This is going to be a post in two parts. The first is going to be about how freelancers can diversify to make money in the digital world, the second is going to be how media organizations can do the same.
For freelancers
To make money as a writer in today's economy, you have to be more savvy than ever before. Tap into your own interests for story ideas and expand them for a larger audience (think regional, national, etc.). The more topics you can prove yourself an expert on, the more potential sales you can pull in.
You should also be writing for a diverse group of publications. Submit to every kind of media available, including newspapers, blogs, video channels (unless you're a pro with top of the line equipment, think online video channels like YouTube), magazines, and commercial and content based websites.
Look into starting your own blog to use as an online portfolio and as a way to play around with monetization. I recommend Blogger, because it works seamlessly with Google Adsense and Analytics, which is where most bloggers I know cut their teeth on blog tools.
It's also good to become a networking fiend. Meet as many people as you can and give them your card; you never know when you'll get a call from an editor who picked up your info from a friend or an email from your pal's aunt Sally who wants you to work on her Mary Kay site.
For news orgs
Here's something I've noticed from the current upheaval in our industry- firing your company's top talent, whether they be community columnists who know their city better than anyone else or that young kid who developed a few widgets and a quick, interactive flash game for your site, isn't working.
Asking the public to take pity on us and tell their friends about how important the news industry isn't working.
Dumping your newspaper directly onto a website isn't working.
What we need to do is ride out the current storm and redefine the industry. Focus on new ways to engage your audience. Give your reporters small, crappy cameras so they can take footage that really won't look that bad on a 4"x 4" movie player. (Trust me, if you include a tripod with the camera, it will be fine for online.)
Let your best writers write but give them the tools to make their own multimedia presentations. In fact, insist they do. Let your best photographers write small pieces if they're going out into the field by themselves.
Look past the traditional "new" media and towards innovative thinking. Give readers interactive Flash presentations, copies of public documents, and widgets that inform and connect them to other users. Offer up an interactive "newspaper" where readers can flip the pages. Give local musicians a network where they can upload footage from live performances and a calendar of events everyone can add to.
Above all, become the ultimate guide to your coverage area. If that means creating portal sites to specific neighborhoods or paring down your coverage to one city instead of ten, that's what you should do.
If I type in Tampa, a Tampa newspaper should pop up on top of my list of results. (The Tampa Tribune is on the first page, but the Busch Gardens website is ranked before it. Does the Busch Gardens website really have more information about Tampa than The Tampa Tribune? And, why doesn't the St. Pete Times, with the address tampabay.com come up in that first page of results?)
If I want to find a hotel, a newspaper website should pop up. If I want to go see a show, a newspaper website should come up. If I want to know whether or not roads are going to be blocked because of a football game, a newspaper website should come up.
In order to survive, I really believe newspapers need to become the portals everyone uses to view the world. Unfortunately, years of comfort in a booming economy have shaped the ways in which Western newspapers and other media organizations react to their audience, and apparently the audience isn't impressed.
This post is part of the January Carnival of Journalism, hosted by Paul Bradshaw. Just to have everything out in the open, I cover city government for two cities in Pasco County for the St. Pete Times.
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