What to do for Wednesday, Dec. 5

For today you will amend your business plans as necessary and add some financials. Here you will find  a simple template for developing a budget. You have done lots of research and perhaps have even come up with some costs. I know it's been a while since we discussed numbers, but let's just see how it goes. You will see that you can fill in your own categories, and your own numbers, and that the program will  do the math for you. Sweet! If you are unsure of what categories to put in, you might get some ideas from the Points East example. Do your best to come up with numbers that are reasonable, rational and well founded. Don't just manipulate numbers to get the result that you think looks best. The idea is just to get some experience playing around with numbers and to develop a sense of just how viable your project might be. Print out the results, add them to your final business plan, and submit to  my office by noon on Wednesday, Dec. 4.

What to do for next week, Nov. 25

We now have two classes left. That doesn't seem possible. Or maybe it does to you. As we discussed in class, your job over the next two weeks is to research, write and assemble a killer business plan that no investor will be able to resist. I have given you the Points East plan we developed when we were shopping for new investors. In class, we went over the text portions of that plan. Ours certainly is not the only way to do a business review, but it is a tried and true formula and it did the job of presenting the face of the company as we wanted potential investors to see it. There are all sorts of other examples online and a number of templates you can explore to come up with your own business plan formula. The goal here is to impress, obviously, by clearly presenting your vision and explaining why investors ought to believe in it.

I know some of you won't think you have that much to say, because we had already been in business for two years at the time I wrote this document, while you are just getting started. Actually, our first go at it in 1997 wasn't much different, except that this time we had two years of financials to back it up. So do your research, talk to people about your project, get feedback, look deep into the future, think about what kind of a person you are and why you are the right person to lead this mission. Pretend your life, your happiness, etc. depend on the success of this venture. Let your passion bleed through. Create four pages that cover the text portion of your business plan. Write well. Feel free to illustrate with photographs and graphics, comments along the side, text breakouts, etc. Create something that you are proud to share. Print it out on some nice pape, put it in a binder, and bring it to class. For the final week, we will work on the financial pages.

What to do for next week, Nov. 18

After today (Tuesday, Nov. 12) we have three more classes. For now we're going to drop the journalism entrepreneurs so we can get to work on business plans. Each week will be dedicated to developing a section of our business plans. Then we will pull them all together in a completed business plan that could be used to begin shopping your business to investors. This will be submitted on the last day of class. Development of each section of the document will be cumulative, i.e., nothing will be final until compiled into the final document. I will give a grade and evaluation of each element of the project as they come in.

Among the things we will work on are:

• Market research
• Analysis of any competition
• Content development, including mission statement and “about” page
• Audience outreach
• Revenue and cost preparation

For next week, I would like you to study some of the sample business plans and primers found on the Web. Here are a few:

From Entrepreneur: http://i.oc.gs/herid
From the Small Business Administration
From Forbes
From our friend Guy Kawasaki

There are many more. Have fun exploring. Take what seems to work for your project. Avoid junk sites like ask.com or yahoo.

I will also attempt to dig up the for-now-elusive Points East business plan that we used to shop our magazine around when we were looking for a second round of investors. Search for other business plans online and explore those as well. We didn’t have time to talk this week about market research and analysis of competition because we had a guest, but for Monday I’d like you to try to develop some ideas and publish them as postings on your blog. One blog will be about market research and the other Analysis of competition.

Part I: Market research.

To some degree, some of you have already done this. Before you can launch a business, you need to know what you are dealing with. At Points East, we needed to know how many people owned boats in New England, which we gleaned from state and federal databases; we needed to know where these boaters were concentrated; we needed to know their demographics — ages, incomes, professions, etc. This was a little harder to quantify. Figures from the most recent census could help. We needed to know how long they kept their boats in the water (only a fool boats in winter New England); we needed to know how much money they spend on boating activities each year. The idea here is to collect all the information that you will need to answer questions from potential advertisers and/or investors.

Your work for next week: Think hard about the kind of market research you need to do and how you will do it. Identify as many of these elements (at least 10) as you can and list them on your blogs. Pick five from the list and do some actual research. Report on the results of this research on your blogs.

Part II: Analysis of competition

In some ways, any time we ask someone to do something we are competing with someone for that person’s time. Sometimes it is obvious. In the case of Points East, we needed to study every other boating publication that might tempt our potential readers; we needed to know how much of the the reader pie and the advertiser pie they were eating, so we’d know how much might be left over for us; we needed to know how much they were charging for subscriptions and for advertising; we needed to poke for vulnerabilities so that we would know how much business we could attract away from them; we needed circulation numbers and methods; we needed to know about content — did they concentrate on any particular boaters or types of boats? 

