Here’s what I’ve been reading this week:

What do established writers need? – On her There Are No Rules blog, Writer’s Digest Publisher Jane Friedman asks veteran writers to tell her what’s missing from the pages of WD as she contemplates developing a new periodical specifically for long-time professional writers and authors.

Five ways to find revenue sharing opportunities – Revenue sharing isn’t limited to ad networks and affiliate marketing programs, as this post from the Freelance Folder blog explains.

It’s now or never for citizen journalists and federal shield law – PBS MediaShift weighs in in support of a federal shield law protecting bloggers, even the unpaid ones.

Gresham’s Law of the Internet: Crap Content Quashes Quality – From the always smart Erik Sherman, yet another look inside Demand Studios’ content factory.

Should you incorporate? – While it’s not new, this short piece from publishing lawyer Daniel Steven on the pros and cons of incorporation for non-fiction writers and other freelancers is definitely worth checking out if this question has ever crossed your mind.

The basics of freelancing on the go – Another good one from Freelance Folder, on the essentials you need to work from anywhere.

That’s it for this week. Have a great weekend everyone, I’ll see you back here on Monday.

Stop what you’re doing and listen.

Do you hear it?

That quiet noise in the background?

It’s almost imperceptible, but it’s there. That little buzz.

It’s the sound of innovation.

Everywhere I turn these days, I’m running into writers quietly working on projects. In their home offices. At the coffee shop with their laptops. In the group that’s huddled at the back of the regional journalism conference.

If I had to pick an indicator of whether or not the media business is bouncing back, this would be it. I’m not talking about newspapers and magazines going back to their glory days. That’s not going to happen. But something is happening. My evidence:

• A former wire service colleague is researching a website project for a consumer-oriented organization.
• Another colleague just pitched a blogging-related start up to a tech venture group in her area.
• Here in Portland journalists and ex-journalists are involved in at least two efforts to form non-profit news organizations.
• A similar effort is in the works in Colorado.
• Another Portland journalist is working on a web-based news aggregator.
• A few other Portland journalists are involved in so many different projects I can’t keep track, including one who dropped out of college because he had too many things going on.
• Several writers on a message board I frequent are investigating opportunities to create mobile apps, either with established publishers or on their own.
• Another freelancer I’m familiar with recently tweeted that she had a great idea for a mobile app, if only she could find the money to build it.

Writers are taking fate into their own hands because face, it, those newsroom jobs aren’t coming back any time soon. There’s something about a rough economy that brings the entrepreneur out in people in every field, and writers are no exception.

Because they’ve already figured out how to work for themselves, freelancers may have a leg up on newly displaced journalists when it comes to doing their own thing. Either way, there’s only so much rejection you can take from editors whose freelance budgets have been cut back to nothing before you start figuring out other ways to make a living.

I’m about to embark on a project of my own. It’s a start up of sorts, though it’s not my start up. But it is something new for me. When the time’s right I’ll be able to share more. For now, all I can say is it’s exciting to be doing something new.

What about you – got a project up your sleeve? If you could embark on something new right now, what would it be?

With so many traditional freelance markets drying up, writers are investigating new opportunities online, including paid blogging gigs, or if they’ve started their own blog, joining a blog advertising network that pays affiliates a cut of advertising revenue.

The most well known of these blog ad networks is Google AdSense. But there are others. One of those is BlogHer, the network of blogs for women that’s now 2,500 bloggers strong.

Four-year-old BlogHer has become so successful it now competes with some of the largest women’s magazine publishers for Fortune 500 advertising dollars and will “quite likely” be profitable for the first time in 2010, according to BlogHer co-founder Lisa Stone. She talked about the business and the opportunities it presents for freelancers who blog at the recent Online News Association annual conference.

If you’ve considered running ads on your blog, here are some things to know about working with BlogHer. One important thing to note: as of early November, BlogHer was not accepting applications for new bloggers. But you can put your name on a waiting list.

