Today, it is Cloud Computing. “The Cloud” may indeed change computing forever, but no one really understands quite how yet. That doesn’t stop people from writing about it, however. Companies are again clamoring for people who can write about the nebulous technology. Publications want to be regarded as the most authoritative source of cloud news. (One editor told me: “We want to be known as the expert on all-things-cloud.”) And yet few really know what they are talking about. In most cases, it’s more like a Rorschach test, with companies projecting what they hope cloud will do for their business. They spend big on advertising to crow about how their products and services relate to the cloud. And they churn out a never-ending stream of white papers and “thought-leadership” articles to show that they understand what cloud computing is and how it will affect the industry.

It’s whistling past the graveyard. The basic idea of cloud computing – that someone else owns and runs the computer and you just buy the service (like Google Apps) – is scaring most hardware and software companies to their core. After all, what happens to their business model if most individuals and corporations no longer buy computers or applications? Better to talk loudly about how cloud actually creates a need for whatever they are selling.

For freelancers like me, who specialize in technology and business, cloud computing has been a boon. Last year, as companies started recovering from the economic body blow of 2008, they restored marketing departments’ budgets. After a very lean year in 2010, I suddenly had a wealth of assignments all about the cloud. Take any topic that I might otherwise have written a story about a couple of years ago – computer security, for example. Now it is a story about computer security in the cloud. Mainframe computers? How mainframes can be used to create clouds. Storage technology? How to store data in the cloud. At least 50 percent of my work last year was related to cloud. And so it seems to be going this year as well.

We journalists like to complain about the hype in the high tech industry. We sometimes accuse marketers of trying to create FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) in order to sell their products. But, at least in this case, the FUD fallout from cloud is selling my product and paying my bills. Let it rain!

OK, so maybe I’m not much of a data point. After all, my audience of 100 or so family, friends and colleagues would probably still read my blog even if it made no sense and was stuffed with keywords like “Viagra.” In fact, I’m pretty sure a couple of them might even read it more.

The point is that Google has succeeded, at least temporarily, in kicking the content farms down a few notches in search results. That’s a good thing for anyone who cares about good editorial. Demand Media admits that Google’s new algorithm hurt its search rankings. In a conference call to discuss the company’s quarterly results in May, CEO Richard Rosenblatt said search engine referrals for eHow were down 20 percent. The company is also still losing money, reporting a first-quarter loss of $5.6 million. As of May 18, Demand Media’s share price was down to less than $15, from a high of just over $24.

In explaining the changes to its algorithm, Google is trying to encourage higher quality. While it won’t reveal details on the new algorithm, since that would defeat the whole point of confounding the content farms, Google did explain the company’s thinking on its Webmaster Central Blog. It presented a list of questions, most of which any good editor would use to judge the quality of her website, magazine or newspaper. Among them:

• Would you trust the information presented in this article?
• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it shallow in nature?
• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
• Does this article have spelling, stylistic or factual errors?
• Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
• Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
• How much quality control is done on content?
• Does the article describe both sides of a story?
• Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
• Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend or recommend?
• Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?

“We hope the questions above give some insight into how we try to write algorithms that distinguish higher-quality sites from lower-quality sites,” wrote Amit Singhal, Google Fellow.

In apparent reaction, Demand Media announced that it will hire “feature writers” to write 850-word-plus articles based on actual reporting.

“The feature writer role is designed to bring highly experienced writers into our studio to develop lifestyle features around topical ideas, with compelling story lines and original quotes from known industry experts,” said Jeremy Reed, senior vice president of editorial at Demand Media.

What a novel idea. Almost sounds like journalism.

And what will they pay these writers, who are required to have 5 to 10 years of experience writing or reporting for a major daily newspaper or equivalent experience as a regular contributor to a major magazine? Up to $350 per article. Yes sir, three hundred and fifty big ones.

And how many of those 850-plus words are going to have to be certain keywords? Somehow, I don’t think this move will do much for Demand Media’s search engine ranking. Quality is something that just doesn’t fit into its business model.

Meanwhile, after having watched the explosion of digital publishing over the last year, I’ve increasingly wondered whether I might be able to publish and sell my articles to readers directly.

