At 21, Steven Walling has accomplished what some writers twice his age are still trying to figure out: how to make a living as a digital freelancer. Despite his youth, Walling took a very old fashioned path to get where he is today. Fresh out of high school, he took whatever paid writing work he […]
Best of WordCount: Oregon edition
I live and work in Portland, Oregon, and this weekend’s Best of WordCount is dedicated to the area’s burgeoning media community: Can the techies save the news? – If the scene at the recent BarCampPortland III meet up was any indication, that could very well be the case. The Smalltown News – Small newspapers are […]
Can the techies save the news?
If you think reporters, editors, newspaper pundits, Sam Zell and the Sulzberger family are the only ones worried about the fate of the media business, you haven’t spent a Saturday morning with a room full of geeks. At last weekend’s BarCampPortland III meetup, the assembled developers, programmers and Web 2.0 entrepreneurs were just as concerned […]
PDX City Club hosts April 17 panel on newspapers, democracy
If newspapers as we know them go away, who or what will act as democracy’s watchdog? That’s the question of the day as the newspaper industry transforms itself, and the subject of a panel discussion this Friday, April 17, at the Portland City Club, a non-profit public affairs and research organization. Panelists taking part in […]
Small papers best positioned to survive recession, changing news business
My first newspaper job was selling classified ads over the phone for The Valley Times in Beaverton, Oregon, the summer after my freshman year in college. I’d started writing for my college paper and was thrilled to have a job – any job – in the newspaper business, even if it meant inputting ads for […]
Room to write
The first time I worked as a freelance writer I shared an apartment with a roommate and had my office in my bedroom. Between working and sleeping I probably spent 18 hours a day in that 12 x 12 room. A few years and several full-time jobs later I once again found myself temporarily working […]