Every business is different. Yours will have its unique characteristics that will shape all the above questions. You may have more questions. You may have fewer. But again the object is to anticipate as many of the questions your investors and/or advertisers will have as you can and prepare answers for them. You will need these answers for both your business plans and for your pitches.

Your work for next week: Research and identify your competition — everyone and everything that could get between you and your customers. Gather any statistics you can find. Be resourceful. Use your reporting skills. Why are they competition and in what way do they threaten your business? What are you up against? What are you going to do about it? In your blog, write about your competition. 

In each of these cases, you could be creating sections of your business plans, so the more work you do now the easier it will be later to polish them and merge them with the plan. 

This should all be done by class time Monday.

What to do for next week, Nov. 12

Note: This assignment was covered in an email to the class, so if you saw that you don't need to read this.

First, I must humbly and publicly apologize for the numerous late assignments this semester. It's not by plan, but I no it's frustrating. No good excuses.

Second, don't forget that next week's class is on Tuesday at the regular time, due to the Monday holiday.

Third, after we discussed our missing guest on Monday it occurred to me that perhaps because next week's class is actually on a Tuesday, our guest could find time to join us and...bingo! John Christie will be joining us at about 4:30 to talk about a piece of the entrepreneur puzzle we haven't explored yet -- the non-profit. Check out his bio elsewhere in this blog. John, a UNH Journalism grad, has seen it all -- the word side, the business side, and now the side of the entrepreneur. 

In preparation for his visit, please visit the web site of The Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, also known as Pine Tree Watchdog. Take some time to explore the site, particularly the about us page. Read the mission and mission statements and think about what you might write for vision and mission statements for your own site. As one of your blog postings, give each of them a try.  As you explore the site, please also take a look at the kinds of stories that Pine Tree Watchdog is doing. How do those reflect the mission statement? What is the niche these guys are trying to fill? Also, read John's long piece on Gov. Paul LePage. This is a huge effort by John to paint the definitive profile of a controversial governor. It's the lead story on the home page and goes on for several pages. Think about some questions you'd like to ask John.

Fourth, and finally, one thing I'd like have you do in the remaining weeks is profile a journalism entrepreneurs. I have several that I can connect you with, but beforehand I just want to check whether you have your own journalism entrepreneurs you would like to profile. Please drop me an email at andrewmarsters@me.com (my UNH email is out of commission) and let me know.

Our guest next week, Nov. 12

John Christie is the publisher and also the senior reporter for the Center. Christie is a media executive whose 40-year career includes work in four states as a writer, editor, general manager and publisher for newspapers owned by Tribune Co., Dow Jones and Co. and the Seattle Times Co. In June, 2009, he retired after nine years as the president and publisher of Central Maine Newspapers, which publishes two daily papers, the Kennebec Journal and the Morning Sentinel.

He has won numerous awards as a reporter and editor, including twice for best public service reporting in New England from the AP, and he was the primary editor at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel of two Pulitzer Prize finalists. In 2008, a series he edited, “For I was Hungry,” about hunger in Maine, won a number of regional and national awards, including best editorial series from the national Society of Professional Journalists.

Christie was one of the first journalists to serve as a full-time training editor for a newspaper, a position that included coaching writers and editors on their craft and creating and running a news writing program for high school and college minority students.

He is also the editor of four books, including a bestselling book on Hurricane Andrew, which devastated South Florida in 1992. He has spoken on newspaper management and writing in the United States, Europe and South America.

What to do for Monday, Nov. 4

I thought that was a fascinating discussion with Terry Williams on Monday. Between Terry and Meg you should have a very good sense of where the industry is at right now and where it might be going. You might even have a sense of the role you would like to play as you move into the profession. I found both presentations very positive. I’m kind of jealous of you guys just getting started on your careers. Don’t forget too that Meg and Terry are excellent contacts who will go to great lengths to help you out. Don’t hesitate to ask them. I’d still like to talk more about this idea of paid content, which nobody else seems to care much about. I think it’s something that needs to be sorted out since it will obviously face anyone who is publishing online. For Monday, please read this column about paid comment from Forbes magazine. An ad will pop up, so you have to click on “continue to site” in the upper right to get to the column. You could us it for a blog posting and we’ll discuss it in class.

