Tag Archives: entrepreneurialism

OJR: Journalism’s problem isn’t the internet or advertising, it’s attitude

What’s the biggest problem facing the journalism industry? The online explosion of content and competition, jobs cuts, the advertising crisis? According to the Online Journalism Review’s Robert Niles it’s none of these – but instead the attitude of some journalists.

There are too many journalists, he says in this post discussing the Knight Digital Media Center News Entrepreneur Boot Camp in May, who are “wallowing in a culture of failure” and he urges more to step off of the familiar pathway in journalism.

You won’t be the first journalist to do this. That means that others are available to help show you the way. But you’ll need to start listening to these new voices, and tune out the pessimism, frustration and even scolding you might hear from the colleagues you leave behind.

The Journalism Firm: What journalists have to learn from lawyers

Responding to ongoing discussion of the idea of journalists as entrepreneurs, videojournalism pioneer Michael Rosenblum suggests a new model for independent journalists going forward – the law firm:

Lawyers, (while it is true some become employees), tend to organise themselves in partnerships in which they pool their skills and their business.

A law firm hires its talents out to many clients.  A Journalism Firm (to craft an interesting idea) would do the same. A partnership of journalists would contract with various magazines, newspapers, television stations and websites to offer content, as a law firm offers work. In this way, they would also be insulated from the predictable disaster if one newspaper or one magazine went under.

The Journalism Firm would be a partnership, and as a good law firm combines the high paying M&A with the lower paying family practice, so too could a Journalism Firm combine the low paying investigative journalism with the high paying Public Relations. Don’t cringe. Many of our grads go into PR and can make a fortune. It’s the same skill set.

Full post on Rosenblum TV at this link…