Entrepreneurial journalists should pursue several revenue streams

Entrepreneurial journalists make a mistake if they think advertising is their only potential revenue stream.

Our entrepreneurial journalism class at Georgetown University will focus tonight on exploring possible ways to make money beyond display advertising. I doubt that many organizations would want to pursue all these possibilities. Particularly if you’re a small organization or an individual, you will need to pick your shots carefully and decide which have the most potential and which are worth the time and money it would cost to try them. Some of these opportunities are tailored for the sole proprietor. Others work better for a larger organization or at least for an entrepreneur or team with specialized technical skills.

Here are some revenue streams we will discuss in class:

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Craig Silverman shares excellent advice on accuracy, verification and preventing errors

We knew we were risking schedule conflicts when Craig Silverman agreed to present a workshop on accuracy and verification for the TBD Community Network while he was in Washington for the Online News Association. Nearly everyone had something else to do (many of them at ONA).

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Tips on verifying facts and ensuring accuracy

Craig Silverman of Regret the Error is leading a workshop for TBD Community Network members (and staff and anyone else in the Washington area who’s interested) this evening at American University’s School of Communication. As supplemental reading for those attending the workshop, I’m posting this handout updated I developed for my Accuracy First workshop when I was presenting ethics seminars for the American Press Institute (updated somewhat). The original version of this handout was initially posted on the No Train, No Gain website.

While this handout is geared to journalists, we encourage all members of the network to follow these practices and those Craig teaches, regardless of whether they consider themselves journalists. Anyone providing information to the public should seek to ensure accuracy to maintain credibility.

In pursuit of excellence, journalists seek to develop lots of sophisticated skills, such as investigative reporting, narrative writing, social media and video. Accuracy isn’t as glamorous as those skills but without accuracy, they become worthless. Accuracy is the foundation upon which journalists must build all other skills. Ensuring accuracy involves several steps:

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Outcry over Juan Williams’ firing from NPR underscores why we don’t need more government subsidies for journalism

If you think government should subsidize journalism, check out the outcry over NPR’s firing of Juan Williams.

I’m not going to weigh in on whether Williams’ remarks should have been a firing offense. You can argue that in a circle with valid points on either side and I don’t care to. My point is simply that the hiring and firing of journalists and the standards of a news organization should not be a subject for Congress to waste a single minute on. Our founders wisely set journalism outside the government. Yet House Minority Leader (and perhaps the next House Speaker) John Boehner and other Republicans are calling for legislation to cut off NPR’s federal funding.

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The Guardian shows newsrooms how to guide digital journalists

I have criticized other news organizations’ policies relating to social media and other digital journalism issues frequently in this blog:

• Wall Street Journal
• Washington Post
• New York Times
• Los Angeles Times

Time to lavish some praise on a news organization for it sensible approach. The Guardian shows why it is a leader in social media and digital journalism with its guidelines for blogging and commenting by journalists.

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Even with older Americans, mobile is gaining on print

A number jumped out at me in the Pew report Americans and their Gadgets: 58 percent of Americans 65 and older own cell phones.

That made sense to me. My mother is 83 years old and has Alzheimer’s disease and a cell phone is her only phone. It’s not a smart phone and I know better than to text her or leave her a voice mail, but we talk on it frequently (well, not as frequently as we should, but that’s my fault).

I wondered whether newspaper readership among older Americans was higher than 58 percent.

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A key decision for entrepreneurial journalists: What’s your content plan?

If you’re an entrepreneurial journalist, your success starts with your content plan.

Today’s class session in entrepreneurial journalism at Georgetown University will cover content, one of three key factors we are examining in the course (along with distribution and monetization) determining the success of an entrepreneurial journalism venture. (Those aren’t the only factors, of course. Each of those factors raises technology issues and you need to provide a successful user experience.)

A content plan should consider at least three aspects:

1. Focus
2. Format
3. Acquisition

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Great advice on seeing news content as data

Most news stories are basically data in paragraph form.

Each of the 5 W’s could just as easily be a field in a database. Structured as data, not simply as stories, “who” becomes more than a fact for a story; it relates this story to the other stories with the same “who.”Databases give news content more lasting value, by providing context and relationships.

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For journalists: It was the worst of times, it was the best of times

It was the worst of times, it was the best of times.

With apologies to Charles Dickens, who wrote one of the greatest leads of all times, that is the theme for my presentation leading off an APME NewsTrain seminar at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth this week. (The two-day seminar breaks the group in half, with each half following a different track each day, so I will open the same program for a different group each day.) The seminar organizers asked me to give a big-picture overview of the changing media landscape for the frontline editors who will be attending. This is a blog version of that presentation.

It was the worst of times. I won’t spend much time on this, because everyone at newspapers (my primary audience at the seminar) knows how bad things are. So I’ll just review quickly:

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Chasing the perfect sunset

Sunset over the Pacific from Duffin Cove, Oct. 5, 2010

The glorious sunset was a daily marvel when I was growing up in Sunset, Utah.

Our home lay directly east of the Great Salt Lake, a mile or so away, and every evening, the setting sun would paint the sky a stunning array of reds, oranges, pinks and purples, the hues reflecting off salty water and wispy clouds. I can’t attest how much of this is selective childhood memory or meteorological fact, but I don’t think we ever had a cloudless sky or an overcast evening. It seemed that the Salt Desert to the west of the lake kept us from more than light rain, and that was during the day, but the lake itself gave off enough moisture to provide delicate brush strokes of clouds to spread the sun’s last rays across the sky.

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Whale-watching tours show how you can compete and collaborate

As you drive the main drag of Tofino, a coastal resort town on Vancouver Island, competing signs beckon you to go whale-watching.

The competition among tour operators is genuine on the street and in the fliers hawking tourist attractions and activities. Each business wants to attract the most tourists to its boats.

But out on the waters, the captains turn from competitors to collaborators. They share their whale sightings by radio, and the competing boats race to the area and follow the same whale(s) for a while, their boats bobbing on the water and their passengers pointing and exclaiming each time a great beast surfaces.

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C3 presentation for the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association

These are slides and links relating to my Oct. 2 presentation on the Complete Community Connection for the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association:

You can read more elsewhere in this blog in my posts on the Blueprint for the Complete Community Connection, on mobile-first strategy and on resources for journalists using Twitter. The slides are below:

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