On Monday, the Wall Street Journal published details of a plan by AOL for a 21st century news system that depends as much on computer algorithms as it does editors to decide which news is fit to print and which, well, isn’t.

You’ll have to subscribe to the paper in print or online or borrow a copy from a friend to see AOL to Produce News, Video by the Numbers in its entirety. But here are some of the relevant details:

• AOL will rely on a new digital newsroom system that uses computer algorithms to predict what types of stories, videos or photos will be popular, then assign articles accordingly.
• Here’s where freelancers come in. Stories will be assigned to freelancers via a new Web site called Seed.com. According to the story, AOL already works with a network of 3,000 freelancers but is looking to increase that number through Seed.com, “which is open to anyone looking to submit a story.” In other words, not necessarily professional writers. Note: The Seed.com website isn’t much to look at just yet, but they will take your email address and promise to get back to you after they launch, if you’re so inclined.
• Under the new system, AOL’s freelance fees will range from nothing up front and a share of ad revenue to more than $100 per story.
• According to the WSJ story, AOL will offer advertisers “the chance to work with its editorial team to create custom content.” In other words custom publishing. While there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s not exactly journalism, and hopefully won’t be labeled as such.

The WSJ story used the recent baby crib recall as an example of how AOL’s new system would work. If the new system had been up and running, according to the article, the company’s number-crunching wizardry would have determined that people were interested in seeing more stories on the subject, which would have prompted editors to assign more stories.

To which I can only say: no duh. Any editor worth their salt would have come to the same conclusion, and wouldn’t have needed a lot of computer algorithms to do it.

All this is being directed by Tim Armstrong, the former Google advertising exec who’s slated to take over as AOL’s CEO when Time Warner completes spinning off the Internet company in December.

Some of my freelance friends are already up in arms over the whole situation. They’re ready to put AOL into the same group as Demand Studios, Associated Content, Helium, Studio101 and other sites that I’ve called content aggregators but other freelancers have dubbed content mills for the paltry amounts they pay, whether to professional writers or hobbyists, to churn out how-tos and other articles based on topics that are more prized for how high they’ll turn up in keyword searches than for their reportage.

But other freelancers I know who work on AOL’s blogs and other news enterprises have nothing but good things to say about the working conditions, including friendly editors and decent money.

For now, it remains to be seen whether AOL’s new endeavor will turn out to be a legitimate new market for freelance work, or give new meaning to the term bad seed.

Whatever happens, it’s also worth noting that AOL is the latest in a string of companies that most people would identify as technology ventures getting into the media business, a growing list that includes Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. As newspapers continue to struggle, are these tech giants the real future of the news?

It’s not too late to attend the WeMaketheMedia.com conference, which takes place tomorrow, Saturday, Nov. 21, at UO’s Turnbull Center in Portland’s Old Town neighborhood.

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.

I’ve talked the talk.

Now it’s time to walk the walk.

After preaching to everyone who visits here about the need to innovate during an era of unprecedented industry change and try new things, I’ve taken my own advice and accepted an assignment to do something I’ve never done before.

What will I be doing?

Here’s a hint:

You know all those things I’ve written about editors – what makes a good one, how to tell a bad one when you see them, how to pitch, how to keep them updated on what you’re doing?

Well, I’ll be taking my own advice as, like Alice, I go through the looking glass and say goodbye freelance writer, hello freelance editor.

I’ll save all the details for another day. But generally speaking, I’ll be helping bring an online-based project from concept to launch, including mapping out timelines and editorial calendars, securing writers, lining up assignments, editing copy and working with what seems like an enormous team.

Am I excited? Of course.

Am I nervous? Of course.

I’ve worked as a business publication editor before, but it’s been awhile. In fact, it was so long ago the publication I was responsible for came out once a month, in print and the Internet was still a twinkle in ARPANET’s eye. In those days, marketing a publication consisted of printing extra copies to take to conventions and trade shows. This project will live online, and once we’re live we’ll let the world know through Twitter and Digg. Times, they are a changing indeed.

I’m not saying goodbye to writing altogether, especially not here. But it’s going to feel good to exercise a few different creative muscles for the time being.

Wish me luck!

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.