BlogHer co-founder Lisa Stone (Photo: BlogHer)

Expect editorial guidelines. Before bloggers can join BlogHer they have to sign editorial guidelines prohibiting them running things like hate speech or allowing similar nasty comments from readers. To drive home the importance of this, contributors have to print out, sign and fax in this agreement. “I’ve learned that if you make it unsafe for (people) to say ‘I support McCain and here’s why,’ for example, you’ll never be able to grow the community the way we want to,” Stone said in her ONA address. These days, spam has overtaken hate speech as the biggest thorn in Stone’s side, including bloggers trying to embed commercial messages into their posts. “We have a very adept ‘Mark as Spam’ function,” Stone said. “We ignore spambots and go after people who are abusing our community practices agreement.”

They use editors. BlogHer has 7 to 10 headline editors on staff, each policing 200 to 300 blogs to make sure they don’t violate terms of the network’s community practices agreement.

They share ad revenue. Most individual bloggers get a cut of ad revenue. For every $1 in advertising on BlogHer, the company takes 10 percent off the top and splits the rest 50-50. Ad rates are based on CPMs, “So if they have 10,000 viewers and we have a $10/CPM, she’ll get $4.50 if she has a typical arrangement with us,” Stone said. The company doesn’t cut a check until a blog has accumulated $25 in ad revenue. BlogHer also has special arrangements with 79 contributors who are paid $50 a post, Stone said.

It’s OK to be small but it pays to be big. Traffic on some BlogHer blogs is quite small and Stone is OK with that. “We’ve always said we don’t care about quantity, we care about quality,” she said. “But some people go supernova. We have bloggers on the network who are earning five-figure incomes and are living off of that.”

‘Fish where your fish are.’ While Stone encourages bloggers to use SEO, social network and other tactics to improve site traffic, she believes building a blog following involves more than that. “The goal is to fall in love with a subject area, write expert content about it and go discuss it with other people. Fish where your fish are. If you’re blogging on health care or taking fantastic pictures of your children or pioneer women joining a network like ours is a great option” because it puts you in touch with blogs on similar topics that you can build alliances with. Building alliances with newspapers, magazines or other publications in your area is another. “Coalition building is everything in this space,” she said. “The bottom line is if you build it they will not necessarily come. It takes a village to building a blog following.”

Readers come before content. Stone, who has a journalism background, says she started out thinking content came before audience. But her BlogHer experience has taught her to think the other way around. The network started out with 34 parenting blogs, grew to 180 and mushroomed from there. Based on what readers asked for, Stone and her two co-founders eventually moved into different subjects, then added conferences, a news service, publishing network and other services – all because that’s what readers said they wanted. “We had guidelines first, then wrapped the business model around it later,” Stone said.

Changes are coming. Stone’s convinced initiatives the network undertook to cover last year’s presidential campaign and health care reform are the wave of the future. “We think women in our network care as much as the future of journalism as they do about Manolo Blahniks,” she said. “Our goal is to listen as hard as we can to where they want to go with the tools we have. We lead by listening. That’s the way we’ve been able to success so far.” Expect to see more changes in the not-too-distant future, as BlogHer moves into other forms of media, including books, radio and video, she said.

An article in today’s New York Times, Business is a beat deflated, by the paper’s media critic David Carr suggests the business press as we’ve known it – Forbes, BusinessWeek et al – has fallen on hard times and isn’t getting back up again any time soon, if ever.

Forbes just announced yet another layoff. Bloomberg bought BusinessWeek from McGraw Hill for a song. Fortune’s scaling back the number of issues it will produce next year. The Wall Street Journal is closing its Boston bureau. Advertising in other business publications has fallen precipitously. Carr suggests that a lot of what passed for business journalism was aspirational in nature, showing would-be captains of industry the prescribed formula to follow if they wanted to be the next Wall Street millionaire. Now that the mighty have fallen, he reasons, people have stopped caring about the the publications that praised them.

While I buy into the fact that the print business press has suffered what might be a fatal blow, it’s not the end of the world for business reporting.

For every Forbes or BusinessWeek that’s downsizing or sold, new publications are popping up online. New entities might not have the gravitas of the old ones. But they don’t have the overhead either. That might be bad in the short run – not as much money equals not as many resources to do investigative pieces or go after the important stories of the day. But at least they’ve got a better shot at living to see another day.

