Entrepreneurial Journalism at the University of New Hampshire

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

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.

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

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.

Monday, September 9, 2013

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.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

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.

Monday, August 26, 2013

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.