The Online News Association is staying true to the times and asking journalists – including freelancers – to help them choose topics for sessions at its annual conference, ONA10, which takes place Oct. 28-30 in Washington D.C. The best part – you don’t need to be an ONA member to have a say.

ONA is the largest professional organization for reporters, editors and other journalists working primarily in digital media, whether on staff for newspapers or magazines or for themselves as freelancers, bloggers or entrepreneurs. Based in Washington D.C., ONA has regional chapters around the country and in recent years has started several international outposts.

The ONA recently asked members to submit proposals for conference sessions. Suggestions poured in, including proposed sessions on teaching writers how to code – and computers how to write – building nonprofit news ventures and thriving as a journalist entrepreneur.

Now the organization’s crowding, asking anyone and everyone interested to vote on which of the 118 proposed topics they’d like to see at the conference. To vote, go to the Session Selector page, and create an account. Each proposed topic comes with a brief explanation, and you can see who the presenters would be. You can give a thumbs up to select as many as you like.

Although it’s still months away, it’s not too early to start thinking about attending ONA 2010. Last year’s conference in San Francisco was a sell out, with guest speakers such as Twitter’s Ev Williams and BlogHer’s Lisa Stone, and close to 750 professional and student journalist in attendance.

For more information on the ONA 2010 conference visit the main registration page. Get conference updates on Twitter at @ONA10 and track conversations at #ONA10.

There’s a great quote attributed to motivational speaker Anthony Robbins: if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.

This quote reminds me of freelancers who continue to query print consumer magazines then complain when they don’t hear anything. When the print magazine industry’s losing ad pages at an alarming rate, it’s not surprising that editors aren’t buying. So why keep flogging that dead horse?

Online’s the future, and I’m not just talking about writing for content farms. There are all kinds of opportunities with online only-news sites, corporate sites, newsletters, trade publications, e-books, user guides, mobile phone apps and on and on.

Making the most of these opportunities could require retraining. But if you’re in the market to pick up some new skills, you don’t need to look far for opportunities.

One is a free hour-long webinar, Moving to Digital-First Content: How Intelligent Content Technology is Changing Publishing from Scott Abel, of The Content Wrangler fame, on Thursday, March 11 at 2 p.m. ET. Registration is free but you have to sign up in advance.

In the webinar, Abel will lead a discussion with content management specialist Ann Rockley and digital publishing innovator Dev Ganesan.

Here are a couple other journalism training websites that offer free or low-cost classes freelancers can take to pick up skills they need to create content online.

Knowledgewebb – Run by former journalist Amy Webb, this website’s motto is “Don’t sweat the tech. ” Knowledgewebb hosts online and off-line classes, webinars, tutorials and more. Subscriptions are $129 a year or $89 if you belong to the Online News Association or another partner organization.

Knight Digital Media Center - This partnership between journalism schools at UC Berkeley and USC offers multimedia trainings, bootcamps and other workshops at one or the other campus several times a year. Classes are limited to 20 applicants and are free, with costs underwritten by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation. Here’s a list of upcoming classes in 2010.

Online News Association – The largest professional association for journalists working online hosts its own annual convention, regional seminars and informal mixers and meetups around the country. The group also maintains a calendar of outside seminars and training opportunities (but you have to be a member to access it). Annual dues are $75 for working journalists.

J-Lab – The Institute for Interactive Journalism helps professional and citizen journalists use digital technologies to to report the news, through training, research and publications. The organization also provides grants to new media projects, and will award a total of $25,000 to nine such ventures this year – but hurry if this is something you’re interested in, the deadline is March 1. J-Lab and the McCormick Foundation also run a separate grant program to fund women-run new media ventures; that deadline is April 12.

Poynter’s News University – Nicknamed News U., this online journalism training program offers 150 free or low-cost classes. The e-learning project of the nonprofit Poynter Institute has more than 150,000 registered users and currently offers courses such as Mobile Media 101: Producing News with Your Smartphone (March 3) and Becoming a more Effective Editor: Strategies for Editing Yourself, Others (March 2010).

Know of other places – online or off – where writers of all stripes can get training? Let me know and I’ll add them to the list.

