Just a couple of quick highlights that you don’t want to miss:

News:rewired: If you weren’t in London last week for this one-day conference, fear not, they’ve got you covered. The folks at Journalism.co.uk who organized the event also did a bang-up job covering the event for those who couldn’t be there in person. The main conference coverage page is a comprehensive roundup of links, videos and other information. Educators might consider using this as the basis for a mini lesson plan.

David Cohn on new revenue models: The Spot.Us founder weighs in on the Media Shift Idea Lab blog with a mini manifesto of sorts, titled The Search for a New Revenue Model in Journalism. “One of (the) assumptions, and I claim this all the time, is that there will always be a market for news and information,” Cohn writes. “That marketplace is in flux and hard to pin down at the moment, but people want accurate and thorough news and information. If this assumption is true, then journalism will be sustainable once we figure out the marketplace again and how to “sell” the news.”

Yes, Virgina, there is a business model for journalism. For now, however, it’s called “local online.”

Last week’s Interactive Local Media conference in Los Angeles featured two-and-a-half days of presentations and hallway conversations focused on connecting local businesses with local audiences while making money. “Monetizing the local opportunity” was the title of the conference, which is exactly the problem that so many “future of journalism” pessimists and pundits have suggested can’t be solved, leading to another tired discussion of pay walls and non-profit fundraising.

The overall takeaway from last week’s conference, since it was echoed by so many speakers and attendees, was best summed up by Brian Buchwald, Executive VP, Local Integrated Media and NBC Everywhere:

“Local online is a highly immature space.”

In going back through my notes from last week’s conference, I found several nuggets of interest. Taken together, they paint a fairly decent – and optimistic – picture of the state of local online. For more, see Lost Remote, Local Onliner and, for the most comprehensive roundup, the Kelsey blog.

Highlights from the 2009 Interactive Local Media conference (after the jump):

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The good news for local publishers? There is growing demand for local advertising.

The bad news? An entire industry of companies you’ve never heard of (including some giants you have) are laser-focused on connecting local businesses with local consumers and most of them don’t care if a publisher is in the middle of that transaction.

That’s my halftime analysis from the Interactive Local Media conference in Los Angeles. (I’m posting updates to Twitter and you can find the conference stream by searching the hashtag #ILM09.)

Publishers see opportunities, too, of course. NPR and ESPN are moving quickly on locally staffed “franchise” sites. MSNBC.com and CNN are focusing on getting local, too – down to the neighborhood level. The concept is not new: create content that draws an audience, then sell ads around it.

“Our model is to create high quality, high context, in-market ad inventory,” Outside.In CEO Mark Josephson said during a session today. “Local content is a proxy for local ad inventory and there is a fundamental shift that is creating huge opportunities.”

Josephson’s company is one that is trying to assist publishers. But there are so many more companies at this conference, from business directories to search engine marketing firms, that are direct-to-advertiser plays. They do everything from placing location-based mobile ads to tracking social media conversations and buying Google ads for small businesses. And don’t forget about the big G, of course, or MSN, Yelp, Facebook, etc.

If you’re a traditionalist and want to see legacy news media survive, it’s not pretty. Even the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium, which includes TV and radio, has apparently only booked $83 million in ads this year, which isn’t going to save an industry (newspaper) that used to book some $40 billion. (And my outside impression is that Yahoo is getting the most benefit here, boasting about 100,000 local sales reps thanks to the partnership.)

If you’re a forward-thinker and an optimist, it’s exciting. Independent journalism startups have a bevy of potential partners to help them with the advertising side of the business. Sure, these third-party vendors will get a cut, but it might be less than you’d pay to staff up an ad sales team. And any percentage of zero is …

Additionally, there are publisher models worth following. Scott Tobias of Village Voice Media talked about a thriving local media business that includes three important segments: print, digital and street. The street team is a guerrilla marketing effort that can promote Village Voice events (online and offline) or do street-level marketing for big brands.

“Print is not dead for us,” Tobias said. “Village Voice wasn’t bloated like a lot of the metro dailies. And the Web is just an extension for what we’ve been doing for 25-plus years.”

The power of local brands still works, of course. Cory Bergman (MSNBC.com, Next Door Media, Lost Remote), Mike Orren (Pegasus News) and I were talking last night about how few of the companies here have any presence on main street. Local businesses have heard of Google, of course, but Yodle? Methinks not. Yet they claim to have 7,000 customers.

Yesterday, Howard Owens responded to one of Twitter updates with a prediction that “localpreneurs” will win this space in the end. If a local publisher can create, or in the case of newspapers – resuscitate, a recognized local brand, then local businesses are still an open opportunity.

After all, the one big recurring theme throughout all the sessions is that we’re still in the early days of all this. As Jim Pastor of ESPN said: “Anyone who tells you they know what local online looks like 1, 2, or 5 years from now is fooling themselves.”

