Social media and reporting workshop for Portuguese journalists

I will be presenting a full-day workshop today for the Committee of Concerned Journalists and Georgetown University for a group of visiting Portuguese journalists. We’ll be talking about social media and reporting.

I will be discussing points made in several earlier blog posts:

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Lessons from a successful journalism entrepreneur: Craig Silverman

Entrepreneurial journalism may not mean bootstrapping a single venture. For some journalists, it may mean building a personal brand that brings income from a variety of sources.

Craig Silverman

Craig Silverman is a great example. I can’t remember when I first learned about Craig, but I’ve followed his “Regret the Error” work for several years and was quite excited earlier this year when he wanted to interview me about some things we were doing at TBD. My recognition of him and the esteem in which I held him before even meeting him reflect his success in building his brand through multiple efforts.

When Craig was coming to Washington in October for the Online News Association conference, he offered to present an accuracy workshop for our TBD Community Network. We finally met and chatted about his various ventures. I shared his story with my entrepreneurial journalism class and decided to blog about it as well.

I want to do two things here: Tell a story about an interesting journalist whom I like personally and pull from his story some lessons for my students and other journalism entrepreneurs. The lessons will be boldface headings, scattered through the story at appropriate places.

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‘Good enough’ and ‘value-added’ work together in entrepreneurial journalism

Howard Owens gives a great explanation of what makes his journalism venture successful. But he mistakenly extrapolates to some rules about what other entrepreneurs should not do.

I recommend reading Howard’s post Forget “value-added journalism” — Think, disruptive innovation and Kevin Anderson’s post Journalism: What added value will add revenue? Howard was responding to Kevin, so I suggest reading Kevin first, then Howard, then coming back and finishing this.

Howard understands correctly that his venture, The Batavian, is succeeding with a simple formula of providing lots and lots of community news. He isn’t “adding value” with many feature stories or investigative journalism that would take considerable time. Instead, he says, he is following Clayton Christensen’s disruptive innovation formula by providing just “good enough” quality, but lots of it.

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Entrepreneurial journalists need to master social media

Our entrepreneurial journalism class at Georgetown will be discussing social media the next two weeks. Of course, you could do a whole course on social media, which offer some of the most important tools an entrepreneurial journalist will use, so this will be an overview more than a deep dive.

Social media can be part of the solution for all three of the key challenges an entrepreneurial journalist faces: content, distribution and monetization.

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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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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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Reading resources on entrepreneurial journalism

This is a crosspost from the class blog for my entrepreneurial journalism class at Georgetown University. Please add other resources I should call to the students’ attention in the comments. I’ll also be compiling links to entrepreneurial projects. What links should I include on that list?

These are some recommended resources on entrepreneurial journalism. Students choosing the project option of contributing to the class blog can do blog posts about any of these resources. You can write commentaries about posts on these blogs or reports or about a book or a chapter or section of a book. You also are welcome to blog about other resources. I will add some links here during the semester.

Blogs about business and journalism

(Some of these blogs cover multiple topics, not always relating to entrepreneurial journalism.)

BuzzMachine by Jeff Jarvis

Newsonomics of … by Ken Doctor

Reflections of a Newsosaur by Alan Mutter

Online Journalism Review by Robert Niles

McGuire on Media by Tim McGuire

paidContent, multiple authors, including Staci Kramer, Robert Andrews, Joseph Tartakoff, Tricia Duryee, David Kaplan and Amanda Natividad

The Biz Blog by Rick Edmonds

Mobile Media by Damon Kiesow

NewsPay by Bill Mitchell

Nieman Journalism Lab, multiple authors, including Laura McGann, Megan Garber, Mark Coddington, Joshua Benton and Ken Doctor

lostremote, multiple authors, including Steve Safran, Cory Bergman and Polly Kreisman

GigaOm, multiple authors, including Om Malik, Mathew Ingram, Liz Gannes and Katie Fehrenbacher

Recovering Journalist by Mark Potts

Susan Mernit’s blog

10,000 Words by Mark S. Luckie

MediaShift, hosted by Mark Glaser

News Leadership 3.0 by Michele McLellan

Search Engine Land by Danny Sullivan

Other resources for entrepreneurial journalism

New Business Models for News

Newspaper Next reports

• Blueprint for Transformation
• Making the Leap Beyond ‘Newspaper Companies’
• Be the Answer: Using Interactive Databases to Provide Answers and Generate Revenue

Webb Media Group

Books dealing with innovation

The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Innovator’s Solution by Clayton Christensen

Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne

Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky

What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis

Newsonomics by Ken Doctor

Steve Buttry blog posts on entrepreneurial journalism

If you’re going to write about my blog as part of the project, you can’t simply write a flattering review. Write your own take on something I have written about.

A Blueprint for the Complete Community Connection

Mobile-First Strategy

A possible new business model for obituaries and Jobless journalists could find a business model in obituaries

Blog posts about charging for content

Other sources recommended on Twitter

Romenesko (This is a general blog about the news business and journalism

ReadWriteWeb (This seems to me a bit more focused on technology than journalism, but there is some overlap and it’s a good resource.)

Diffusion of Innovations by Everett Rogers

Internet2Go

Mediamum

First chapter of Tina Seelig’s What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20

Local Search Database

How to raise venture capital

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