Meanwhile, the saga of the PowerPoint presentations goes on. OK, so we have eight of 11 projects on Dropbox. I think Emily and Katie may be missing, along with someone else. If we can get these all up there, and you can all post your reactions/suggestions/whatever to them, as we were going to do for last Monday, then we’ll be in great shape and ready to move on. So let’s get this taken care of for Monday — all presentations will be in dropbox ASAP; everyone will have posted comments on their blogs on each of the 10 presentations (you don’t have to comment on your own, obviously) again, ASAP; each of you will read ball the comments posted to date about your project; once you have read everything there is to read about your project pitch (some might still be missing, or you need to get going on the last part of this assignment before seeing them all), you will post on your blogs your reaction to what you have seen; finally, you will revise and polish your pitch and bring the revision to class on a thumb drive, ready to make a pitch presentation accompanied by the Powerpoint in class Monday. I know this has been kind of a fiasco due to technical challenges, but let’s see if we can get these pitches behind us and move on.

Our Monday guest had canceled on us, so we’ll focus on the project pitches in class.

I will make this simple, since it's getting late in the week. For Monday, please read in Entrepreneurial Journalism Chapters 1, 2, 3, 6, and 7. Also, I know it's been frustrating, but try and get me copies of your Powerpoint pitches. Check out as many of them as you can. On your blogs, post comments, suggestions, reactions, thoughts, etc. about each of the pitches you see there. Currently there are four pitches up there. Hopefully everyone will be up there soon. You should have received at least one email from Blogger inviting you to join the folder. Here is the link in case you need it.

Our guest next week is Terry Willliams, President and Chief Operating Officer of the Keene Publishing Corp. and a great and generous friend of the UNH Journalism Program. Here is his bio:

Williams came to The Keene Sentinel in April this year with responsibilities for the company’s strategic planning; advertising, online and circulation sales; website and digital media; and new product development.

Prior to joining the Sentinel, Williams was, for nearly 19 years, president and publisher of the Nashua Telegraph based in Hudson. He also held roles as assistant metro editor and managing editor at The Telegraph, where his career stretched nearly 25 years. He also oversaw McLean Communications Inc., owners of New Hampshire Magazine, New Hampshire Home, Parenting New Hampshire and New Hampshire Business Review.

His newspaper work prior to 1988 included time as a reporter and city editor at The Sun of Lowell, MA, and as a reporter at Foster’s Daily Democrat in Dover.

Williams is a past president of the New England Newspaper and Press Association; past president of the former New England Associated Press News Editors Association; a member of the Publisher’s Advisory Board for Stars & Stripes newspaper in Washington, DC; and incoming vice president for the New England First Amendment Coalition.

Williams, who grew up in Springfield, VT, is a 1980 graduate of the University of New Hampshire in Durham with a bachelor’s degree in environmental conservation.

He lives in Amherst, NH, with his wife Julie, a teacher and tutor. They have two grown children, Christopher of Portland, ME, and Heather of Windsor, CT.

Powerpoint pitches for next week

In the reading you did for Monday and in class we talked about "The Pitch." Guy Kawasaki, the author of those handouts, suggests it takes 25 practice pitches to get it down. It was suggested in class that too much practice might lead to a wooden performance, like the first guy on "Shark Tank." Good point. Obviously, you are not going to practice 25 times. But a few wouldn't hurt. "All of these pitches don't have to be to your intended audiences," he writes. "Your co-founders, employees, relatives, friends, and even your dog are fine auditors." And your classmates are too. I'm not a big Powerpointer, but it can be a powerful tool in certain circumstances and remains ubiquitous in the business world.

So, using the suggestions the Kawasaki handout, combined with the thought you have given to the new company you want to start, prepare a 10- or 15-slide slide Powerpoint pitch presentation with voiceover that you can post to your blogs (we have guests for the next three weeks, so we'll have no time to view these in class.) You can pretend that you would be sending these to potential investors. The presentations should be three to five minutes long and can be as wild and creative as you'd like. If you prefer you can do your pitch in a video, or combine video and stills. Title your presentation with a clever three- or four-word mantra. These should be posted by Monday, Oct. 21, at noon at the latest. Otherwise, there are no particular guidelines -- it's your show.

If you don't have the Kawasaki handouts, there are still a few on my office door. See the handouts for more information on mantras if you weren't in class Monday.

(Powerpoint is one of the products in the Microsoft Office software suite. It is available pretty much everywhere if you don't already have it on your own computer. It is very easy to use, and there are plenty of tutorials online. Here is a tutorial on how to do voiceover or narration. Here is another one on embedding the show in your blog posting.)