Shakespeare said a rose by any other any other name would smell as sweet.

But did Shakespeare call himself a freelance writer or a poet? A hired pen, or a playwright?

Not offense Shakespeare, but words matter. Today what writers call themselves matters more than ever because it sets the tone for how we perceive the value of what we do, and how others perceive us.

This hit home after two professional groups recently scrubbed the term “freelancer” in favor of the more business-like “entrepreneur” to describe their members who work independently.

Earlier this year, the Society of American Business Editors and Writers changed the name of its Freelance Committee to Entrepreneurial Committee, apparently to better reflect the times.

At the Online News Association annual conference earlier this month, officials of that professional group started preliminary work to offer webinars and other training for reporters who work independently, either by choice or because they’ve been laid off and are contemplating some kind of start up. The ONA’s term of choice for describing these individuals: journalist entrepreneur, or entrepreneurial journalist.

I got the chance to briefly meet ONA Executive Director Jane McDonnell at the conference. When I identified myself as a freelance writer, I told her I was confused about the right thing to call myself these days, especially in light of all the freelancers who now do work for content aggregator sites such as Demand Studios and Helium.com. My blog even carries the tagline: “Freelancing in the Digital Age”. Was it becoming detrimental to my career and my blog, I asked her, to be associated with those other freelancers, even if just by name? McDonnell agreed that today there’s a certain negative connotation attached to the term “freelancer” compared with the more positive sounding “entrepreneur.”

Today, many more people are working  freelance in all types of industries. But as McDonnell’s comments show, at least in media circles the word is getting a bad rap, and a bad rep. It would be easy to blame it entirely on those freelancers writing for content aggregators, doing work that doesn’t take the same kind of journalistic background or skill set that other types of writing require.

But there’s more to it than that. The traditional way of running a freelance business – querying print publications and waiting for them to respond – is falling by the wayside, forcing writers like me to take a more business-like approach to our jobs. We’re also exhorted to push our personal brand as a way to separate ourselves from the pack.

For 14 years, I’ve called myself a freelance writer and never had a problem with it. But given all that, maybe the time has come to throw out old terms and adopt new ones.

What do you think? Should a professional, ex-newspaper or magazine reporter or long-time independent writer adopt a different name for what they do?

Have you purposely avoided using the word “freelance” to describe yourself?

Do you believe what do you call yourself changes the way you look at what you do?

As I sort this out for myself, I’d love to hear what other writers have decided: are you a freelancer or journalist entrepreneur?

It’s been one of the worst years on record for the news industry, what with newspapers and magazines closing or shrinking substantially and shedding tens of thousands of jobs** in the process.

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.

So I wrote this whole long blog post about the future of news, lessons learned from going to the 2009 Online News Association conference last weekend in San Francisco. The conference was great on so many levels – one session after another of journalists taking about the cool new tech tools they’re using to tell stories, how they’re connecting with the communities they cover in new ways online, and how those communities are being empowered to get in on the storytelling process.

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.

Tribes, marketing guru Seth Godin’s 2008 book, is all about the groups people identify with. Godin posits that the Internet helps make it easier for individuals to be leaders and form tribes with others who share their interests, be it for work, faith or fun.

It’s got me contemplating my own tribes. There are the obvious ones – my extended family, the parents of children my kids go to school with, friends I went to high school or college with.

Then there are the writing tribes I belong to. When I worked at a daily newspaper, the other reporters were my tribe.

When I went freelance, not only did I lose my full-time paycheck, I lost my tribe. Instead of being part of a pack of 300, suddenly I was on my own – at least that’s what it felt like at the time.

It’s partly the reason journalists – anybody really – feel discombobulated after losing a job. Suddenly the tribe you’ve identified with for as long as you held that job has vanished.

But as Godin points out, the Internet is the perfect tribe-making tool because it makes communicating so easy. First it was through email listservs, then IM and chat rooms on online services like AOL, then the Web, blogs, and now the ultimate tribal circles, social networks like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Ning, LinkedIn and so on and so on.