Several hundred people at a Hyatt in LA this week think so.

And by “local online,” I’m referring specifically to the opportunity for marketing local businesses, not publishing local journalism. Although, as we’ve learned during the almost-completed decade, the latter will have trouble surviving without the former.

I’m at the Interactive Local Media conference in Los Angeles through Friday, analyzing the state of local business marketing online.

I’ll be posting updates to Twitter and you can find the conference stream by searching the hashtag #ILM09. If the morning sessions are any indication, there will be loads of good information presented here.

Already this morning, we heard about data that says that still only 42% of local businesses have a website, only 7% advertise online and only 14% have claimed their free profile page on Google. Clearly, there is opportunity here to connect buyers and sellers online. (And don’t even get me started on mobile.)

The question I’ll be seeking to answer is: will the local business marketing opportunity support new forms of journalism? The last time I attended a Kelsey conference, I bemoaned the fact barely a handful of newspaper companies sent representatives. Now, I’m not wondering where the legacy media companies are today, but where the independent journalism startups will fit into this landscape as they flourish in the future.

Many of the companies here are disintermediating the traditional publishing model. They work directly with local businesses to improve performance on Google, perform email marketing and mobile services. Some work to help publishers with directory listings and other products and services.

Newspapers funded their journalism for decades by connecting local buyers and sellers. If the next generation of journalism models succeed, they will have to compete with – or partner with – the innovative companies and concepts that will be presented at this conference during the next 48 hours. I’ll keep you posted.

(NOTE: I originally published this post on the Serra Blog.)

Expect to see more of this in the coming months: indepdent local news and information sites banding together to form a local/regional advertising network.

The Sacramento Press today announced the most recent version, called SLOAN for Sacramento Local Online Ad Network. It’s an ambitious effort, which should be no surprise coming from a start-up news site that has made a lot of progress in a relatively short time. The site counts some 700 contributors to its news machine and will soon have 18 partners to leverage when selling ads.

“We’ve been working really hard on this,” Ben Ilfeld, co-founder and COO, told me last week. “Hyperlocal ad networks have been talked about at conferences, and in the blogosphere, for some time. We wanted to tap into advertisers like auto dealers or Indian casinos and having a network will make that easier.

“Our goal to support people doing interesting and good hyperlocal journalism.”

Upon launch (in mid-January) SLOAN will include The Rancho Cordova Post, Gold River Online, Elk Grove Online, SacMix, The Sac Rag, MyFolsom.com and The Tomato Pages Network.

The SacPress staff will be the only ones selling into the network and Adify will supply the technology, so each will take cut of the action. But Ilfeld said publishers in the network will still receive 60% of the revenue, which is a pretty good deal if you ask me.

“We want to put together enough unique users to challenge the other news outlets, and eventually, maybe even the (Sacramento) Bee,” Ilfeld added.

In a recent “future of journalism” interview, author Clay Shirky said that things will get worse before they get better. He also said that he’s “a network-inhabiting news junkie of the first order” so the world “has been a paradise of additional information, additional points of view, additional access.”

The challenge – and the revolution – is bringing that additional access and information to average citizens in a local democracy. Independent journalism startups, powered by people whose paychecks used to come from mainstream media companies, are one form that will bridge that gap. But another, possibly more exciting, form is taking shape in the student-powered projects that are popping up all over.

They run the gamut, from News 21, a well-funded and impressive collaboration between eight universities, to student startups like NYULocal, which has 15 staffers and gets more traffic than the school’s newspaper site, according to founder and publisher Cody Brown. (Brown is also launching a project called Kommons.com that is provocative in its approach and will be exciting to watch.)

Now it’s spreading to the high school level with projects like The Foothill Dragon at the Foothill Technology High School in Ventura, Calif.

“This is the first year we’ve had journalism at the school in five years, so the kids are raw and they have a long way to go to learn good writing, reporting, videotaping, etc.” Melissa Wantz told me via email. “But I think we have a good platform to build on (and we got 450 Facebook fans in less than a month, so I guess that’s a good sign).”

Wantz is the journalism teacher who built the site (in Joomla) and recently presented the project at a conference at MIT. The site launched in October and the stuents made an introductory video with a great title: We don’t use paper for this. A former journalist, Wantz wonders whether the students truly appreciate what they have accomplished in a relatively short time.

“I don’t think the kids realize what they have with this site and their new journalism class,” Wantz said. “The influence and reach they now have… this generation thinks nothing of using incredibly powerful tools that are absolutely free.”

Maybe their naivete is a good thing. Getting back to Shirky, he wrote in his last book that digital social tools only become powerful when they were taken for granted. (You don’t ask someone if they have email anymore, but 15 years ago you did.) So if our next generation of journalists understands that the power to publish is in their hands (and if they don’t take it for granted), maybe the negative fallout that Shirky predicts can be limited.