After attending the Maryland Writers Association (MWA) annual meeting in early April, I’m convinced that at least some journalists could do this and make more money than the typical freelance fee for any given article. The MWA is primarily for fiction writers, and the panel discussions focused on book publishing, but what I heard there only reinforced my belief that an exciting new publishing and distribution model is opening up for writers of all kinds, including journalists.

More and more authors are publishing e-books through companies like Amazon and Smashwords, and making good money doing it. The poster girl for this is the young writer Amanda Hocking, who has made more than a million dollars publishing her short novels on the Kindle. After slowly creeping up on them for years, disintermediation has finally hit the “legacy publishers” (as the participants of one panel at the MWA meeting insisted on calling them) hard.

This entertaining (but very long) discussion of e-book publishing between authors Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath lays out the reasons behind the self-publishing stampede. You don’t have to read the entire 13,000 words on the business reasons, including an explanation of the revenue math, to be convinced that self-publishing is at least worth a try. These quotes reverberate in my head:

On distribution of stories: “Print is just a delivery system. It gets a story from the writer to the reader. For centuries, publishers controlled this system, because they did the printing, and they were plugged into distribution. But with retailers like Amazon, B&N [Barnes & Noble], and Smashwords, the story can get to the reader in a faster, cheaper way.”

On the worth of writers, aka content producers: “We provide the content that is printed and distributed. For hundreds of years, writers couldn’t reach readers without publishers. We needed them. Now, suddenly, we don’t. But publishers don’t seem to be taking this Very Important Fact into account.”

I heard variations of these themes all over the MWA conference. One panelist predicted that within five years, more than 50 percent of all books will be e-books. How much journalism is already consumed digitally today? Probably well over half. And with the iPad and other tablets starting to breathe visual life into digital newspaper and magazine stories, it should increase astronomically.

Why not package and sell single articles? I’m aware of at least one experiment in selling digital long-form journalism singles: the Atavist. The articles are by well-known journalists, of course, to appeal to the general public and attract as many buyers as possible.

Would this work in trade journalism? One of the literary agents at the MWA meeting, Jessica Sinsheimer of the Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency, encouraged authors to aim for niches rather than the mass market. The more narrowly defined the market, she said, the easier it is to sell the story. That’s the whole idea behind trade publishing: niche audiences – CEOs of technology companies, for example – want articles that deal with the issues and events that are most important to them.

Would they pay for that? What if a journalist wrote an article of 5,000 words that brought them new, useful information that could make a real difference in their life, career or company? Going the traditional route, that journalist might expect to make $5,000 to $7,500 for that story. What if she published her own e-story and charged $10 a pop? Based on Konrath’s figures that an author can keep 70 percent of the revenue when publishing on Kindle, she’d have to sell at least 1,000 copies to reach that $7,500. Just as important, however, is the fact that she would retain the rights to that article. Maybe she could later sell it to a couple of “legacy publishers,” or publish it as part of a longer book.

Effective social networking could be the key. If a writer is to have any hope of selling her own stories, she has to have developed a personal readership – people who know her and want to read her stuff. Another publishing agent on the panel, Jason Allen Ashlock of Movable Type Literary Group, stressed how important it is for writers to build and grow their reputation and relationship with readers. Not only does it help promote the writer, but it also feeds the writer good ideas for future stories. By communicating with readers, a writer can learn what her audience wants. And if her stories deliver what her audience wants, she should be able to sell more of them. It becomes a virtuous cycle. When readers are being overwhelmed by the vast universe of digital information, hitting a reader’s sweet spot becomes very valuable. “Where there’s an abundance of content, then quality content becomes your marketing strategy,” said Ashlock. “Business models can be built around good content.”

The next few years will tell whether and to what extent individual journalists will be able to profit more directly from their work. Regardless of what happens, the “freelance” in freelance journalism is starting to take on a whole new meaning.