Some of these new publications aren’t really new. One of the best business stories of the year was The Giant Pool of Money, a listener-friendly take on how we got into the present economic mess in the first place, that was a collaboration between NPR and American Public Media’s quirky radio show This American Life. It was such a hit NPR is now teaming up with local public broadcasters on EconomyStory.org, a website that will showcase all the parties’ economy-related reporting.

Other new outlets for business news are starting up all the time. Two I’m acquainted with because I’ve done some work for them: MoneyWatch.com, created by CBS earlier this year, and a still in beta start-up on personal finance for women.

The old guard of online business news, sites such as MarketWatch.com, The Street, The Motley Fool and CNNMoney are still going strong, as are newer outfits such as VentureBeat and The Business Insider.

So, while some of the big glossies might be fading into the sunset, the genre can hardly be said to be dying.

If you cover business, where’s your work coming from these days?

Since I undertook the big WordCount redesign there’s been a big “Coming Soon” sign on the page marked Best of WordCount.

No more.

As of today, the Best of WordCount is home to 30+ of this blog’s most well-read posts conveniently sharing the same page. Call it the WordCount Collector’s Edition. Or my WordCount greatest hits -get it, hits?

Whatever you call it, take a look.

You’ll see posts on writing, running a freelance business, why writers should blog, social network tools for writers and how the Internet is changing the media industry and what that means for freelancers journalist entrepeneurs.

If there’s a subject you’ve been dying to see me cover here, please feel free to let me know.

In honor of Halloween, here are my list of the top 10 things that scare freelancers:

1. An empty mailbox – No checks for you!

2. A reply from an editor that arrives a minute after you sent in a pitch – Inevitably means “Thanks, but no thanks.”

3. Email to your favorite editor that bounces back with the message “Address can’t be found.” – Oops, looks like a layoff!

4. @themediaisdying and Mediabistro’s The Revolving Door newsletter – Twin harbingers of newspaper and magazine industry doom and gloom.

5. Content sites. ‘Nuf said.

6. Magazine editors who say they want you – But don’t have a freelance budget right now, could you do it anyway for free as a way to build a platform for your next book project?

7. Realizing you hit the “Reply to all” button instead of “Reply” on a snarky comment about a fat-head editor you intended to share only with a fellow writer that instead every staff writer and contributor is going to see.

8. Rewrites!

9. Answering questions an obviously newbie associate editor inserted into your text not because the story needs it but because she has no clue what you’re talking about and is too lazy look it up for herself.

10. Editing by committee – Wherein a story your immediate editor signed off on with nary a peep gets kicked back to you once, twice, three times from editors higher up the food chain with so many requests for revisions or “fresh” angles you no longer recognize it as your work.

Trick or treat everyone!

When it comes to online news, are you a Digital or a Turn Back the Clock?

Those are two of six types of new journalists Northwestern University’s Media Management Center identified in a recent report, Life beyond print: Newspaper journalists’ digital appetite.

The Northwestern team surveyed 3,800 journalists working at 79 newspapers about their digital habits, “where they want their newsrooms and careers to go, and how well their leaders are doing in managing the tumultuous changes in the news industry.”

Based on their finding, the report placed journalists in one of six groups based on their desire for digital change. While the survey covered only journalists working at newspapers, I’ll wager the categories apply to freelancers as well. They are:

Digitals – Spend a majority of their time online. These are the Web rats who ruled at the recent Online News Association conference, 20somethings who dropped out of j-school to run an online news start up, coding whizzes who win awards for their news-related content management systems, and guys (and girls) who never worked in print in the first place.

Major Shifters – Spend lots of time online outside work and are frustrated they don’t do more online when they are. Think newsrooms need to “get on it and make a more ambitious shift” and would devote heaps more time toward that end if they felt it was worthwhile.

Status Quos - Like the little bear in Goldilocks, find the 30 percent of their time spent producing online news is just right.