The 2009 Online Journalism Awards finalists were announced yesterday and a glance through the list shows the many ways news and the news business are being redefined.

Many finalist projects are the work of traditional newspaper companies that have invested major time and money into their digital news efforts. As you would expect, the New York Times, Washington Post Digital, BBC News and other big-time publishers are well-represented, along with a handful of small and medium-sized papers – including two here in Oregon, the Oregonian for its poignant series on a pregnant woman’s battle with cancer, and the Daily Astorian for its breaking coverage of a plane crash in a nearby beach town.

But many finalists are online-only publications that aim to pick up where cash-strapped newspapers have left off, especially on investigative news. One of the most ambitious is The Chauncey Bailey Project, a collaboration between more than two dozen reporters, photographers and editors from 23 Bay Area print, broadcast and online news organizations. They worked together to investigate the Aug. 2., 2007, shooting death of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey while he was investigating suspicious activities at a local business. Back in the day, competitive news organizations wouldn’t have dreamed of voluntarily entering into such a collaboration, which goes to show just how much times have changed.

Some other finalists projects from online-only publications:

• Women.Children.Crisis – An online “gateway” run by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting that compiles stories from multiple international sources about the adversities and dangers faced by women and children in crisis situations.
• Muckety – A daily news and information site based on online databases, research and old-fashioned journalism that maps “the paths of power and influence.”
• A staggering swindle - A multi-part, mulitmedia investigation of how a local man used the “easy money excesses of the housing boom” to scam $12.5 million from fake condo sales, by VoicesofSanDiego.org, an independent nonprofit hyperlocal news site.

2009 Online Journalism Award winners will be announced on Saturday, Oct. 3, at the conclusion of the Online News Association annual convention in San Francisco.

From what I’ve heard, the last few ONA conventions have been well worth attending, but I’m predicting this year’s will be the best ever. The pace of change in the news business has accelerated. More laid off reporters and editors are looking for ways to reshape their careers in an online mold. Content management systems, mobile apps and other tech tools have reached a level of maturity and cost that makes them manageable and affordable for even the smallest online publisher. I’m excited to be making the trip – and while I’m there I’ll reporting on what I learn.

If you’re going to ONA let me know – I’d love to host a meetup of fellow freelancers to talk about how independent writers fit into the new world of online news.

I have a confession to make. I am a Web content writer.

Do I write for Web content aggregators? No.

I write for magazines that publish stories in print and online. I write for business and trade magazines that publish some stories in print and some online. I write for e-zines, news sites and custom publishers that publish only online. I write for this blog.

I don’t need to write for content aggregators. After more years in the business than I care to share, I don’t have to. I know a good story when I see one. I can find sources. I’ve pulled court documents and interviewed relatives of homicide victims and dying children. I’ve combed through 10Ks and dissected proxy statements. I’ve walked the floors at trade shows and grilled CEOs. I know how to write a basic news story in the inverted pyramid style. I can write an essay, a feature, a Q&A, an op-ed, a column. I can write headlines, cutlines and pull quotes, charticles and “at a glance” fact boxes. I blog. I tweet. I can do simple HTML coding, add keyword tags and know the basics of SEO (sort of). I can take pictures, though I’ve yet to tackle video or podcasts.

So content aggregators hold no appeal.

But writing online, that’s attractive. At one point, I freelanced for some of the biggest newspapers in the country, the biggest tech magazines and the largest financial wire service in the world.

Today, 90 percent of my stories show up online right away and 100 percent eventually.  And I’m well paid for the work – in fact, extremely very well paid.

If that makes me a Web content writer, so be it. Because in another year or two, even more news stories, essays, columns, blog posts and charticles from established media companies and publishers yet to be born will go directly online.

I’ll be ready.

If you’re getting into freelancing these days, one option is writing for content aggregator sites like Helium, About.com, Associated Content or HubPages. These companies pay writers to create massive amounts of content to help the sites rise up to the top of Web searches and make more money on click throughs.

But for freelancers, there’s a huge debate happening over the merits of writing for a content aggregator to advance your career, a debate that last week spilled onto the pages of this blog. First long-time freelancer Tim Beyers examined the reasons why a writer shouldn’t bother with content aggregators. Then Helium’s new writer outreach manager Barbara Whitlock countered with her own detailed explanation of  why freelancers would want to write for a content aggregator, Helium in particular.

