Rather than kill trees to make handouts, and in the spirit of sharing with others, I’m using this blog post to publish a list of links to Web sites I plan to discuss today during a panel discussion at an SPJ workshop for freelance journalists in Seattle.

The focus of my material will be examples of independent journalism start-ups. This, of course, is not a comprehensive list but rather a glimpse at the current landscape, complete with ad hoc categorization. For more extensive collections – with hundreds of examples – see Placeblogger for hyperlocal blogs or the Knight Citizen News Network for citizen media enterprises.

The point I will try to make: now that journalism has become more entrepreneurial, freelance journalists should have an advantage since they have always had to entrepreneurial. As large institutions cut back or close, smaller enterprises are sprouting like weeds forming the next marketplace for freelance journalism.

Big-time: TechCrunch, GigaOm, Huffington Post, Politico.

“Mature” start-ups: Pegasus News, Baristanet, MinnPost, Voice of San Diego, St. Louis Beacon, Seal Beach Daily (to name just a few).

Recent launches by former newspaper journalists: Ex-Rocky staffers start a sports site, former Plain-Dealer staffers start a medical news site,  and former reporter starts a shopping blog.

Getting started:

Looking for tools and training? Try J-Learning, the Knight Citizen News Network, and (of course) Journalism 2.0. (Full disclosure: I’m currently doing some work for J-Lab, which is behind J-Learning and the Knight Citizens News Network and also published my last book.) The J-Learning site is particularly helpful since it is really a soup-to-nuts package of launching a news site.

As always, add more links in the comments please.

Many of you know that I’m working on an updated version to my first book, Journalism 2.0, that will be published as a college textbook in the fall and my editors and I are struggling to find the right title.

So I need your help.

People have asked if it will be called “Journalism 3.0″ and that is the working title. But I’m afraid the concept of tacking on a version number to a set of skills is tired, especially for a college audience. But there is some logic in maintaining a tie to the “brand” that has developed for Journalism 2.0.

The chapter outline is here. Please take a second and vote in the poll, or offer a better suggestion if you have one. And thanks in advance.

Poll Answers

We’re closing up the Journalism That Matters session at Poynter this morning. A final exercise had us put fingers to keyboard and explain our place in the “new news ecology.” Here’s my 10-minute take:

The new news ecology is authentic, collaborative and transparent. Technology enables it, but should almost be taken for granted. Anything is possible, so the tool or the platform doesn’t matter. The question, the challenge, is what do you want to do? Engage, inform, collaborate and navigate: These are what guide my decisions today, whether I’m improving Newsgarden, brainstorming new products for Serra Media, or speaking, writing and training on the topic of journalism innovation.

Sustainability and marketability also factor into the equation. But the question is not about new business models, it’s about how to cultivate an audience and connect that audience with the right information. If you can do that, the business will take care of itself as many independent journalism start-ups are proving today.

Many people, including Lisa Williams yesterday, have suggested that journalism will survive its institutions. That should be the focus for journalists today. How do you bring to bear your skills, values and expertise on this new information ecosystem? It’s not a question of “how do you save your newspaper?” That can’t be solved by a focus group or panel discussion, not can it be solved by a beat reporter who’s still lucky to have a job. But a piece of it can be solved if that reporter or his or her editor focus on a form of journalism that is entrepreneurial. It will lead to better information experience for a larger audience. And if it doesn’t help save the institution, at least it will position the journalist to continue the important work beyond the life of that institution.

Participants in the Journalism That Matters conference at Poynter were asked to bring a “fire starter” to get the discussion going, something “to spark a conversation about the emergence of a new news ecology.” Along with the assignment, we were given four examples of a fire starter:

1) From Rusty Coats, VP Interactive for Scripps:
Print is about stories. Digital is about search. So what will that mean for journalism?

2) From Borrell and Associates Media Researchers:
If you are a newspaper or TV station today, your brand is baggage.

3) From Morgan Stanley Technology/Internet Trends report 11/5/08
Uh-Oh. Online spending on newspaper Web sites is declining. So can Web advertising actually support the cost of gathering news?

4) From Bill Demsmore at the InfoValet Project at the Reynolds Journalism Institute:
If we don’t believe news information has value, why should our readers, viewers and contributors/collaborators think so?

On the plane from Seattle, I finally got around to reading “From the height of this place,” an internal memo from Google SVP Jonathan Rosenberg that was published on the Google Blog. I highly recommend it, and draw from it to offer my fire starter:

As written communication has evolved from long letter to short text message, news has largely shifted from thoughtful to spontaneous. The old-fashioned static news article is now just a starting point, inciting back-and-forth debate that often results in a more balanced and detailed assessment. And the old-fashioned business model of bundled news, where the classifieds basically subsidized a lot of the high-quality reporting on the front page, has been thoroughly disrupted.

I was planning to attend the Journalism That Matters conference at the Poynter Institute that started today, but a snowstorm in Atlanta re-routed my flight to Huntsville, Ala. which is where I’ll be for the night. (I hope to make it to Poynter tomorrow.)

Ellyn Angelotti, Poynter’s digital media guru and conference co-organizer, just sent me a direct message on Twitter, trying to include me in the process.

What is your best possible outcome for your experience at JTM (when you get here)?

Here’s my reply:

Good question. Having been through many, many discussions on the future of news in Seattle lately, I am fully past the discussion phase and hungry for action. But it’s difficult to form an action plan that can be used by everyone who is practicing journalism today: legacy and corporate news organizations on one end of the spectrum and independent journalism start-ups on the other.

But, challenging as that seems, that would be be my “best possible outcome.” Maybe it’s a Code of Innovation, much like the code of ethics and fairness that we’ve long agreed on (for the most part). A short list of practical values that would guide decisions and strategy for news operations of all sizes.

The bonus would be brainstorming an actual independent journalism start-up that could be launched as a pilot project to test the Code and its principles.

Of course, any such action plan would have to include business model strategy, too. I’m anxious to see how much business discussion there will be during the Poynter gathering, which runs through Wednesday.

(Mostly, though, I’m anxious to get out of Alabama and join everyone there.)