One of the bad things I think it going to happen is, I think civic corruption is just going to rise for towns and regions of under about half a million people. Which is to say, I think the old model of the newspaper is going to break faster than the hyperlocal civic reporting can come in its place.

Revolutions are messy. There’s no question that some geographical areas will advance faster than others when it comes to local information and understanding and civic participation. But the potential to create a better-informed society is undeniable.

“I guess this is what it’s like to live through a revolution, the older people (I’m 46) are practically suspended in wonder at the changes and opportunities, and the younger people are just using the new tools like it’s no big deal,” Wantz said. “It’s not like the kids are out in front of me in terms of their knowledge of what’s possible, but in terms of their reaction to what’s possible? I’m not sure it’s possible to get a rise out of a teenager who carries a computer in his pocket. They have no idea when they became (so) connected. They just are.”

If a service or platform or other technological invention connects them and empowers them to inform one another, journalism has a bright future. It will look very different than it does today or has for the past 150 years. It may be viewed as a “social utility” – or “societal utility” – more than a professional craft. But it doesn’t matter what it’s called or who participates in it, as long as we move closer to the rain forest of local information and away from the desert.

There’s never been a better time for innovation in journalism, digital content and community.

So come help Serra Media build interactive digital platforms and communities for local publishers, independent journalism startups and university journalism programs.

My company is looking for smart people who are enthusiastic about local content, collaborative publishing and the future of digital content. We’re specifically looking for budding stars in the areas of community management, social marketing and web development (Drupal experience preferred).

If that’s you, check out the details on Serra Media’s Internship Program. These aren’t traditional news/journalism positions, but will be valuable experience and a good resume builder for anyone looking for work in digital communication.

Thanksgiving turkey leftovers are still in the fridge, but I’m already anxious for the first year of the new decade.

Why? Because 2010 will be the year of the Independent Journalism Startup. (There’s also the Winter Olympics and World Cup soccer, but I digress.)

Several interesting new initiatives have been announced or launched recently, including the San Diego News Network, Albritton’s new DC-area operation, the Bay Area News Project, Texas Tribune and Peer News. When you add these high-profile efforts to the ecosystem of innovative digital news operations already publishing, it’s logical that 12 months from now we will know a lot more about the future of news than we do today.

Each of these new enterprises will have different areas of focus, both topical and (obviously) geographical. In order to flourish in 2010, and for years to come, every independent journalism startup needs to take advantage of its digitally native birth and commit to a new order, one that legacy news companies have struggled with.

Here are 5 commitments that should be part of the core mission from day one:

1. Innovative technology: Publishing in the digital age requires innovation and agility. The tools are out there, but you need skills on staff to take full advantage. The newly launched Texas Tribune gets this, as about a quarter of the staff positions are tech-related. The Huffington Post is also tech-heavy, which explains how they have been able to grow such a huge audience in such a short time with relatively small amounts of original content. Committing to technology innovation doesn’t mean developing your own content management system or building everything from scratch, however. It means being able to execute ideas as quickly as possible and support the other four commitments on this list.

2. Entrepreneurial focus: Whether a for-profit or a non-profit, every news operation needs to find innovative business models. Yes, plural, because the new ecosystem demands a diversified approach to revenue generation. Advertising is one, and some hyperlocals have more demand then they can supply, so don’t start with an “advertising won’t support news” prejudice. Different forms of advertising mixed with income from other digital marketing services, reseller relationships, local events and maybe even specialized paid content strategies can combine to support a significant local news operation. Just ask the Sacramento Press or Pegasus News. Jeff Jarvis and the City University of New York have been doing a lot of hard work in this area and have built a go-to repository of resources and information.

3. Collaboration: Last month, Next Door Media and its flagship local site MyBallard won the award for user community at the Online News Assocation conference in San Francisco. As much as 90 percent of the stories published on the site originate through tips from readers. A few weeks later, the West Seattle Blog’s Tracy Record participated on a panel discussion about the future of news sitting next to MSNBC.com president Charlie Tillinghast. Record is a great journalist, but she wouldn’t be the posterchild for independent journalism startups – and MyBallard wouldn’t have won a national award – if not for their audiences. Record often says they don’t have “readers,” they have a community. The first step in launching a new local news startup should be to identify, meet and begin working with the local community it hopes to serve. As important as the journalism you’re sure to produce will be, you need them way more than they need you. (For more examples of journo-collaboration, visit beatblogging.org.)

4. Mobile: CNN is widely recongized as having developed the best mobile application for a news organization, as much for its iReport features that allow the audience to contribute photos and news as its integrated video streams. That’s a start. Mobile, by definition, is local since more and more devices know where the user is at any given time. Local news organizations need to use that to their advantage, like Media General does with its hundreds of mobile bloggers reporting high school football scores in the state of Ohio. And the viral success of social apps like Foursquare should demonstrate to every local publisher how mobile can build community. Don’t get caught thinking that publishing your existing content on a mobile device is good enough (like news publishers did with the web in the 1990s).

