All those sites are hiring freelancers to churn out thousands of SEO-enabled how-to pieces and other “articles” a day in hopes the information will show up high in Google search rankings thereby maximizing the proprietors’ online advertising earnings. The debate over the opportunity these sites present for freelance writers has raged on here and on other freelance blogs for the better part of the year, and media industry heavyweights have weighing in with their (mostly) negative opinions.
Takeaway for freelancers: Content aggregators are here to stay, at least for the short term – although recent changes Google’s made to its search algorithm could affect them in the long run. Also here to stay are a contingent of writers happy for the query-free gigs these sites offer, even if the rates they pay are pitifully low when calculated on a piece-by-piece basis. I remain unconvinced of the merit of doing this type of work, though understand its attraction to someone breaking into the freelance business or with limited time or desire to pitch stories.

Hyperlocal – From the everything-old-is-new-again department. Never have so many been so interested in what’s happening in your Zip Code, your voting precinct, your city block or rural postal route. They are to the news business what nanotechnology is to the tech industry. From biggies like MSNBC, AOL and Examiner.com’s billionaire owner Philip Anschutz to tiny startups, hyperlocal is everywhere. According to Knight Citizen News Network, journalists and hobbyists have started more than 800 hyperlocal sites to date. But will they last? Some are already shutting down. The cofounders of one ambitious southern California hyperlocal project – both long-time journalists – opted to shutter their site at the end of 2009 despite accolades, ads and a partnership with their area’s major metro daily. Why? They couldn’t scale the business to make it profitable without taking on more employees – and the cost that comes with them – a step they were unwilling to take.
Takeaway for freelancers: Hyperlocal remains a viable alternative to working for content aggregators. But like aggregators they don’t pay much. Treat it like the experiment it is. Include work for hyperlocal sites in a broader assignment mix so if a venture goes under you’re not stuck. Or if you go on staff, treat it like a stint at a community newspaper – which is basically what it is – and gauge how long you’re willing to stay for the experience and clips you’ll gain. If you’re interested in starting one of these on your own, you can apply for one of 9 grants of $25,000 each that American University’s J-Lab is awarding for community news sites this year. Applications are due March 1.l

Nonprofit news – This year, everybody who wasn’t busy creating a hyperlocal news site was putting together a 501c3 to start a nonprofit news venture (actually, some were one and the same). According to popular thinking, if nobody’s making money from advertising anymore, why bother, just start out as a nonprofit and hunt for financing through grants, corporate sponsorships, subscriptions and donations. So far it’s working for sites such as MinnPost, Voice of San Diego and ProPublica, which have raised hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars respectively. The bigger question: whether it’s a model that dozens, or hundreds of other ventures can successfully duplicate, similar to the country’s public radio stations. As a matter of fact, don’t rule out the country’s public radio stations as a source of nonprofit news innovation, as stations such as Oregon Public Broadcasting are busy working to expand their coverage areas and the news they dish up on their websites.
Takeaway for freelancers: Nonprofits aren’t the backwater they used to be, especially if an organization is savvy or lucky enough to get backed by Knight Digital Media or another source of major grant funding. Most of these enterprises are being started by ex-newspaper or magazine journalists – meaning if you write for them you’re more likely to get high-quality editing, always good for the clips file.

User generated content – Where to begin. User-generated content is old news if you think of it in terms of YouTube and Facebook. But it’s catching on in new ways. For example, in a different type of user-generated content, more companies are choosing to bypass newspapers and magazines and instead of advertising, starting custom publications, especially online. Expect these types of projects to flourish in 2010 (Disclaimer: I started working on one of them not long ago). Is it journalism? Yes, and no. Sponsored content is after all, sponsored content. But some sponsors understand that for their publications to be taken seriously they have to present information that’s reported and presented like the real deal. The more well-known user-generated content trend is of course the reader comments, videos, etc., that more publications are building into what they do. Expect to see newspapers, magazines and websites do even more of this in 2010.
Takeaway for freelancers: If you don’t already do work for custom publications, now’s the time to look into it. Don’t think you have to pitch publishers of custom publications for the work. If you’ve written for corporate clients in the past, why not pitch them on a news site, or even an e-newsletter. Another options: introducing yourself to one of the growing crop of digital media agencies that produce online-only custom publications. As for the other kind of user-generated content – any writer running a blog or specialized social network has to think about ways to maximize reader involvement.

