Thinking of a journalism start-up? Here’s a checklist

If the future of journalism is indeed entrepreneurial, we have to start thinking with a business hat on.

It’s a big change in mentality for some journalists. I’ve been to several events and meetings recently where hacks have insisted people will have to pay for news “because journalists have to eat”.

This is upside-down thinking. People don’t buy iPhones because Steve Jobs needs to eat. They buy them because they are an innovative product which satisfies a demand people are willing to pay for.

And so it must be if journalists are to be entrepreneurs. I’ve put together a list of criteria a new business idea might need to satisfy to see it become successful. I don’t think a successful business will need to satisfy all of them, or maybe even 50%. But ignoring these questions means another financial failure…

News start-up checklist

1. Is it a new idea?

2. Does it have a defined target audience?

3. Does it provide niche (i.e. hyperlocal) content?

4. Does it satisfy a desire that is not being fulfilled by someone else?

5. Or does it do something better (faster, cheaper, more effectively) than someone else?

6. Does it actually have income potential, or will it rely on funding?

7. Does it use the power of crowd-sourcing/community?

8. Would it be fulfilling for journalists to work for?

9. Does it publish/exist on more than one platform?

10. If it has content, is it sharable?

11. Does it require a lot of money to run?

12. Does it have boot-strapping potential?

13. Does it scale?

14. Does it fulfill a public service?

15. Is it a legally sound idea? What about copyright?

16. Would it appeal to venture capitalists, angel investors?

17. And…does it have a cool name?

That’s what I’ve come up with so far. I think if you answer these questions at the early stages, you’ll have a greater chance of your start up succeeding. What it says is a sustainable business – journalism or otherwise – begins with a solid well-defined customer base.

You need to know who these customers are, and be really clear about why you are providing something they can’t get elsewhere. Innocent Smoothies was begun by three British students in 1999 who realised there was a demand for healthy fruit smoothies, which wasn’t being satisfied by anyone else. It now has a revenue of £128m.

US start-up “incubator” Y-Combinator is looking for new media business ideas which embrace this form of thinking:

What would a content site look like if you started from how to make money—as print media once did—instead of taking a particular form of journalism as a given and treating how to make money from it as an afterthought?

Add more to the list in the comments below if you have any. And while you’re here, read the comments of one reader on an earlier blog entry. Some interesting criticism of the notion journalism is entrepreneurial at all…

What should we teach tomorrow’s Journalism students?

I was invited yesterday to join other journalism lecturers from Kingston University and advise them about the future of journalism.

Wisely, they’re getting together now to think about what the media landscape might look like in five years time, and working out how to adjust their teaching accordingly.

We went through lots of different scenarios, and I highlighted some of the following, which I think will be important skills for the J-students of the future:

Entrepreneurial skills

Jeff Jarvis, Hannah Waldram and others have already written much more about this, and I put myself firmly in this camp. Jarvis says it plainly: “The future of news is entrepreneurial.”

The monetisation of journalism will come from journalists, young or otherwise, launching their own enterprises serving a demand from a specific audience. It might be hyperlocal, or it might be niche.

But to achieve this, students will need to be taught these business basics: how to launch a start-up, how to manage money, where to get investment. And even: what is a good business idea?

The future media landscape won’t consist of a few big giants, but many, far smaller, enterprises. And tomorrow’s journalists must be prepared for this.

Social-network skills

Next, I pushed journalism students need to be social-media mavens. It is not good enough to be aware of blogs and Twitter. Or even to have a rarely used account. Journalism students must be fully immersed in these platforms (and what follows them).

They need to understand how they can create a community around a specific topic.

They must have experienced the exhilarating feeling of getting a spike in blog readers when they publish good content.

And they must know how social media markets their work.

New technical skills

I’m talking video shooting and editing, basic photography and photo editing and website design. HTML and CSS would be ideal. Simply because other journalists will have these skills – and you can’t afford to be left behind.

