Entrepreneurial journalism for new grads : Law grads too?
"It seems to be a great time to be starting out in journalism. Just don't ask advice from anyone who has been in the business for more than five years." That's the advice of Saul Hansell, publisher of the New York Times Bits Blog.
Saul nails the historical party line for Journalism grads:
Find a gig where you can write — a small town paper, freelancing for an alternative weekly, a business trade publication (my route). If you're good, the story went, you would find you way to bigger publications and forge a career.
Seems foolhardy these days with newspaper revenues on the decline and newsroom layoffs. But from Jeff Jarvis's Entrepreneurial Journalism class at the City University of New York's new Journalism School, there's hope for the journalist entrepreneur.
Jarvis got the McCormick Tribune Foundation to put up $50,000 as seed capital for contestants in his class. Saul was a juror for the contest. Hearing a lot of interesting proposals, he concluded grads can 'now count on technology services to accelerate many parts of starting a business.'
Items of note from the contest:
- Hyper-local site for Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.
- Global magazine for Muslim women.
- Google's Ad Sense was on nearly everyone's plan as a source of advertising revenue.
- Specialized ad networks were relevant to some ideas.
- Starting an entire online service entirely within Facebook, ie, personal finance service for young people or a service meant to match high school athletes with college recruiters.
Everyone recognizes that another job is going to be needed to pay the rent for those going the entrepreneurial journalism route. Perhaps that's why we're not seeing as many ideas emanate from law grads. Two degrees cost a lot of jack, requiring a good salary to repay student loans, let along pay the rent.
But niche legal sites developing into quasi reviews, law journals, and treatises driven by technology services to accelerate things are coming.
