Thinking of going entrepreneurial? Then you should go to news:rewired
Journalism.co.uk’s up and coming event news:rewired in January 2010 looks like it’s going to be a promising platform to debate an entrepreneurial future for journalism.
I’ve written an article for the event, looking at three ways for journalists to find ideas for news startups, and in particular, I argue:
[idea for new businesses] must start in the market. They must start with a problem the market has, which you can fix; a service the market needs, which you can offer; a product the market wants, which you can produce.
Entrepreneur Mike Southon asks “where’s the pain?” and builds a business idea from there: is there something people moan about having to do or not being there?
If you don’t start with the market, and the pain it has, you risk peddling a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.
You can read the rest of my article here. Meanwhile, the News:rewired site also has profiles of five UK journalist/entrepreneurs, and 10 tips for would-be journalism entrepreneurs; the event itself looks like it’ll be a promising hotbed of business ideas and debate.
I’ll be speaking at news:rewired on the 14th January 2010, alongside a host of interesting journalists on the front line of the digital revolution. You can get tickets from the news: rewired website.
In other news
I’ve popped up in Newsleader’s “Talkie Awards” for 2009, a great roundup of the best of radio in the last year; and the 2nd Future of News Meetup Group has been announced for London on the 20th January 2010.
Idea 005: the digital magazine
In Ideas for the Future of News I’m collecting positive, tangible, practicle examples of business models, products and content which could pave the future.
To catch up on previous ideas, head to the Ideas for the Future of News page.
Idea 005: Mag+ concept
By: Berg London and Bonnier R&D
Magazines have a value above newspapers: people don’t just read the words, they buy them for the amazing photographs, lifestyle statements, and sometimes just because it looks great on the coffee table.
Magazines will be revolutionised by technology – but in a really positive way. For proof, see the work of Berg London and Bonnier R&D.
They’ve had a really good think about how future e-readers (like the much mooted Apple Tablet) could work with magazines – and crucially they have started with the benefits of magazines and worked from there. As the creaters explain:
“The concept aims to capture the essence of magazine reading which people have been enjoying for decades: an engaging and unique reader experience in which high quality writing and stunning imagery build up immersive stories.”
They’ve looked not at the e-readers themselves, but how magazine layouts should adapt to them. They have created, I think, a very enjoyable reading experience, which will add huge value to magazines.
“We don’t want to interrupt the core reading experience,” says Jack Shulze from Berg, “we’re very keen to make sure the UI doesn’t get in the way of the experience – it’s not covered in buttons.”
It’s 8 minutes long, but I highly recommend you watch this video, a demo of Mag+ in action.
A business model?
Could the e-reader provide a financial saviour for magazines? In short, yes. For two reasons: firstly, as I mentioned they add extra value to the magazine itself. The experience of scrolling through pages on a touch screen is so enjoyable, people may buy mags just for that.
And more importantly people will pay to download an electronic magazine and experience it on these e-readers. They won’t pay to view the content on a website.
Berg London and Bonnier R&D’s ideas are very new, but magazine owners should waste no time in chasing this concept and making it a reality. Newspapers too need to wake up to the possibilities and ask how the Mag+ concept could help them.
Their success though depends on the readers themselves. Who will make them and how much will they cost? Magazines will need to think about subscription models again, but that shouldn’t be too hard as that’s how many magazines make money anyway. And how will you download the content? Will it take long?
But these creases will no doubt be ironed out over the next two to three years.
As well as keeping current magazines afloat, they could also inspire a new generation of magazines, and most importantly keep journalists in business doing what they do best: writing great content and presenting it with great designs and pictures.
10 trends in journalism in 2010
It’s that time of year again…
After a turbulent year in the industry, I’ve had a good think and put together my top 10 trends for journalism for 2010, wrapped in a big shiny positive outlook. But rather than roll out another list, I thought I’d be a bit different and crack out some video. Enjoy!
And is there anything I’ve missed? Add it in the comments box!
The power of data visualisation…
…even when the data is made up!
I posted a couple of weeks back some videos which make fantastic use of text on screen.
Well here’s another. Watch it, and you’ll learn about the power and possibilities of infographics…and a little bit about life itself:
Hattip: ISO50
A wealth of journalism inspiration from New York
I’m sure most readers of this blog also follow US new media giant Jeff Jarvis’ blog over at Buzz Machine.
Jeff was telling us the future of journalism is entrepreneurial before anyone had really considered it and Buzz Machine is a hive of interesting writing. Today Jeff posted the results of an Entrepreneurial Journalism class where his CUNY students have been pitching their own business ideas.
For obvious reasons he’s not giving much away, but what he did reveal about the pitches that won some development cash (and those that didn’t) offers some excellent inspiration and ideas to the rest of us:
The four ideas that won some money from the McCormick Foundation are (emphasis mine)
- a platform for news assignments
- a mobile sports application
- a creative, algorithmic answer to filter failure
- and ClosetTour a new media site dedicated to fashion
And those that didn’t:
- a specialised womens travel service
- a specialised local real estate (property) service
- a cool food idea
- 2 business-to-business ideas
- a hyperlocal idea
- a service for NGOs
- a commercial service for NGOs
What’s great is the huge variety of ideas – covering news, fashion, food, sport. What’s more as Jeff notes:
A few were built around the need not just to create content but to curate it. Most are highly targeted. Some saw the potential in specialised local services. Some saw the need to go mobile to service the public. Some are international. Some are multimedia. A few saw the need to make news fun, others to make news useful.
And Jeff stressed the need for every business to cut a profit in order to survive. We must be capitalist about it now.
Anyone outside of CUNY or the US should read this and take inspiration. Although Jeff’s descriptions are necessarily vague, use them to fuel your own ideas and thoughts for entrepreneurial models. Think about the importance of serving a market, having a niche, finding a gap in the market – and being able to sum up your business in an elevator pitch.
Earlier today a friend showed me plans for an exciting news business in the North of England, which I can’t say anything about at the moment. But all this adds strength to my conviction that, if 2009 was the year of “great media collapse” then 2010 will be the year it rises from the ashes.
Talking the future of news
This week we held the first Future Of News Meetup in London.