Old journo skills

And here I mean good writing, good storytelling. We talked a lot about what separates a journalist from a citizen journalist. I think the answer is the ability to identify news, to source it, to find people…and to publish it into good content.

…and the drive

You can’t teach this to kids, but you can try to instill some enthusiasm. It is no longer good enough (in any walk of life, save I dunno, chemistry, engineering etc) to walk into a degree and hope to walk into a job. That attitude will earn you a McDonald’s badge and not much else. Students themselves must crave success, and as Hannah Waldram puts it: “get-up-and-go to take them through the difficulties and pressures of doing something on their own…”

The fact journalism course are looking to the future now is a small, but important step in the right direction. What skills would you put on the curriculum?

Disclaimer: I am a part-time lecturer in Video & Photojournalism at Kingston University.

Journalism posts: Summary III

Time for another quick recap on the journalism posts on here since my last round-up in August.

Future of  Journalism

The future of journalism: in vs out

Thinking like a startup for journalists

Why I’m glad Murdoch’s charging for content

What can next generation journalists learn from Les Paul?

Taking the plunge

Is there an Atlantic divide in journalism?

Wanna be a journalist?

Can journalism save the environment?

What Simon Cowell can teach you about the future of news

Radio looks to the future

Multimedia Journalism

“For people to act, they must truly believe”

5 rules for multimedia journalists to break (and 5 they can’t)

Getting to know The GIMP (photo-editing software)

5 reasons why UK newspapers still don’t get multimedia

How to launch your own Indie-Journalism site

A snapshot of how video journalism should be

War reporting – on crack

One easy step to simplify your storytelling

Multimedia Journalism on the frontline

The 6×6 series

Click here for all the 6×6 articles and the free ebook.

 

Multimedia Journalism on the frontline

I spent an afternoon at the Canon expo in London yesterday, a showcase for the latest photography kit, including some very sexy looking XL H1s and of course the 5D Mark II.

Hidden among the photo-geekery was photojournalist turned multimedia war reporter John D McHugh.

He was there to speak about his experiences reporting from Afghanistan between 2006-8, during which time he moved from producing just photographs, to audio slideshows and even full films.

He also experienced several fire fights, which he described as “fucking insane” and was even shot by insurgents for his trouble.

John D McHugh

“The power of the still image is still unsurpassed” he says, although he admits he loves the fact he now has lots of different ways to tell a story.

His aim is not to copy television though, rather to “emulate the newspaper tradition”, using multimedia to show more and give more understanding to a story.

But it is not without its challenges. He admitted it is difficult to juggle his SLR with a video camera and dictaphone – something I can totally relate to from my short time filming in Iraq earlier this year. For me the fear was always missing a good shot because I’m busy with something else, something John has just got used to.

“I’ve missed photos, sure” he says, “but then I’ve always missed photographs in my whole career. If I was going to write a book, I always said it was going to be called ‘Photos I Didn’t Take.”"

He says each missed photograph is seared in his memory.

“This is never going to be ideal, but it’s the world we’re in.”

A talented, brave and determined photojournalist, John is very much on the frontline, both militarily, and inside the industry.

Get your copy of 6×6: advice for multimedia journalists

My e-book 6×6: advice for multimedia journalists is now available for download.

I put it together after the popularity of the blog series of the same name back in August. It sums up the advice in that series and updates it. It’s also packed with bonus tips which you won’t find in the series itself, plus a page of resources and links to help you on your way.

The six chapters cover the technical skills, like video, audio & storytelling, plus the non-technical skills, like branding & business.

Best of all, this 32 page e-book is 100% free – you won’t need to register or anything – just click on the big download button below to get it!

And please hit me with feedback, good or bad. What did it miss out? What would you put in?

New book: basic skills for the multimedia journalist

If you found the 6×6 series back in August there’s a treat in store for you next week.

I’ve wrapped the blogs up,  tidied them up, corrected & updated them and put them into 1 handy ebook for you to download and take home. It means you have have an all-in-one desktop reference to giving your multimedia journalism more spark, and getting in the entrepreneurial mindset.