I say if you’re a writer looking for experience, there’s a better way.

Instead of writing for an aggregator, find out what hyperlocal news sites have popped up in your area, introduce yourself and ask if there’s anything you can do to help.

In case you’re not familiar with them, hyperlocal news sites are blogs that focus on what’s happening in a specific area, be it a neighborhood, town or city. You might also know them as community news blogs or citizen journalist sites. Some examples: NewzJunky in Watertown, New York; Hop Town in Hopkinsville, Massachusetts, and NeighborsGo.com in Dallas.

If you work for a hyperlocal news organization you’ll probably start out making about as much as you would at a content aggregator – which is to say not much. But if you really are just starting out, you could use the opportunity to go out and do some man-on-the-street reporting,  and pick up other valuable experience.

If you don’t think there are hyperlocal or citizen journalists operating in your city you’re wrong, you just haven’t looked hard enough. Here in Portland, there are at least four, including Neighborhood Notes and OurPDX, more if you count sites that focus on niches like tech, books or cycling.

If there really aren’t hyperlocal sites where you live, start one. By teaching yourself everything you need to know to run a hyperlocal or community news site, you’re teaching yourself everything you need to know in 2009 and going into the future to get hired as a staff writer or make it as a freelancer, things like using a content management system (a fancy term for blogging or blog-like software), HTML, linking, how to write for a blog, how to write straight news, how to take pictures, video and audio, etc.

When it comes down to it, as long as you’re going to the time and trouble of learning the craft, why give the fruits of your labors to another business when you could maximize the benefit and profit for the enterprise that matters most – you.

Here’s what I’ve been reading about freelancing, writing and the online news business I’ve been reading this week:

On writing:

• How do you learn to write – From a literary agent, writer and book editor.
• 5 tips for citizen journalism from ProPublica’s new ‘crowdsorcerer’
• 16 things you learn in j-school – Journalism basics
• You don’t have to be a journalist to be a journalist – Advice from a young journalist.
• The end of newspapers, in chart form – Newspaper classified ads fall off the deep end.

On blogging and online media:

• WordPress tutorials on YouTube – How to move a blog from one domain name to another and more.
• Why ebooks look so ugly
• 55 extremely useful online generators for designers

On Twitter:

• 10 must-have productivity tools for Twitter – The usual suspects (TweetDeck, TwitPics) and more.
• A directory of book trade people on Twitter – Publishers, agents, publicists, booksellers, etc.
• Twitter in the newsroom – Podcast of print and broadcast journalists talking about using Twitter.

Tuesday was the last day the Seattle Post Intelligencer published a print newspaper.

Starting today, the 146-year-old Seattle daily goes online only.

The print edition of the paper folded after Hearst Corp. determined the company couldn’t afford to continue running the money-losing paper as is.

So they pulled the plug. Rather, they plugged in. Hearst officials said they plan to reinvent the paper as a community platform with reporting from a slimmed down team of 20 reporters, smattering of columnists, reader bloggers and features on health, wellness and homes from magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Country Living, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, House Beautiful.

In an age of multimedia news, it’s fitting that the head of the company’s Web efforts uses the title “executive producer” rather than “editor,” a term that’s still associated with old (print) media.

That executive producer is Michelle Nicolosi, my one-time colleague at the Orange County Register and the subject of a Q&A I did last year chronicling her transformation from print reporter to multimedia maven.

It’s interesting to note that even a year ago, Nicolosi had high hopes for online journalism. She said:

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.

You can read more of Nicolosi’s observations on new media on her blog, Print to Online, although one has to wonder where she’s going to find the time to update it now.

In a blog post to readers about the PI’s transformation, Nicolosi says the online-only SeattlePI.com will “break a lot of rules that newspaper Web sites stick to, and we are looking everywhere for efficiencies. We don’t feel like we have to cover everything ourselves.”

Can a newspaper successfully reinvent itself online? Nicolosi thinks so. At a time when metropolitan dailies have become the equivalent of an endangered species, you can believe editors in newsrooms across the country will be keeping tabs, and praying she’s right.

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.