It also gives me time to evaluate the state of my freelance career. In spite of the economy, I had a fairly good year. I’m especially thankful for:

• My clients, most of whom have maintained my pay rate, even in this bad economy
• Editors who make good copy great
• Editors who think my stories are good enough to enter in the ASBPE awards, one of which I won in November (Thanks, Computerworld editors!)
• Clients and colleagues who refer business to me

But there are several things I want for next year. Here’s my freelance wish list. If there is a Santa, I hope he’s reading this.

• Quality, affordable healthcare. I’ve posted about this before, both here and here. The single most difficult part of being a freelancer is obtaining and paying for health insurance. After a long struggle, I finally got mine through a Maryland state high-risk pool. To keep costs down, I’ve gone with high-deductible ($2,600) plan. The premiums have gone up more than 100 percent in four years. I now pay $300 a month, or $3,600 annually. Meanwhile, my doctor is changing to a “membership practice,” which will require another $1,800 a year on top of that. That’s $8,000 before my health insurance provider even thinks of covering my healthcare costs.

• Reliable electricity. My regional power company, PEPCO, has one of the poorest reliability ratings in the country, and I seem to be on the weakest part of its grid. My power can go out for no apparent reason, even on a sunny, windless day. When bad weather hits, my street is usually the first to lose power and the last to regain it. During last winter’s Snowmaggedon, when the D.C. area got hit by two blizzards in a row for a total accumulation of almost four feet, my power was out for more than three days.

• If I can’t have #2, then a windfall of $10,000 to buy a generator for the house would be nice.

• Continued economic recovery. I’ve seen business pick up this year, and then fall off again, and then pick up again. It’s generally headed in the right direction, but I’m paranoid that another financial catastrophe could pull us all down again.

• Just one more steady gig to even out my sometimes erratic cash flow.

In the spirit of slowing down to enjoy the holidays, I’ll be taking a break from blogging for the next couple of weeks. Happy Holidays. May we all get our wishes in 2011.

But which ones to join? Which ones are worth their cost, in both time and money? I now belong to two groups. I’ve been a member of the National Press Club (NPC) for 12 years. About three years ago, I also joined the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA). I’ve had very different experiences with each. In this blog post, I describe my experience with the NPC. Next week, I’ll talk about ASJA.

I joined the NPC in 1998 when I moved to Washington, D.C., to become national editor for a high-tech magazine, Electronic Business. At the time, technology companies were just beginning to become involved in public policy. (The Justice Department’s anti-trust suit against Microsoft had rudely awakened the industry to the fact that those folks in Washington could be troublesome.) Because my job was to cover Congress and the major federal agencies, an NPC membership seemed worthwhile. Because my employer covered the $562 annual membership fee, it was a no-brainer.

When I left the magazine in 2005, however, the fee was on me. I took a close look and realized that I wasn’t getting much for my money. For one thing, I didn’t attend many events because they weren’t inconvenient. The NPC is in the National Press Building in the heart of D.C. I’m out in a suburb, and go into D.C. only occasionally.

The other, more important, reason was that the NPC didn’t offer me many networking and professional development opportunities. Anyone who’s ever visited the Club senses its history. Its storied conference rooms and bar (“The Reliable Source”) are filled with photos of presidents chatting with the national press and with historical newspaper front pages: “Japan Bombs Pearl Harbor.” The downside is that the Club has had a hard time moving into the 21st Century. Its membership is the old guard of journalism – the men and women who started in the era of “get me rewrite” and neared the twilight of their careers just as the Internet was about to change everything. Until recently, the club’s website was atrocious. Once I found the list of committees and activities, I looked in vain to find anything relevant to either the coverage of technology (my beat) or training in digital tools for journalists.

What’s more, the club was geared to journalists who were employed full-time by national news organizations. For a freelancer, and one who was focused on a niche rather than general news, there was nothing.

Nearly six hundred dollars seemed too much to pay for the prestige of occasionally taking a source to lunch or drinks at the club. I was ready to drop it.

Then an energetic young member created a freelance committee within the club. She rounded up a few of us freelancers, and we started organizing meetings and professional development events designed for people like us. How to write the perfect pitch. Using social networks. Podcasting. There was a core group of us who were interested in these things.