Today, I’m part of several writing tribes. Knit them together and they’re the buddy system I lost when I left the newsroom. They’ve become intrinsic to my professional identity.

My tribes:

Freelance Success – A subscription-based writer’s community with a weekly newsletter and pay-rate database. For me and many of the hundreds of professional writers who pay the site’s $99 annual fee, the best part is the message boards, which are active, civil and cover topics such as magazines, corporate writing, blogs, travel writing and books.

#EditorChat - A weekly online chat on FriendFeed.com hosted by Motley Fool finance writer Tim Beyers and business feature writer Lydia Dishman that takes on all manner of subjects writers and editors care about. #Editorchat happens Wednesday nights at 8:30 p.m. Eastern. The latest discussion covered the types of work or household tasks freelancers outsource to buy themselves more time to work – or would if they could afford it. Earlier discussions have covered the New York Times’ decision to have columnists teach online classes, writing for content aggregators and hyperlocal news.

Twitter – Writers use Twitter many ways – to connect with sources, promote a story, showcase a blog. Another is to synch up with fellow writers. I follow several hundred writers and editors and am followed by a like number. We use it like a mini-message board, to share tips, answer quick questions or exchange atta boys. If you’re a writer, follow me at
@MichelleRafter and I’ll follow you back.

Portland digital media scene – A collection of writers, bloggers, podcasters, software developers and other media types with one thing in common – living and working here in Portland. This is probably the most loosely defined tribe I’m in. Portland’s media tribe hangs out at the Green Dragon on Fridays for Beer and Blog, goes to WordPress user groups meetings and WordCamp Portland (the next one’s Sept. 19-20 at Webtrends), and congregates at Mediabistro.com cocktail parties (which, BTW, somebody needs to resurrect – Mediabistro, if you read this, I’m happy to volunteer). The area’s digerati coalesced in the biggest way ever when more than 150 locals got together at the Digital Journalism Camp in August to listen to panels on hyperlocal news, new revenue models, podcasting and more.

UPOD – A Yahoo group for experienced freelancers led by Los Angeles freelancer David Hochman that I tune into via email.

Online News Association – This trade group for professional journalists who specialize in digital media has benefited from the demise of traditional (print) media in the past year, witnessed by a major uptick in membership. The group holds an annual convention – this year’s is in San Francisco Oct. 2-4 and I’ll be there – regular online and in-person classes, an online journalism awards competition, member discussion forum and offers other benefits and resources.

These tribes have become the places I look for help, bounce ideas off people, blow off steam when I’m frustrated with a story or editor or visit when I just want to talk.

As more people work freelance – not just writers but all kinds of freelancers – expect to see more tribes. That’s what all the fuss is over social networks, which ones are the best tool for creating tribes. It’s why Facebook and Twitter are such big news, why investors still pour money into social network start ups and everyone from job boards to media outlets are tacking on a community component to their websites – think of it as tribal warfare.

Are you in a tribe?

The week’s highlights from the freelance world and digital media business:

Standing up for writers – Today is the 2nd Annual Writers Worth Day. Lori Widmer, a Valley Forge, Pa., writer, dreamed up the campaign to help writers and other freelancers do a better job negotiating fees and standing up themselves. I’m down with that. As I’ve said here before, writing for free is not a business model.

Write On! Query contest – The southern California-based Write On! writers’ support group led by veteran freelancer Debra Eckerling is sponsoring a query contest with winners in screenplay, teleplay, fiction and non-fiction categories. First prize in each category is the opportunity to have a literary agent read your query, plus an iScript recording of the project and Save the Cat software.  Second and third prizes will be given in each category too. Entries are due by June 22 and winners will be announced July 7. Visit the website for more details.

Reporters go online, bloggers go to class – Membership in the Online News Association is up by a third this year as more old-school journalists retrain themselves in News 2.0, according to this Poynter Online report. Meanwhile, traditional journalism groups are changing their policies to allow bloggers and citizen journalists working in non-traditional media outlets to become members or take part in conventions and seminars.