Turn Back the Clocks – Long for a return to print. Represented 6 percent of journalists surveyed (good thing, cuz face it, it ain’t nevah coming back)

Moderately Mores – The largest contingent – 50 percent of total surveyed. Would like to double their current digital activities to get to an even split between working online and in print.

Leaders – High-level publishers and editors who typically spend more time focused on print but would like to shift more of their attention to online operations.

The survey results show a need for a reorganized hierarchy of talent, writes Alltop blog curator (yep, that’s her title) Noelle Chun. She observes:

While newsroom veterans provide invaluable editorial instinct and experience, young upstarts tend to bring the digital skills and fresh ideas. How can we soundly lead newsrooms in ambitious new ventures with diverse leadership and colleagues?

I’m not certain where I fit into this group. I’m no digital native, but I spend an overwhelming majority of my work day producing articles that will appear only online, online and in print simultaneously or first in print and then online. None of the publications I write for are print only (are any?) Some of the publications I write for have print issues but the work I produce is for their websites. Guess that makes me a Digital Status Quo.

Which new journalist are you?

Scenes from a work day:

9 a.m. First call of day, with a trade magazine editor and old friend. Talk shop. Go over pitches for business features I sent earlier. Settle on a few, plus a special report story package. Discuss terms. Schedule due dates. I am a contributing editor.

10 a.m. Interview local quasi-celebrity social media expert about Twitter, Facebook, etc., for career piece for new website for women. Fun stuff. Conversation veers to mutual acquaintances, dumb things people do online. Make mental note to interview this source again if possible. I am a career columnist.

11 a.m. Conference call with two web gurus for story for small business tech website. Realize I can only use fraction of their information. Contemplate pitching follow-up piece in order to use leftover material. I am a tech writer.

Noon – Another interview for same tech piece. Hear same things over again, signal story’s ready to write. I’m an old pro.

1 p.m. – Monitor ongoing email discussion with editor, other writers collaborating on stories for new small business website. I am a team player.

2:30 p.m. Get idea for blog post. Dash off post, look up links, preview, change headline, preview again, tinker with headline, preview, make change, preview, make change, preview. Publish. Check stats. Wonder why stats have been lower since switching blog to self-hosted. I am a blogger.

4 p.m. Write social media story for women’s website from morning interview. Channel light and breezy in order to stuff maximum meaning into minimal word count. I am a word-working wonder.

6:30 p.m. Feed dog. Check homework’s done. Make dinner. Do dishes. I am a working parent.

8:30 p.m. Finish final edits on copy going into catalog for youngest son’s upcoming school auction. I am a volunteer copywriter.

9 p.m. – Query editor of tech website with ideas for next month’s assignments. Check email. Check blogs stats. Check Twitter. Check email again. Power down computer.  I am a Type A worker.

You could call what I have freelance multiple personality disorder.

Then again, if you do what I do, you know it’s all in a day’s work.

When it comes to Twitter, does it feel like the parade’s passing you by?

Don’t let the fact that 50 million people discovered it before you stop you from giving it a whirl. If you have a blog, Twitter is not only a good way to promote your blog, it’s also an idea factory you scan for things to write about, and a virtual hangout you can visit to discuss the latest blogging issues and trends.

Here to make a convincing argument for integrating Twitter into your blogging life is Jane Boursaw, an entertainment industry writer and blogger at TV Squad, Film Gecko and more. If you like what you see, consider taking Jane’s upcoming blogging class, which she mention’s at the end of the post. Hit it Jane:

Blogging and Twitter: The Perfect Match

For better or worse, Twitter seems to be here to stay, and that’s a good thing for bloggers. I manage five Twitter accounts for my various blogs, and get tons of traffic coming from Twitter for each one. Here are five tips and tricks to help you blend Twitter into your blogging life:

1. Feed those blog posts. No, I don’t mean give them grains and veggies. I’m talking about feeding your blog posts automatically into Twitter. There are several programs to do this, including TwitterFeed.com, but my current favorite is RSS2Twitter. The site is clean and simple, it supports multiple Twitter accounts, and once you sign up and set up your Twitter accounts, it starts immediately feeding your posts into Twitter automatically. No muss, no fuss.

