Future of News Bootcamp: a market for traditional reportage?

The first ever Future of News Business Bootcamp took place in London last night – 7 journalists, several bottles of wine and one problem: how to make money in journalism.

Each bootcamp will focus on a different area of journalism, and this inaugural event had possibly the biggest challenge of all – how to create a business around human rights & development reporting – that vitally important, but until now, expensive and unprofitable part of journalism.

In the room were half a dozen journalists, pretty much all of whom were interested in being able to travel to different parts of the world and uncover human rights abuses and report on development issues – and get paid to do it. And we were going to do something which has never really been tried in this way before – to take an entrepreneurial mindset and approach to business, and transplant it onto journalism.

Not many journalists dare to stray into this territory, more often than not, simply because they don’t have much entrepreneurial nouse (or don’t think they do). Not us! We bravely strolled into this area to see what sticks.

Product or Service?

Almost all businesses can be divided into two categories – those which provide a product, and those which provide a service. A product is an item you can ship and sell; a service is selling your own time, expertise or knowledge. We looked at both options. Under service, we came up with ideas such as a business which chases every penny of UK development money around the world to check it’s being spent properly; we also looked at providing a reporting service for businesses with Corporate Social Responsibility policies and half a dozen other ideas.

The idea of a product got the group more excited. Is there a gap for a decent human rights reportage magazine? The room felt there was, but it would need to be a massive departure from what little there is out there already. Costs would be another problem; the annual cost estimates for a small business, with maybe six journalists travelling and reporting, ranged from £500,000 ($1m) to £3m ($6m) a year. A lot, yes, but the Times and the Guardian loose hundreds of thousands a day – something new would have a massive advantage…

A market?

A key part of starting any business is thinking ‘who is my customer?’. We spent a fair bit of time coming up with crazy different ideas for who might want this type of journalism in the modern world…NGOs? Students & universities? Schools? The military? Traditional media appeared too, although we all agreed getting money from them was becoming harder and harder.

Packaging?

We made some good headway with the idea of how to package the product. Settling on an idea for an online (and possibly print-on-demand) magazine, we looked at all the other news outlets thriving online: the Financial Times, NPR & Propublica, Techcrunch & Mashable, the BusinessDesk.com, MediaStorm – and looked at what ways of packaging our product we could steal from them: everything from exploiting a sponsored mailing list to running events, to bootstrapping, to branding. A combination of these feeding into multiple revenue streams seemed like an attractive idea.

With all the wine gone and the two hours up, we had a lot of ideas, but nothing hugely concrete. But that’s OK! It was pretty much as much as we could have hoped for. More importantly I think it sewed some seeds in all our minds about what might work and what wouldn’t….that’ll stew in our minds for a while – and I think maybe someone in the room will suddenly get the spark of inspiration not far into the future.

Thanks very much to Deborah, Donnacha, Kat, Rebecca, Adam and Phil for bravely taking part in the experiment! If you like the idea of the bootcamps and would like to come to the next one make sure you’re signed up to the Future of News Meetup Group (it’s free!).

Advertisement

A new market for journalists: who else needs good storytelling?

There’s less than a week to go until Next Generation Journalist is available to download. From tomorrow, you’ll be able to get a preview of more of the new ways to make money in journalism on journalism.co.uk or by signing up here.

04. storytelling for the commercial sector

In the second chapter of Next Generation Journalist I will give a quick series of questions to ask yourself before reading on. The questions are designed to get you to root out exactly what you love about journalism so much. It’s different for every person but it’s vital to the Next Generation Journalist if you want to pursue a new and exciting career path.

Some of them, like this one, aren’t directly about reporting hard news. But I think they’re still worth including, because not every one of us went into journalism to report hard news right? For some of us, it’s about analysing data and making complicated things simple for everyone to understand; for some it’s about getting to meet the rich and famous; and for others it’s about telling stories.

If you dig telling stories, you’ll like this idea.

It’s about converting your expertise in storytelling, whether in print or multimedia to offer content for small businesses which brings them more customers. In return, they’ll pay you for it.

It’s all about the power of the story. I’ve long banged on about storytelling on this blog as well as to journalism students across the UK. It is, in my humble opinion, one of the most powerful, but undervalued crafts in journalism. A good story well told grabs people by the collar and shakes them; it can change their view of the world, make them laugh and make them cry.  Most importantly, stories compel people to action, which is why they’re of value to businesses.

Imagine if you took the power of storytelling and sold it to different industries?

Storytelling for the commercial sector…

• lets you practice and hone your storytelling and multimedia production skills
• will help you develop story ideas and contacts to pursue as a journalist
• could pay you more than editorial clients (depending on how much you’re willing to charge!)
• is a virtually untapped niche, with countless businesses as potential customers

Here’s how it works: you set up a cheap web based business offering your multimedia storytelling skills to small businesses (the book contains a list of suggested ones); your website convinces them about how a well told story can compel their customers to action (ie buying their product). You offer to do a few short videos for friends or associates for free to build up a decent portfolio. Then you use that start approaching and bringing in clients.

This option might appeal to you, but I understand, it might also repel you. This isn’t journalism after all is it? Well in Next Generation Journalist: 10 New Ways to Make Money in Journalism I’ll show you how it can be part of a wider, bigger income, with the concept of the Portfolio Career.

Click here to find out more!

Idea 005: the digital magazine

In Ideas for the Future of News I’m collecting positive, tangible, practical 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.

(Hat tip: Hull Digital)

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.