Micropayments anyone? The Wall Street Journal will introduce a micropayment system this fall for individual articles and premium subscribes to its website, according to this Reuters piece. Good thing it’s the WSJ doing the experimenting. According to PaidContent.org, a new study on what news readers will pay for says beyond financial info, it ain’t much.

2009 Loeb Award finalists announced – UCLA Anderson School of Management’s Gerald Loeb Awards are awarded to the year’s best business news stories. Winners will be announced June 29. The bad economy, real estate industry meltdown and collapse of prestigious Wall Street firms figured heavily in this year’s competition.

Emailing in your blog posts – WordPress bloggers can now post new material to their blogs via email. The blogging software company rolled out a new feature this week that lets people post new material from an iPhone, Microsoft Outlook or anywhere else you can send email.

Twitter tools for journalists and writers:

• Tinker - This app claims to let you follow events people are talking about on Twitter or Facebook.
• 7 tips on using hash tags – From Erik Sherman’s WriterBiz blog.

Here’s what’s been happening in the worlds of freelance writing and online media this week:

Web-only news awards watch – The Pulitzer Prizes, the Oscars of the journalism business, will be announced on Monday and for the first time Web-only publications are eligible. According to this Editor&Publisher article, at least five online news organizations submitted entries in the Web news category: the St. Louis Beacon, Voice of San Diego, MinnPost.com, ProPublica and Center for Independent Media. Winners will be announced at 3 p.m. EDT.

From a two newspaper to a two Website town? – One month after the Seattle Post-Intelligencer shut down its print operation and moved online only comes word of a second Web-based news enterprise in the Emerald City. A group of former PI journalists – not the same group still running SeattlePI.com – have launched a non-profit news site called SeattlePostGlobe.org. According to this Seattle Times story, the PostGlobe will be staffed by 20 former PI employees and will run on reader contributions, a la the public radio model. The enterprise is partnering with SeattleWeekly.com and the city’s public TV station, KCTS/9.

In case LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook aren’t enough – Journalists now have a social network to call their own. The UK-based Journalist Social Network reports signing up 600 writers in the first weeks of its launch. Like existing social networks, members can create profiles, read member blogs, watch videos and join interest groups. The site’s owned by London-based Chatter Ltd., which has launched 100 niche online networks. A quick peek at the site’s online forums showed chatter on Journalist Network was still on the light side.

How much is a blog post worth? – The Blog Herald has as detailed an analysis as I’ve ever seen on how much bloggers are paid to blog. It’s part of a series on blogging jobs the six-year-old blogging industry new site is running. It’s riveting stuff, and depressing. Nobody’s getting rich blogging on a fee-for-post basis, according to Lorelle VanFossen, the article’s author. Her conclusion:

If you want to blog for a living, don’t take just any blogging job or low paying jobs. It isn’t worth it. Get paid what you are worth so every blogger within the industry can get a chance to make a decent living and not be undercut by those blogging for $5 a post. Consider your expertise and ask for what you deserve.

Sign of the times – In case you needed any more convincing you should pitch queries elsewhere, U.S. magazine ad pages fell 26 percent in the first quarter, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. Ad revenue and pages declined in the top 12 magazine advertising categories, according to the magazine industry research group.

More free ONA memberships – The Online News Association gave away 31 memberships to recently laid off journalists as part of its Support a Journalist campaign that ultimately looks to raise $90,000 for free memberships for displaced reporters. Get details about donating or applying to the program here.

Twitter tools of the week:

• Hootsuite – A Twitter app that lets you manage multiple accounts, pre-publish tweets and add multiple editors to a single account.
• Muck Rack – Another list of journalists on Twitter. This one’s brand new, still fairly small, and so far, only includes journalists working at major news outlets. The list can be sorted alphabetically or by outlet or links.

The week’s highlights from the freelance and digital news biz:

It was a week for debating whether Google and the Internet have hurt or helped newspapers.

• Search engine guru and ex-newspaper reporter Danny Sullivan doesn’t understand newspapers’ anti-Google stance.
• But a poll of 43 mainstream media insiders conducted by The Atlantic and National Journal reveals 65 percent feel the Internet has hurt journalism while 34 percent say it’s helped.

