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.

An important aspect of developing a social media presence for your publishing brand is consistency. As I wrote previously, you should have a Twitter editorial calendar in place so that each reporter knows when they should post so the publication’s Twitter and Facebook accounts have fresh content daily (posts = followers  = exposure for your brand).

CoverItLive fancies itself the Swiss Army Knife of live coverage. The service is a widget that is embeddable like a YouTube video allowing reporters to interact with readers through a curated chat, video streams, Twitter integration and even audio files (see the service’s video demo here).

Help a Reporter Out (HARO) founder Peter Shankman grew what was once a Facebook page into what he calls the largest source repository in the free world, with more than 150,000 global sources for journalists. He is also part of a collaborative effort to create a comprehensive media database on Twitter.

John Druckenmiller of Hometown Headlines has quietly been building a network of hyperlocal sites in Rome, Georgia.

As publisher, reporter and ad salesman, John has had to build and maintain several different types of community. The former newspaper reporter doles out his keys to creating the type of community that will advertise with your publication for years while steadily feeding you news tips.

For starters, he said, be different.

When it comes to the major sports leagues, the NFL has the strictest policies pertaining to the media and its players. Players are only allowed to wear NFL sponsored hats at press conferences, are not allowed to break uniform standards for any reason and Web sites are only allowed to post 45 seconds of video a day.