Our guest next week

Our guest next week will be Meg Heckman. She plans to talk about her recent trip to Chicago to attend the Local Independent Online News Publishers Association summit. She is riding the crest of the wave into the new world of digital reporting and publishing. Meg will join the UNH Journalism Program faculty as a lecturer in January. Here is her bio:

I’m a post-platform journalist with more than a decade of experience covering communities both big and small. I attended the University of New Hampshire and completed fellowships with the Poynter Institute and the New York Times Foundation. I'm currently a graduate student at Northeastern University where I'm researching women's roles in emerging digital news organizations. My recent work has been published by Poynter.org, Editor & Publisher, NetNewsCheck.com, the Columbia Journalism Review and the Center for Digital Ethics & Policy at Loyola University. 

Meg asks that you read this piece that she wrote recently for NetNewsCheck.com before Monday's class.

What to do for next week, Oct. 7

I have never met anyone like John Herman. I trust you enjoyed his visit as much as I did. He is an excellent resource and contact for all of you.

Next week we will start talking about basic business arithmetic. It's not as sexy as Monday's topic, for sure, but it's necessary for anyone who wants to start a business or even to understand how a business works. Every journalist should know this stuff, if only so he or she can report knowledgeably on the business world.

Our guest will be Joe Burke, the fool guy who bought my magazine a few years ago. We were delighted to sell Points East to Joe and his wife, Joanne (who teaches nutrition at UNH), because we knew that with 30 years in the high-tech industry he would run it as a disciplined business rather than a seat-of-the-pants hobby/excuse to spend lots of time on boats. The added bonus is that Joe and Joanne are super-nice people. Bio: Joe worked in operations and marketing capacities for several high tech companies for 30 years before finding his true calling as the publisher of Points East. B.A and M.A. from Boston College, M.B.A. from Babson.

To prepare you for Joe's visit, I have assembled a reading and study list for you. This is the simplest, kindest explanation of business accounting principles I could find. Please go through each one carefully and stick with it until you understand the concepts. If you don't, it will be very hard to follow Joe's presentation. This all comes from the Web site "Understanding accounting."
Feel free to read all the sections on this site, but again be sure to read and understand the following sections. We'll do a very quick quiz on some of the key concepts and terminology on Monday.

Glossary
Balance Sheets
Revenue and Expense
Bases of Accounting
Receivables and Payables
Fixed assets and depreciation
Statement Preparation
Goodwill

And don't forget your blog postings. The frustrations and challenges of understanding business accounting may provide some inspiration. You could also write about your reactions to John's visit.

Meet our Monday guest

Our class guest Monday is John Herman. You may have met him during one of his visits to UNH. John is a very interesting character, to say the least. He does many things and he does them all well. "Artist, teacher, writer, web adventurer," he calls himself on his website. Oh, and actor. And director. And producer. And very good friend of the UNH Journalism Program.

But one of his most remarkable qualities has been his ability to brand himself through intensive use of social media. As an entrepreneur, that is exactly what you need to do and what you need to be thinking of all the time -- every time you tweet, every time you post on Facebook, every blog you create. It is a constant process that requires constant attention, and that's what John is going to help us with.

I'm looking forward to it. I know you will enjoy it.

What to do for next week, Class #5, Sept. 30

Next week is class #5. That puts us one-third of the way through the course. Yesterday we discussed -- or attempted to discuss -- ideas for the new ventures you will be creating this semester. Clearly some of you have thought a lot about this and are energized. Others appear not to have found a focus yet. We need to all get on the same page before any more time goes by. This is idea week. Through your reading and blogging, we will firm up your idea. Please remember that your idea/project/product must have some connection to journalism.

For next week, before doing anything, read chapters 9-12 in Newsonomics (you should already have read Chapter 11, actually) and Chapter 8 in Entrepreneurial Journalism.

You should also have already read Chapter 5 of the Briggs book. Review it if you need to. In it, Briggs says, "...the idea alone is never enough. Ideas become sustainable only when they are transformed into a product or business -- and that's a constant process of development, marketing and improvement." So let's begin that process. Here's what to do:

1. State your project idea as concisely and precisely as possible. Keep it very focused. A sentence or two should do. Post this to your blog.