Chapters include: video, audio, storytelling and branding.

It’ll be available from Monday, it’s 100% free and there’s no registration or anything. Just click on the button and you’ll be able to download it outright.

I’ve got plans for more guides of this kind in the pipeline, so any feedback will be much appreciated.

See you Monday!

The figure of 8: simplify your storytelling

Teaching my class on Video & Photo Journalism at Kingston University last week, I introduced my students to the concept of the Figure of Eight.

It’s a handy storytelling tool I was taught when I trained to be a journalist, and I’ve always kept it in mind when I need to put a story together in a rush. It is a tool for broadcast journalists, but applies to newspaper journalists working with video too.

The Print Way

Newspaper journalists are usually told to arrange their facts in the paradigm of the inverted pyramid, still regarded as the best way to display text information. You put all the important information right at the top and work your way down from there.

It was invented around the time of the telegraph message, when you had limited space to get lots of information down.

Many newspaper journalists make the mistake of trying to fit this way of sorting information into their video and audio. It doesn’t work. Why? Because multimedia exists differently.

The ‘Broadcast’ Way

Television & Radio – and now video & audio are temporal media. They exist in time. We don’t talk about TV news reports in terms of word counts. We talk about them in terms of time. Time is a tricky dimension because it means all your information has to be laid out in a linear fashion, and usually your audience has only one chance to watch your piece.

Compare that to newspapers, where the reader can skip ahead, or re-read bits they didn’t understand.

Because of it’s unique time-governed nature, broadcast journalists developed a new framework for organising their facts: introducing the Figure of Eight.

The Figure of Eight

Broken down it simply means this:

1. Start your multimedia piece in the present: what’s just happened? What’s the latest?
2. Then take them backwards and tell them the past: what’s the context? How did we get here? What’s already happened?
3. Then, finally, loop back over and tell them the future: what’s going to happen next?

This method ticks all the boxes for getting your facts out: it gives them the who-what-where-when-why, fills in the context, and gives us an idea of what it all means by suggesting what will happen next.

A Classic Example

Say you’re producing a video piece about a court case, for which the verdict has just been announced. You start your piece by saying what’s just happened:

Joe Bloggs has been found guilty of killing his wife in a domestic row. After a trial which has gripped the country, the father of three walked into the dock just an hour ago to hear his fate…etc…

Then you tell us the background – take us back to the history of the story.

This tragic case started a year ago when police were called to the Bloggs family home in London.  They found Jane Bloggs dead with a knife in her chest. After a man hunt lasting three months, her husband Joe was arrested in April…etc…

Then to finish off – a quick line on what’ll happen next.

Bloggs will return to the Old Bailey tomorrow where he’ll be sentenced. The Judge has warned him to expect a long jail term…etc.

That way, we’ve covered the bones of the story, in a logical fashion.

It’s a great technique for two reasons: it organises the information for you so you don’t have to; and it is perfect for a temporal medium like video.

…wait! There’s more!

If you found my 6×6 series for multimedia journalists useful, from Monday you’ll be able to download it all in one handy (free) ebook. More details on the way!

War reporting – on crack

Here’s  a snippet of war reporting…as you’ve probably never seen it before:

Danfung Dennis‘ upcoming online feature Battle for Hearts & Minds resembles the sort of thing Michael Bay might have put together if he’d decided to become a journalist rather than a movie director.

First of all, his access is quite extraordinary: the trailer suggests he’s been given some quite rare access to frontline troops, and allowed to film and publish what he wants, without censorship. Presuming he had an attached media-ops officer with him, they seemed not to mind him running ahead of advancing troops with a glidecam.