2. Access Twitter easily. There are a number of programs to help you keep track of your Twitter followers and traffic, including TweetDeck, TweetGrid, and Tweetie. My favorite is Seesmic.com. Basically, what these do is provide a place to easily update Twitter, manage conversations with @replies and direct messages, stay organized with groups, see what’s trending, and manage multiple Twitter accounts easily.

3. Check out Twitter’s Help section. It’s a little bewildering getting up to speed on all the Twitter-speak like hash-tags, RTs, @names, trending topics, and everything else. Twitter actually has a great Help section that helps to sort it all out. So if you’re ever stumped on anything, that’s a great resource.

4. Build your followers. If your Twitter goal is to help build your brand and niche -– and not just to tell people what you’re having for lunch – the more followers you have, the more you’ll spread the word about your blog. To get followers, follow others, but focus on people and groups within your niche. For example, to build my niche of entertainment and get people clicking through to my blogs, I follow lots of people and groups in the movie, TV and celebrity niche.

5. Include updates that aren’t blog posts. It’s considered bad form (by whomever created the social media rules) to have ONLY blog posts going into your Twitter account. So in addition to your blog posts (which should be automatically feeding into your Twitter account – see Item #1), be sure to include Twitter updates about other fun things in your niche.

For more on Twitter, social media, and all things blogging related, sign up for my online class, Blogging for Passion and Profit. The next six-week session starts Monday, Oct. 26, 2009, but feel free to sign up after Monday, as well, and I’ll get the lessons headed your way. Email me if you have any questions or need more info, jboursaw@charter.net.

Jane Boursaw blogs at TV Squad, Film Gecko, CliqueClack, Ruby Shoes, and ifollo.com. Home base is Reel Life With Jane.

Care to guess what freelance technology innovation I could not live without?

It’s not Twitter or even Microsoft Outlook – those I use both of them all day, every day.

It’s the Track Changes feature in Microsoft Word.

OK, you didn’t have to work very hard to guess that because I put the answer in the title of this post.**

Little old Track Changes. Do you know how hard it would be to do this job without it? It’s the handiest way I know of editing copy when more than one person is working on a document. It’s the shorthand of choice between editors and writers to communicate what’s good and what’s bad in a piece, to ask questions and to make comments.

Yet, not a month goes by where I encounter someone who hasn’t been introduced to it, or worse, refuses to learn.

Just this week, a fellow freelancer complained about a book editor she’s working with who had printed out pages of her manuscript to edit an was going to scan or photocopy the materials to send back to her. Talk about living in the past.

Most full-time professional writers I know are on intimate terms with Track Changes and have been for a long time. The same goes for editors – well, most of them.

But I do a lot of sideline work on marketing and communications projects for nonprofit groups and inevitably helping with one of those I run into someone who’s never heard of Track Changes. Or they know about it but haven’t ever taken the time to figure out to how make it work.

To them and anyone else who still hasn’t figured it out I say, get over yourself. If you don’t understand how to use it, ask someone – heck, ask me. In fact, here’s a straightforward explanation straight from the Microsoft Word website:

Open the document you want to revise.

On the Tools menu, click Track Changes.When the Track Changes feature is enabled, TRK appears on the status bar  at the bottom of your document. When you turn off change tracking, TRK is dimmed.

Make the changes you want by inserting, deleting, or moving text or graphics. You can also change formatting.

If more than one person is editing a document, each person’s suggested edits will appear in a different color, making it easy to track which person is proposing what changes. That’s a handy feature if your editor’s editor likes to go over your copy and make suggestions for changes – don’t you love it when that happens?

We’re in the 21st century. Microsoft Word’s been out in one or another form for more than 20 years. There’s no excuse for not using it. If someone’s still making writers  look at edits in hard copy it isn’t a style thing, or a fear thing, it’s an ego thing.

** I learned the headline writing trick at a Web-writing class I took at the 2009 Online News Association conference. In blog post titles, forget puns and cutesy headlines and stick with keywords related the subject you’re writing about – your posts will show up higher in search engine rankings for that subject.