The attendees of these events, however, were somewhat depressing. There were a few younger, savvy journalists. But many who attended were the walking wounded – the victims of the dramatic changes that the Internet has caused in the media business. Today, Washington is full of middle-aged and old journalists who have been laid off or bought out as major national news organizations have cut back on staff and even closed their Washington bureaus. Many of these people seem bewildered and lost. They worked for the same news organization for most of their careers and are, for the first time in their lives, without a job. They are freelancing out of desperation, not out of career ambition. They are unprepared for the new world. During a session on how to break into freelancing, I remember one of them asking, “Do I have to send a query? Can’t I just write the article and send it in?”

After an initial flurry of activity, the freelance group faded. I’m told it still exists, but I haven’t heard about any events in nearly a year. Once again, I’m pondering letting my membership lapse. Surely, there are other groups where I can find more of what I need. Fellow journalists: what groups do you find useful? Check back next week to see how ASJA measures up.

One of the joys of freelancing is that I don’t have to get dressed up to go to work. In fact, I don’t even have to get dressed. I do, of course, eventually. But when I have loads of work or a pressing deadline, I stay in my pajamas. All in the name of efficiency, of course. Why spend time on clothes, hair and makeup when nobody’s going to see me anyway, except maybe the FedEx man?

But now that integrated webcams have become a standard feature in most laptops, rudimentary video conferencing through services like Skype and Google video chat are becoming more common. I started to realize this when my son went off to college this fall. He was amazed that he couldn’t video chat with me. (I was amazed that he wanted to. It was probably just a momentary lapse caused by the novelty of the webcam on his college-issued laptop combined with a golden opportunity to make me feel clueless.)

Initially I thought maybe we could keep this Skype thing just between me and family. Then in October Cisco introduced Umi Telepresence , a video conferencing system for the home. The system, which retails for $600, includes a camera that connects to a high-definition TV to become a video-conferencing system that shows everything. With this technology, you’re no longer just a talking head at the computer, but a full person, head to toe, with a picture “so clear, natural and lifelike that users will see . . . the twinkle in your eye.” Or, in my case, the stain on my bathrobe and the fuzzy slippers on my feet. Wonderful.

I’m hoping this won’t catch on. But the monthly subscription cost – just $25/month for unlimited video calls and storage of up to 100 minutes of video messages – is going to be attractive for businesses that till now have been priced out of the high-end videoconferencing market. And there’s going to be lots of competition that will drive those costs down further. Skype, for example, just hired away a senior vice president of Cisco’s, Tony Bates, to become its CEO. It doesn’t take a high-definition picture to see what’s going on there.

My five-year-old computer is about ready for retirement. But I keep putting off shopping for a new one, because I probably won’t be able to avoid buying one with integrated webcam and microphone. Which means this time around it’s more than the hardware and software that requires an upgrade. Bye, bye, bathrobe.

My former employer started using me as regular contributor. I hadn’t planned on that, but I had left on good terms, and apparently they missed me. It was a good deal for the publication as well as for me. The editor already knew how talented, reliable and thorough I was. And I already knew the publication’s style and readership. I could report and write great stories in half the time it would take if I were working for an unfamiliar magazine, so my projects for them worked out to a nice hourly rate.

Then, as editors and writers from that publication moved up or out to other jobs, they continued to hire me for freelance work. It was a wonderful sort of cross-pollination. Like butterflies, people for whom I’d worked flitted off to a new flower, and then offered new opportunities to me. Many times I not only added a new client, but continued working for the old one as well. Thus, my client base grew.

Today, however, the publishing industry is consolidating. As more and more magazines and newspapers close, more of my colleagues are being laid off. Given the state of the economy and of journalism, they aren’t necessarily landing on a new flower right away. Many have become freelancers by necessity.

And yet, the cross-pollination has continued. Most of my new clients still come from referrals from former editors or freelance colleagues. A few recent examples:

A former colleague who’d been freelancing for the last several years just took a full-time job editing blogs for a major trade publisher. Not only is she handing off at least one of her freelance clients to me, she also has hired me to do some work for her new employer. On top of that, she’s in a position to circulate my name to other editors at other publications the company owns.