Secondly, visually it is extremely impressive. It’s a great example of the elegance the Canon 5D Mk II allows. The DSLR Newshooter blog has published an interview with Dennis in which he explains his rig in more detail:

I used a Sennheiser ME- 66 shotgun mic and G2 wireless system running into a Beachtek DXA-2s (I’ve since upgraded to a Juicedlink CX-231 with the Magic Lantern hack) which converts professional XLR mics into a minijack suitable for the 5D. I built custom aluminum ‘wings’ in a workshop to hold this audio setup…

I mounted my whole system onto a Glidecam 2000 HD with custom rubber pads on the mount and a foam ear plug to suppress the vibration of the the lens.

The combination of the 5D Mk II with the Glidecam is quite effective – and quite affordable too.

Third, no doubt the storytelling will pack a punch too…but what kind of story will this tell of the war in Afghanistan? Although we can only go on the trailer at this point, does it glorify war? Is that something journalists should do?

The use of the music in this trailer, if anything else, seems to serve that purpose.

I know from my own experiences of being embedded, I felt a pressure within myself not to glamourise conflict, or perpetuate The Old Lie, as gung-ho as it can be sometimes.

Some writings over at Duckrabbit

Multimedia chums Duckrabbit have been in Bangladesh this month reporting on the effects of climate change. While they’ve been away I, and some other journalists, have been filling in on their popular blog.

Here’s a few of the posts I’ve written over there, mostly highlighting and critiquing various multimedia journalism projects:

“Hidden Hunger“, 11th September

“Behind the Veil“, 23rd September

“Black Saturday“, 28th September

A snapshot of how video journalism should be

A big hats off to US journalist Paul Balcerak, who has found and posted two examples of what he calls artistic video journalism.

What they are, are two examples of how video journalism ought to be, if we can persuade VJs and newsrooms the world over to drop their book of TV conventions, put down the voice-over microphone and engage some creative juices.

The first, tells the story of a man trapped in a lift in a New York skyscraper. Before you watch it, imagine how it might look as a human interest piece on your local news programme.

FOOTAGE FROM INSIDE LIFT

REPORTER VO: “Nicholas White got more than he bargained for when he went for a smoke break last Friday evening”

WHITE, ON SCREEN: “I told my colleagues I was going for a cigarette break and I’d be back in five minutes.”

REPORTER VO: “But it became the longest cigarette break in history when the express elevator Nick was in broke down somewhere between the 30th and 43rd floor.”

REPORTER PIECE TO CAMERA, OUTSIDE BUILDING: “It began a 40 hour ordeal for Nicholas…” etc. etc.

We might also expect to hear from the manager of the building, defending lift safety, and if the reporter’s got more space to fill, some kind of medical expert about what happens to the body after 40 hours with no food or water.

All very….meh.

Now watch this:

That’s how the New Yorker ran it on their website. No reporter. No voice over narration. No interviews.

But which one tells the story? Which one gives you even the slightest inkling of the fear, boredom, desperation, despair you must feel being stuck in a lift for 40 hours?

The second piece was produced at Pnwlocalnews.com:

But there’s lots to be said about it, the first being I watched the whole thing through, even though it was about transportation policy in a US state thousands of miles away.

• It uses vox pops, not to tell us how ‘disgusting’ something else or how ‘the government need to sort it out’; instead they’re used to share how people commute
• It favours captions with artistic b-roll over droning voice over
• Some footage is not full frame
• It is beautifully shot with excellent use of depth-of-field/focus, which gives the story an extra quality

On the other side I’m sure you noticed the poor quality of the sound in the interviews, and I felt it was a bit slow in places, but otherwise this is storytelling on another level.

So what can we learn from this?

The way news is gathered is changing. So is the way it is funded. And the way it is delivered. But it is also vital the way news looks changes too. It would be a crying shame if, after the dust of the digital revolution settles, we are still watching formulaic 90 second packages fronted by a reporter.

Now is the time to make sure that doesn’t happen: video journalists need to let go of the rule book and think freely – and let storytelling take the lead.

The last word is best left to Paul:

The industry is going through a complete and utter reformation—and a lot of us aren’t going to make it. Most of us who do will be the ones who innovate, who experiment—who go against everything we’ve been ever been told about journalism.