I’ve been in journalism for close to 30 years. As one would expect, my skills, the tools of the trade and the state of the industry itself have evolved dramatically over that time.

Newsrooms that once functioned under a cloud of cigarette smoke now work in a cloud computing environment. Writers who once tucked a reporter’s notebook in their back pocket now wield a digital voice recorder or a Flip camcorder. Editors who once redlined copy and haggled over how headlines matched the lead art now stress over Web analytics and keyword selection.

Our industry is caught between “what was” and “what will be.”  Which means that “what is” is up for grabs. And when things are up for grabs, people get busy.  Busy preserving their livelihoods, their positions, their power.

Ironically, the preservation of editorial power comes down to language.

If you think the content game has been rapidly changing, try being in sales. While editorial staffs get to dream up new ways of delivering information, it’s the sales staff that often has to figure out how to monetize it.

Last Wednesday just over 100 journalists packed into the 92YTribeca to talk with Mashable’s Vadim Lavrusik and Columbia professor Sree Sreenivasan. The duo chatted about how best to navigate the uncertain waters ahead. 

This wasn’t your typical macro-level “how do we save news?” discussion. Instead it focused on more the individual journalist and their careers.  Some takeaways included:

Before the paid content, CPMs and multimedia ruffled the feathers of newsrooms everywhere there was the advertorial. In its previous life advertorials, advertiser produced editorial (clearly marked, of course), were mainstays of newspapers and consumer magazines.

Most publishers grasp the benefit of Twitter, but what if you could translate social networking to real life interactions with readers, or even close sales using Twitter?