A former editor took a job at a custom publishing company. He has hired me for regular contributions to an online newsletter for one of his clients.

A freelance colleague and former editor has found himself suddenly buried in work. Rather than say no to a valuable client, he referred them to me.

I’m amazed, and grateful, that this process continues. In this time of upheaval in the publishing business, maybe even because of it, there is still work out there. It’s just more difficult to find. That makes referrals especially sweet.

Custom publishing – producing articles, newsletters and magazines for a corporation or organization – is a form of marketing. As such, the goal of the writing is usually to get someone to buy something. Even the high-brow, glossy custom magazines that publish in-depth articles aimed at top-level executives are selling something. The goal of these magazines is often “thought leadership,” a vague marketing term that means the company is promoting how smart it is. They are trying to get the reader to buy into the image of the leaders of this corporation as particularly intelligent, insightful and strategic thinkers.

Such phrases have started creeping into my vocabulary as I do more custom work. I’ve always been a stickler with myself, and with others whom I edit, about keeping language simple, clear and concise. While many marketers value good writing, some do not. They – and the executives above them – apparently think imprecise, vague language effectively promotes their product or advances their agenda. Granted, the goal is to sell something, to in some way influence the reader’s behavior, but to do that you need to hook readers – by entertaining them, piquing their curiosity or delivering valuable information. Marketing people often think in terms of what they, and their company, want to say, rather than what the reader – their customer – needs. I try to point out to them that few people will actually read their custom magazine or corporate white paper unless it’s interesting, well-written or useful – and preferably all three. And those that do read it aren’t likely to take action if they get the sense that the article is just promoting the company.

But the marketing folks sign the checks. My job is to write what they want in the way they want it. So I cringe, subvert my hard-earned skills and write how I’m told. I write about challenges, rather than problems. There are no products or services – they are all solutions. Some are even, God forbid, unique solutions. And these solutions are often optimized, a word that runs all too rampant in marketing copy. (To optimize is to “make as effective, perfect or useful as possible.” If you have to optimize a product, that implies it wasn’t very effective or useful to start with.) All the while I imagine my notoriously loud and dictatorial journalism professor, John Bremner, rolling over in his grave and screaming “barbarisms!” (Yes, that word applies to writing. According to Dictionary.com, definition #3: “the use in a language of forms or constructions felt by some to be undesirably alien to the established standards of the language.”)

I know I shouldn’t complain. After all, in a strict business sense, my goal is to please my customer. Still, it gives me a stomach ache to write this way. And that’s not all. Like a fungus in a dark room, these marketing phrases and meaningless executive pronouncements proliferate and sneak into my journalism. It doesn’t help that I often interview marketing people, as well as executives, for my stories, and thus am exposed to these phrases on several fronts.

How to combat this? One of the best antidotes I’ve found is editing work. In college, Bremner seared so many editing commandments into my brain that I somehow channel him when I edit other’s work. My ability to sniff out the inexact phrase or dangling participle becomes keener when I read someone else’s copy. When I don’t have others to edit, I try to bifurcate my personality. I’ll write a draft of something, let it sit for a day, and then come back to it with my merciless Bremner persona, red pen ready to slash.

The other method is to really listen and think when I interview people. Even journalists – who are professional listeners as well as writers – sometimes get lazy as they take in the answers to their questions. I try to remember to ask, at least once during any given interview, some version of the question: “What the hell does that mean?” More diplomatically than that, of course. For example, the other day a CIO was explaining to me a strategic move that his company made. “They were charged to come back with a change in communication initiatives to drive better alignment for not only the IT organization, but also drive better alignment for the enterprise.” I was able to partially translate as: “I asked them to tell me how .. .” but I had no idea what he meant by better alignment. So I asked. His answer got into important details that enabled me to write a much more interesting and useful story for the reader.

Whether the reader is a magazine subscriber or a customer, that should always be the goal.