A small but interesting mix of people turned up: journalism students, academics, publishers, photojournalists, news producers and seasoned hacks: a small fraction of the 140 people who have joined the group so far.
Although it was a casual first meeting, conversation soon turned to the crisis in journalism and the digital revolution, with paywalls and citizen journalism being thrashed out by the bar.
I set the group up in November, with the idea of bringing together journalists, academics, students and entrepreneurs to a free, regular forum to talk about new ideas which will define the future of news.
You can read more about it here, and if you’d like to join and come to more formal meetings in 2010 sign up here.

Photographs: Megumi Waters
Idea 004: the rise of the blogazine
In this series I’m compiling a list of creative, tangible, practical ideas for journalism which will emerge from the digital revolution. If you have any suggestions for future features, contact me. Previous entries include:
002: students as investigators
Idea: Powering a Green Planet
By: Mark Z Jacobson, Mark A Delluci & Scientific American
An apt subject as the COP15 meeting gets underway in Copenhagen this week. Powering A Green Planet, featured in the Scientific American in November, explains a radical idea on how to stop global warming, put forward by two scientists.
They reckon if we embraced renewable energy head on, we could power the planet on 100% clean energy, in just 20 years. That’s a bit better than the current targets, right?

It’s an enjoyable, interesting and convincing read. But let’s get down to the future of journalism nitty-gritty.
The Scientific American utilised multimedia platform Flyp to produce the piece. It is arranged and designed as an attractive magazine, so you can literally turn the page, with lots of video, graphics and text moving on the screen.
It is beautifully designed, with lots of space on the page. Crucially, this piece never feels too cluttered: it always feels like there’s just enough information on the page…but not too much.
It’s interactive too, with lots of buttons to click on, video to watch and audio to hear. The complicated science bit is explained in colourful graphics.
This is challenging scientific information made digestible and accessible. And there is value for the consumer in this too, perhaps one they’d pay for.
The blogazine
The idea of the interactive magazine is still in the embryonic stages. It has a blog counterpart too, the blog-azine, a small but growing trend of bloggers who chose to make every single blog entry a unique design masterpiece, tailored to the particular subject of the blog.
For example, British web designer Gregory Wood designs each blog post individually, creating stunning pages like this:
In a recent feature, Smashing Magazine said blogazines were great because they stopped you:
“Slipping into the habit of typing up your thoughts and clicking “Post,” without thinking about the layout of each article… By taking a little extra time for the art of blogging, your creativity will increase with your efforts”
but also admitted:
“…building a custom layout requires some experience with CSS and HTML…style borrows many elements from print design, anyone who has worked only in Web design may find it difficult to change their way of thinking. Rules of typography and white space, for example, may throw you off. But practice makes perfect, and an endless supply of inspiration can be found in creative magazines.”
A business model?
This is a surprisingly new way of delivering content. It’s amazing isn’t it, that this far into the web 2.0 world, this far since the development of flash, CSS, J-Query and easy to deliver multimedia, 98% of online news is delivered just like this blog: there’s a title, some text, if you’re lucky- a picture or some video embedded. Which leads us to the big question: can making your content stand out make any money?
This has yet to be proved, but I really think it has potential….but its future lies in mobile. In the advent of the Kindle and other OLED readers these interactive experiences could really kick off, because they gain so much value from a touch screen. Imagine being able to sit on the subway with a newly downloaded copy of your favourite magazine, in exciting interactive form! You can flip the pages, click to watch video, audio and drag graphics around.
And if they’re produced as well as the Scientific American, your sleepy commuter eyes won’t skip over long drawn out paragraphs of text, because it would have been made so accessible.
In the meantime there could be room for an ambitious start-up willing to combine magazine design with innovative content. Again if it looks like nothing else on the internet it could soon grow an audience.
This technical sublime I firmly believe the consumer will pay for. But it relies on a visual sublime too – it has to look good. Style over substance? Maybe.
The sooner designers and journalists start talking to each other, the better.









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