5. Community: Similar to Commitment No. 3 this is about building a trusted network of connections among people with ideas and information to share with one another. It starts with the usual mechanisms like comments on blog posts, news stories and message board forums. But it should extend far beyond that, both online and offline. Online, it means connecting people from where they already communicate, like blogs, Twitter and Facebook. For examples, see ChicagoNow’s blog aggregation and the LA Times’ geographically organized Twitter lists. It also means deploying better technology to facilitate the exchange of information, like The Stranger, a Seattle alt-weekly, has done with Questionland and Electionland. Offline, it means a commitment to educate and entertain, as well as inform. Hosting local events with speakers and panel discussions or meetups and Tweet-ups, based on locally relevant topics, can allow a virtual community to come together physically and be strengthened. (Which is probably why The Texas Tribune has an events coordinator on staff.)

***

The success or failure of these new endeavors will be based on execution, not ideas, of course. The editors, reporters, bloggers and community managers will need to connect with local audiences in a new way. Each operation will find different paths to success, since the “customers” will be different in each market and, therefore, have different needs.

“To maximize a news organization’s social capital and marketability,” I wrote a year ago in an article for the Nieman Reports entitled, The End of Journalism as Usual, “its journalism today must be transparent, authentic and collaborative.”

That still applies to the today in 2009 and the one next year in 2010. The good news is that the tools and technology to make that happen keep getting better. So an effort to be transparent, authentic and collaborative is easier today than it was 12 months ago. And it will be even easier 12 months from now, when we look back on 2010 and see how the future of news developed right in front of our eyes.

It’s hard to pinpoint the single best thing about GonzoCamp.

It can be watching journalists learn from programmers how to define a problem and find the right approach toward solutions. Or the way students bring fresh perspectives and are enamored with working side-by-side with professionals to build something that’s real. Or the suspense that builds throughout the day as teams take an original idea and craft and mold it and produce something that may be totally different by the end of the day.

But, in the end, it’s the fact that ideas get done that I enjoy the most. And that’s what makes GonzoCamp different than other conferences, workshops and meet-ups.

From the other side of the country, Xarker Dan Conover recognized this and posted to Twitter:

You learn by doing, after all. And racing against a clock, in the same room with other teams in the same race, injects a certain energy into the event that I haven’t seen elsewhere. When our lunch speakers from the Seattle P-I, Pat Balles and Michelle Nicolosi, came to give a quick talk and answer questions, it took several tries to get the teams to take a break. The momentum they had created in just over an hour of forming their ideas and projects was difficult to pause.

The urgency of a one-day event helps frame the projects. A team can’t try to take on too much with such limited time. But this urgency is not contrived. Not if you subscribe to the notion, as I do, that the news industry had better get moving faster with innovation in the digital age.

“The news media business faces a stark reality today: innovate or die,” John Cook wrote on TechFlash to lead off his report GonzoCamp: Five entrepreneurial ideas to help save journalism? “Some organizations will make the transition to the digital world. Others won’t. And while one could argue that it took far too long for newspapers, magazines and TV stations to recognize the transformational power of the Internet, at least some newsrooms throughout the country are awakening to the opportunities. The new entrepreneurial spirit was alive and well Friday in Seattle as journalists, developers, laid off newspaper hacks, students and others gathered at GonzoCamp II.”

(Complete reports from the five teams are being posted on the GonzoCamp site as they become available.)

What’s next? How about a national “tour” of GonzoCamp events? Maybe it will become a competition like the Global Innovation Tournament. While it’s not clear how it will continue, the energy and interest that GonzoCamp has created means it will continue in some form in 2010.

“It was really amazing for me to get to just hang around and soak up all the years of experience in the room, let alone participate with them in creating something so cool,” student Daniel DeMay said in an email. “Some really intelligent people who are very motivated for sure. I look forward to the next event.”

RELATED:

• GonzoCamp: Tomorrow happens here
• Less talk, more action: GonzoCamp is back
• GonzoCamp report: An emerging role for journalism when mixed with technology
• The race is on at GonzoCamp
• GonzoCamp goals: discover, play, learn

The second GonzoCamp is over and produced a bevy of on new and interesting ideas for the future of journalism and news in the digital age. I’ll post a complete report on Monday after I receive group reports on from the 5 teams that participated. The (four-hour!) after-party spurred allowed the innovation/conversation to continue, thanks to MSNBC.

UPDATE: John Cook beat me to the punch with his review and anlysis of the presentaions on TechFlash:

GonzoCamp: Five entrepreneurial ideas to help save journalism?

In the meantime, here are some snapshots from the culminating presentations: