Last weekend I attended a conference organized by the Canadian Association of Black Journalists called "Breakin' into the Biz." At the end of the day I had the privilege to speak to Jon Sarpong, editor of Sway Magazine or as the ladies dubbed him, "the tall, handsome guy in the long jacket." Besides explaining to me that the life of an editor is 95 per cent hard work and five per cent fun ("But that five per cent is really, really fun"), his advice to a budding journalist was to find a way to brand yourself.

Huh, brand yourself? How do I do that?

I had to look into this some more. In an article on PressThink by guest writer Chris Nolan, Nolan coins the term "stand-alone journalist" as a someone who provides the public with information that is just as accurate and honest as conventional journalists, but do not work for a news outlet. They aren't bloggers, she writes, but they use blogging technology to establish an audience. They may syndicate their work, publish it on their website, express their opinions: "It's going to be writing -- and writing well, not news gathering -- that sets them apart." How Nolan sees the stand-alone journalism model working is that editors at larger new outlets could scoop up some of the post, say, to cut costs, and include them in the news package. It's like freelance journalism set on reverse.