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come a long way – I was the editor of my college newspaper and I can tell you, way back when, we were happy with the outdated typography equipment and darkroom gear we could scrap together.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?