Meanwhile, new forms of online journalism are getting more notice:

• Buzz Woolley, founder Voice of San Diego, the online reporting site, reports being inundated with requests from people wanting to know how they do what they do.
• In the same panel discussion, held at the recent Logan Symposium at UC Berkeley and reported by PBS MediaShift’s Mark Glaser, the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Robert Rosenthan says collaboration “is going to be very important for profit and nonprofit journalism.”
• ReadWriteWeb interviews David Cohn, founder of Spot.us, the journalism marketplace that lets readers decide what they want to pay to get a story written, on the future of journalism.

A just-launched Online News Association fundraising campaign nets $2,300, enough to offer 31 free memberships. Details at www.Journalists.org.

CBS’ Interactive division launches personal finance and career sites, MoneyWatch.com.

Forbes says it will launch ForbesWoman on May 11. Moira Forbes, daughter of Steve and granddaughter of Malcolm, will serve as publisher of the quarterly print magazine and related Website, which will be sent to Forbes’ 125,000 women suscribers.

News agencies report Iran has formally charged US-Iranian freelance broadcast journalist Roxana Saberi with spying.

The week’s new Twitter tools:

• A geographical directory called LocalTweeps.com. Find me in 97221.
• A collection of Wordpress Twitter plugins.

UPDATED: Last but definitely not least – The Freelance Writer’s Helper is a fantastic everything-you-need-to-know about freelancing wiki guide written by long-time Motley Fool freelancer Tim Beyers. The guide’s a list of agents, associations, blogging services, contests, freelancers and other resources that Beyers updates on a regular basis. In case you don’t know him, Beyers is @milehighfool on Twitter and co-host of the popular #editorchat online chat session for editors and freelancers that runs Wednesdays on Twitter.

In the news this week – the best blogs, the best newspaper websites, the best story on the mortgage crisis, content worth paying for, and a digital news conference to attend. Read all about it:

Time Magazine names its top 25 blogs for 2009 including Talking Points Memo, The Huffington Post, Lifehacker, MetaFilter and The Daily Dish. The most overrated blogs of the year, according to Time: TechCrunch, Gawker, Jim Kramer, PerezHilton and Daily Kos.

Harvard’s Neiman Journalism Lab picks the top 15 newspaper websites of 2008. The top 5 are 1. New York Times, 2. USA Today, 3. Washington Post, 4. Los Angeles Times and 5. Wall Street Journal.

Speaking of top newspaper sites, Politico, the two-year-old Washington D.C. Internet newspaper, made it to no. 11 on Neiman’s list despite being a relative newcomer by following a well-honed strategy of being fast and first with political news with an edge. That strategy is set down in an internal memo that came to light in Gabriel Sherman’s profile of Politico for The New Republic called The Scoop Factory. The memo’s noteworthy because it spells out the site’s criteria for a good story. It’s also an excellent blueprint for any website or individual blogger that wants to distinguish themselves from the pack and rack up page views in the process. Definitely a must read.

Chicago Public Radio’s Alex Blumberg and National Public Radio’s Adam Davidson won a 2008 Polk Award – one of the country’s top journalism honors – for their mortgage crisis report called The Giant Pool of Money on This American Life. I finally broke down and got an MP3 player just so I could listen to this story.

People like free stuff, especially when it comes to online news. But there are some things they’re willing to pay for. According to Slate’s Jack Shafer, people will patronize paid sites under certain conditions, if they are: “1) so amazing as to be irreplaceable. 2) beautifully designed and executed and extremely easy to use. 3) stupendously authoritative.” His examples: ConsumerReports.org, MLB.TV and Apple’s iTunes store.

The future of journalism is the topic of the NVision 2009 conference to be held March 30 at the Newseum in Washington D.C. “Journalism Jobs in Transition” will feature top journalists and media managers including Politico Editor John Harris, NPR President Vivian Schiller and Mara Schiavocampo, digital correspondent for NBC Nightly News. The conference is cosponsored by the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism and the Online News Association. Registration is $45 for members and $75 for non-members or sign up by March 6 and pay $65. Get an ONA promotion code on the ONA Discounts page or visit NewsVision.org to register.