I’ve adjusted to different types of interruptions as my son has grown. When he was a baby, his schedule ruled. Until he went to daycare, I crammed my work into the short slots of time between naps, feedings and play dates. As he grew, the types of interruptions changed. As a boy, he sometimes seemed to demand my uninterrupted attention just when I was in the thick of a conference call. But he gradually learned to refrain from interrupting me when I was on the phone, “unless there’s blood or fire involved.” (We later added water to that directive, after he shyly and sheepishly called down the steps to me one day that water was coming through the ceiling. The upstairs toilet had overflowed and he was trying to stem the tide by himself.)

Even now, at age 18, he sometimes bounds into the house – if he’s with with his cadre of friends, it sounds like a herd of elephants – and starts asking for money or the car before he even reaches my office, only to find me with the phone to my ear, glaring at him.

As kid interruptions subsided, pet interruptions escalated. There was always the dog, whimpering at the front door for a walk. As he reached middle age, my Yorkie developed seizures. Many times I conducted an interview while stroking and comforting his quivering five-pound body splayed out on the floor. He also had stomach problems. I became expert at discerning the distinctive retch in time to scoop him up off the carpet and onto the hardwood floor (for easier post-interview clean-up).

That dog now is also 18. He’s blind, deaf and arthritic, and sleeps most of the time. Still, when he wakes up and figures out I’m not in the same room, he goes hunting for me. He’ll sit at the top of the stairs whining until I come to carry him down to my first-floor office. And I’ve learned that I can’t ignore that whine for long – he’s tumbled down those stairs more than once.

Like an old man with Alzheimer’s, he sometimes wanders aimlessly around my office. He usually ends up ensnared in the nest of wires and cables behind my desk. I know he’s back there when my speakers start inching away from me.

Soon, both son and dog will leave – one for college and the other for the great beyond. It will be quiet around here. My work days will run more smoothly. Gone will be all those interruptions. And I’ll cry, missing them terribly.

That was the happy message at the “Future of Freelancing” conference held last week at Stanford University. Several sessions served to inspire the 120-plus mid-career freelancers in attendance, telling us to stay brave and persistent in pursuing our craft. I was heartened by a panel of assigning editors from Popular Science, The Washington Post, Wired and The New Yorker, as they talked about the wonders of long-form journalism, a “crying need for narrative” and their hunger for new ideas from freelancers.

Everything else, however, is changing fast: the platform on which we publish our stories, the tools we use to tell our stories, and who controls how we tell those stories and to whom. While the changes are daunting at best, for freelancers they can be an opportunity to become the vanguard of a new age of journalism.

It’s news to nobody that publishing platforms are changing. While paper isn’t going away, other platforms have proliferated. The Web is already as popular as paper, for reading short items at least. The e-reader and iPad are becoming increasingly popular as ways to deliver news and magazine stories. Writers need to be on all these platforms, or they’ll miss part of their potential audience.

As these platforms change, they open up new ways to tell our stories. Ways that we should all learn. Although the editors at most sessions wouldn’t go so far as to say they’d pick a freelancer with video and audio skills over one with just writing skills – all other things being equal – it was clear to me that writers without audio and video in their toolbox will limit their opportunities. The most practical and useful session of the conference was given by Richard Koci Hernandez, a Ford Foundation Multimedia Fellow at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, who inspired us with his belief that today “is the golden age of storytelling,” excited us with the prospect of “reaching a global audience with one click” and gave us practical advice on how to acquire audio and video skills.

Finally, the old gatekeepers of publishing are losing their grip on the creative product. Remember the term “disintermediation,” which was popular in the 1990s when the Web had just burst onto the scene? It’s gaining speed in publishing. Authors are publishing books themselves rather than going through traditional channels. Why can’t journalists publish their stories directly on the Kindle? Journalist Damon Brown recently published a guide to the iPad on the Kindle, for example. It’s priced at $1.99.

For those journalists with an entrepreneurial bent, in particular, the future could be interesting indeed. This conference was a one-time deal, the project of Christine Larson, a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford. She deserves an award for having the idea and pulling it off. We freelancers – indeed all journalists – need more conferences like this. I hope the immense amount of positive feedback I heard at the conference turns into action by all attendees to make sure we get them.