The Business of Journalism

Sean Blanda discusses a few tips for journalists making the transition to entrepreneurship when beginning a start-up news Web site.

Here is my take on the article:

One of the biggest issues with a journalist branching out on his or her own and into the entrepreneurial spectrum, is that journalists don’t have sales experience.

It’s well documented that journalism should have a “church and state” relationship between publisher and sales manager, but when a new business is beginning, a journalist needs the basics.

It’s not that a journalist will mold church and state, or tear down the wall. A journalist needs to scale that wall each time a story needs publishing and climb back to sales to earn the revenue. The wall should never get shorter, because that will eventually lead to flat ground and complete mix of business and editorial.

Instead, the journalist needs to grasp new strategies for keeping the balance.

Blanda’s article says journalists need to:

• Build a relationship with mainstream media. This is because most start-ups will be more local than what exists. A partnership can help both sides of this equation with content-sharing and brainstorming.
• Knowledge of non-advertising sales. Making money on the Web for a news site could stretch beyond display and video advertising. In my interview with Chris Anderson, a journalism professor at CUNY, he mentions using a Web development team to work on local business’ Web sites.
• Join a local ad-network. This one probably only exists in the bigger urban areas and its suburbs. But joining with other local sites or news blogs and sharing advertisers could be beneficial - provided you’re not in competition.
• Communicate. This is probably one of the harder ones for a journalist turn entrepreneur to do, ironically. Work the town. Put your name out there as a site, not just to get stories, but to generate excitement that leads to traffic that leads to ad revenue.