Entrepreneurship - With so many journalists getting laid off, it was inevitable some would go into business for themselves. Unlike long-time solo writers – such as yours truly – these reporters and editors don’t want to identify themselves as “freelancers,” a word that for better or worse still connotes a lower status word worker in some circles. Besides, some portion of these newly unleashed writers are opting to steer their own destinies rather than wait for editors to answer their queries, so calling them entrepreneurial journalists fits. What are these EJs doing? Creating news apps for iPhones and Androids. Working on the hyperlocal and nonprofit news ventures above. Creating technology platforms or providing the training journalists or newspapers need to their jobs better in the future.
The takeaway for freelancers: There’s never been a better time to start something on your own. The tools are abundant and free or close to it.  In cities such as Portland and New York, it’s relatively easy to find coworking spaces dedicated to writers or start ups or both. There’s also a wealth of information online and

Twitter - At the start of the year Twitter was still Facebook’s little brother, a circus sideshow fun for goofing off on but not really anything you could use for business. At least that was the perception. But as the year wore on and more publications and writers opened accounts, it became apparent Twitter could be used not just to research stories but tell them too. Dan Baum drove this point home when he took to Twitter to tell his tale of being fired from The New Yorker. If that wasn’t enough, there was always coverage of the plane landing in the Hudson, the Iranian election protests and Michael Jackson’s death to convince you Twitter had arrived as a news source.
Takeaway for freelancers: If you haven’t hopped on Twitter yet, now’s the time. Don’t worry about how you’ll use it, at least not at first. Give yourself some time to play around with it and see how things work. Then come up with a plan that fits into your writing business. You read more of my advice on how writers can use Twitter on this blog post and this one.

Other trends: the wave of online-only startup publications on all matter of subjects will increase; blogging will remain big; more publications and writers will experiment with mobile apps; and writers will see publications’ freelance budgets increase, though not all will return to pre-2008 levels.

Got your own picks for the major media industry trends of the past year?

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.

L. J. Williamson was frustrated with what she felt was a lack of editorial oversight on Examiner.com, the Denver-based content aggregator.

So she gamed the system.

Williamson, a Los Angeles freelancer with clips from big name publications like the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly and Sunset magazine, wrote a series of Examiner.com pieces that she admits included exaggerations and half-truths, like this one about the dangers of playing tag. She explains the whole thing in an email she sent to Fishbowl LA, the Mediabistro blog on the Los Angeles media business.

Nothing happened. No phone calls from fact checkers. No emails from editors questioning her sources. Nothing, that is, until Williamson went a little too far and wrote an autism-related story about Jenny McCarthy the actress and alternative treatment advocate noticed and had her lawyers follow up.

In no time, Examiner pulled the stories and fired Williamson, although she argues since she hadn’t gotten a dime from the site it wasn’t really getting fired.

Williamson says she wrote the stories as an experiment to call out the shortcomings of content aggregators, Examiner.com in particular. In a comment on the Fishbowl LA story, Examiner.com’s editorial director Travis Henry says the site has a growing editorial staff that works with writers, providing them with coaching and daily training sessions.

Here at WordCount, there’s been a similar exchange of opinions on the value of writing for content aggregators recently. In a post and multiple follow up comments, a Helium representative explained the site’s editorial process and how much money writers can make. Several freelancers countered her with arguments explaining why they won’t write for content aggregators or why they did and wouldn’t again. I even chimed in with my own advice to write for a hyperlocal news site instead.

While newspapers and magazines figure out how to transform themselves into fiscally sound Internet businesses, the pay-per-click business model that content aggregators – my friend and fellow freelancer Heather Boerner calls them content aggravators -  use to compensate writerscitizen journalists isn’t going away. Whether it will become the predominant online publishing business model in the future is hard to say. But it’s safe to assume the arguments over the merits of working for content aggregators will continue.