2. Socialize your idea. Run it by three people who are not hotshot business people -- just regular people who might someday become your customers. Friends, strangers, parents, uncles, aunts, neighbors -- doesn't matter as long as they will give you honest answers. Take notes on their responses so that you can quote them exactly later on. You could also record their responses or even videotape them. Add these responses in any creative way to your blog. Identify the three people by name, age, gender, and profession. For those of you who know multimedia, it might be fun to do it in a video or slide show that you can upload to your blog.

3. Copy and paste the following Q & A to your blog and answer the questions as thoroughly as you can:

Question: I have read your idea and I would like to understand a little more about it. What need does this idea fill? Is this a need that you have yourself? Who would share this need?

Answer: 

Q: At this point you should have some idea of who the average user of your product will be. What is the profile of that person?

A:

Q: Who wants this product that you intend to develop?

A:

Q: What problem or need are you satisfying for your customers? (Remember, the customers aren't necessarily the people who will be using your product. For example, television audiences aren't customers unless they pay for the product, as in HBO. The customers are advertisers.)

A:

Q: Who wants this product?

A: 

Q: We all have to live. Where is the money in this product?

A:

Q: You are a journalist. Where is the journalism in this product?

A:

Q: We've read that passion is key to success of a new venture. Money alone will not sustain it. So where is the passion in your product?

This should all be done by class time next week so that we can look at them on the big screen.

Assignment for next week, Class #4, Sept. 23

1. Reading: Chapters 4 and 5 in Entrepreneurial Journalism; Chapter 11 in Newsonomics; and Ken Doctor's story on the runway that Jeff Bezos and other dot.commers are building for legacy media. As I mentioned in class, the future of journalism is kind of splitting into two tiers: existing media companies re-thinking their strategies, and individual journalist entrepreneurs trying to find a niche for themselves. The reading this week is more about the existing media reinventing themselves. These should give you fodder for some blogging. Remember, four blogs a week.

2. Most of you have identified a non-journalism (or could be a journalist) entrepreneur you would like to profile. Most of them are accessible, but one or two of you chose big shots who probably won't give you the time of day unless you have some inside connection. Those people will have to come up with someone new or pull off a miracle. I would like you to do a 600-word Q & A (question and answer) with this person or with another entrepreneur. This should be an in-person or over-the-phone interview. Obviously you are the Questioner and your entrepreneur is the Answerer and it's set up like this:

Question: What has been the most difficult part of becoming an entrepreneur?

Answer: Eating. Or not eating. It never seems there is enough money around and what does come in goes right back into the business. But as my appetite grows, so does the business, so I think we will reach a point where I'm gaining weight and the company is gaining customers and everyone is happy. But I must admit I have a lot of sleepless nights thinking about how far off that time is.

Question: What's your worst nightmare? etc.

The technique is to ask short, snappy, concrete, open-ended questions that elicit long answers. You can then edit those answers as you like as long as you do not change the meaning. Most of your questions should somehow involve this person's experience as an entrepreneur. They should be probing and insightful. Usually you will make up most of the questions beforehand, but it should read like a conversation. These are extended versions of the Q & A interviews in Ken Doctor's book. These should be on your blogs by class time Monday.

3. Start thinking about what you would like to do for a project this semester. This should be some kind of journalism-related venture, as we discussed in class. In one of your blogs, explain what it is you would like to do.

To do for next week, Sept. 16, Class #3

1. Read Chapter 4 of Entrepreneurial Journalism.

You will see on the class schedule that you are also to identify two entrepreneurs. We're not there yet, so ignore that. But I would like you to identify and briefly profile for one of your blog entries an entrepreneur from any field. Just remember this needs to be an entrepreneur -- not someone who has signed on to an existing company, and not someone who has bought a business, and not someone who is opening a plumbing business or a used car lot. That's not entrepreneurship because the venture is not unique or original of necessarily risky or innovative. It will be someone like the razor blade guy, or whoever set up Zipcar, or something smaller, like a homemade cupcake van, or an app, or a website that sells beer glasses from every college in the world. There are several student entrepreneurs on campus. Ask around. Ask your parents. Ask your parents to ask their friends. Look in Linkedin. When you have found someone, which will be before the next class, contact the person and post a 100-word profile of this person on your blog. If you're not sure the person is appropriate, shoot me an email and I'll let you know.

3. You should do three other blog entries prior to class on whatever you choose, for a total of four for the week. Those should be 150 words or so. Ideas: the use of social networking to cover the situation in Syria; some cool websites you have found relating to entrepreneurial journalism; your thoughts about the complexity of opening something as simple as a lemonade stand; how your news habits are changing; an idea blog.

4. Wrap up the lemonade stand project. To do so, you and your team need to come up with the following.

Assume the lemonade stand will be open for 6 hours a day for 5 days. Figure out how many cups of lemonade you think you can sell in that amount of time and how much each cup will cost.

Based on the previous calculation, create a detailed list of all your expenses -- lemons, cups, sugar, straws, electricity, equipment such as heating pots, cart, etc.

Finally make a simple profit and loss statement. Here's an example.

Our lemonade stand

A simple profit and loss statement

Revenues (money coming in)

            Net sales:                                    $100 (total of all cups sold at your price)

            Other:

Total revenue:                                    $100

Expenses (money going out, from your detailed list)

            Salaries                                    $10

            Utilities                                    $2

            Supplies                                    $50

            Debt paydown                        $10 (you borrowed $500 from me)

Total operating

Expenses:                                                $72

Net Income/loss:                                    $28 (if this is a loss, put it in parentheses)

Print this and your detailed expense list and bring to class.

Get famous first, then worry about the money

Check out this college kid, who has made a name for himself photographing Republican politicians. He's not worried about money yet, just college credit. But anytime he wants, he's got a profession to slip into.

Info for Boston Globe digital subscription

As promised, here's the scoop on the Globe, which is required reading. These online subscriptions are dirt cheap for a really great paper.

Go to:  BostonGlobe.com/UNH and see how it works.

Problems? Contact:

David Granai

Consumer Sales; Marketing Manager

The Boston Globe

T 617-929-2708

C 617-592-4617

More problems? Email me at marsters@unh.edu.

What is an entrepreneur?

Entrepreneurship has been defined as the ability to apply a set of behaviors, attitudes, and skills to a successful business venture (Herrmann, 2010). Lazear (2003) argues that an entrepreneur must be competent in a wide range of skills, rather than a specialist. Research also suggests that the motivation for launching a company is not merely financial, but also emotional (Wadhwa, Aggarwal, Holly, & Salkever, 2009). Gibb (2005) proposes an educational framework of entrepreneurial learning outcomes that identifies 12 key entrepreneurial capacities: opportunity seeking, initiative taking, ownership of a development, commitment to see things through, personal locus of control, intuitive decision making with limited information, networking capacity, strategic thinking, negotiation capacity, selling/persuasive capacity, achievement orientation, and incremental risk taking.

Mark Berkey-Gerard, "From Student Journalists to Local News Entrepreneurs:

A Case Study of Technically Media"

For our next class, Sept. 9

Create a new blog in Blogger. Create Twitter,  Facebook and Google+ accounts and connect to relevant contributors (try searching for "Entrepreneurial Journalism" on Google -- you will come up with plenty of people you should be following. There are more listed in various places on this blog.) Reading: Chapters 1 through 4, “Newsonomics” and Chapters 1-3, “Entrepreneurial Journalism.” Write 4 blogs each week, 150-250 words. Blogging ideas: What is journalism right now, today, and how did we get here? What does news look like on the Internet? What is your news diet? Interview five people about their news diets. What did you find? Explore niemanworld.org and talk about what you learn. Definitely read the Justin Ellis piece on journalism schools and blog about that. Find a Patch.com editor and interview that person.Think of 10 original ideas to save journalism and blog about those in one blog. Cultivate your new identity as a thinker, an innovator, a doer of great things. I may throw some other stuff your way, so pay attention to his blog.

Examples of what entrepreneurial journalists are doing

Blogs

Ashley Mill Tyte on challenges of being a female journalist

http://c.oc.gs/kismow

Media Nation, Dan Kennedy

http://www.dankennedy.net/

Micro sites

NJ Spotlight

http://www.njspotlight.com/

West Seattle Blog

http://westseattleblog.com/

VT Digger

http://vtdigger.org/

New Haven Independent

http://www.newhavenindependent.org/

(Melissa Bailey, contact)

Small sites

The Texas Tribune

http://www.texastribune.org/

Voice of San Diego

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/

Medium sites

Gotham Gazette

http://www.gothamgazette.com/

Large sites

Boston.com Metro Desk

http://www.boston.com/MetroDesk

Pro Publica

http://www.propublica.org/

Events and organizations

Online News Association

http://ona12.journalists.org/

Investigative

California Watch

http://californiawatch.org/

New England Center for Investigative Reporting

http://necir-bu.org/

Social Media

Twitter

Boston Media Tweters

http://boston-media-tweeters.wikispaces.com/