Build your own job: what have you got to lose?

Two things make entrepreneurialism so relevant today – one is the internet and the digital revolution, which mean that it’s never been easier or cheaper to publish. Second, with so little job security around, there is very little to lose in striking out.
In this clip from Masterclass 12 of Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide, pioneering multimedia journalist Adam Westbrook talks about the realities of the modern jobs market for journalists.
Find out much more about entrepreneurialism, portfolio careers and building your own job here:  http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/704

How to build a journalism business: free interactive course

Yoodoo is a free, interactive learning website that takes you through the whole process of deciding what your business should be, testing and refining your concept.
They do it with short videos and quizzes, taking you through 40 steps to hone your ideas. It’s an impressive free programme that gives you all the material you’d normally expect to pay for in a business manual or ebook.
You could use it to go through the steps that entrepreneurial journalism students at City University New York complete as they begin a business (details here) but while Cuny is about starting the business, Yoodoo goes further along the path and looks at running it as well.
In addition to identifying your product or service and finding your customers, it deals with the nitty gritty of budgeting, sales, marketing, accounting, costs and break-even, Vat, employment law, finding offices and much more.
I’ve taken the course. Here’s a video taster of what they put me through, in a segment about web marketing, and how I got on.

Working on your elevator pitch

You'll find a full outline of how to create that all-important elevator pitch, and your own journalism business, in Masterclass 12 of Multimedia journalism: A Practical Guide here: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/711

Journalists: What elements to include in your porfolio career

Here's Adam Westbrook's advice on putting your portfolio together: "Ask yourself 'what is it about being a journalist that I really love', and then try and build a business around that."

You'll find a great deal more about building your own job, entrepreneurialism and portfolio careers in Masterclass 12 at Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide's web-version: www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk 

Here are some of the recommendations he comes up with:
Specialise in a single journalistic skill
For example, an expert in Freedom of Information requests (think HelpMeInvestigate) and investigations (think the Investigative Journalism Bureau).
Aggregate the news
Journalism professor Clay Shirky says: “If I was going to set up a news business tomorrow, it would be a business designed to create not one bit of content.”
Adam says: "You can build a business like Mashable or TechCrunch has done. They have aggregated, but built on top so they are the home page of tech news. If it's happened in that field, you’ll get it on those sites, and they build their own spin on top of it."
There are other areas of specialist content where this hasn’t been done yet.
Make a niche work
Forget broadcasting to the many – think connecting with the few.
You only need a thousand followers who will pay for your content to earn a living.
It needs to be a niche that really matters to that audience and you must become the place to go for information about it.
Launch a journalism collaborative
The most famous one – Magnum Photos - was a collaborative of  photojournalists who re-wrote the rules of the game in the mid 20th century.
Magnum was born out of the Leica, a cheap, portable camera, and innovative people such as Cartier Bresson
There are parallels today, where multimedia technology is simpler and cheaper than it ever has been. Creating and publishing  is very straightforward and it's easy to innovate.
Examples from the US:

• MediaStorm

• Story4

• Bombay Flying Club

Examples from the UK:

• Not on the wires

• Duck Rabbit

Hyperlocal
The major groups are struggling: "They had a business model that required 30 per cent returns, and are having to lay off journalists to try to maintain that profit margin.
"A hyperlocal start-up can run on a much smaller margin. They can cut costs not by paying the journalist nothing but by not having to pay for a big office and a massive printing press."
So if you can really serve a community, keep your costs low, you can fill the gap that has been left by the retreat of the big-groups’ titles.

What should be taught about entrepreneurialism

J-Schools that teach entrepreneurialism - how to build your own job - are few and far between. In Masterclass 12 of Multimedia journalism: A Practical Guide, we look at those that do, and what we can learn from them.

City University New York is a pioneer.
At Cuny they set out to tackle the fact that journalists didn’t understand their own business by establishing a course in which students must create a business plan for a sustainable (which they define as profitable) journalistic enterprise. Cuny won grants of $100k to give as seed money to the best of the ideas students come up with, as decided by a jury of experts.
Here’s what students learn:
How to create a plan for a sustainable (profitable) journalism business
That plan includes

• An elevator pitch – how to sell the idea briefly and effectively
• A needs statement – why does the world need this business?
• Market research and analysis – deciding who their customers are, and talking to them about the idea
• Competitive analysis
• Product plan – what is it?
• Revenue plan – how’s it going to make money?
• Distribution/marketing plan – how will people discover it?
• Operations plan – how will it operate? What will that cost?
• Launch plan– what are the phases and milestones?

You'll find out much more about entrepreneurialism, building a job, and creating a portfolio career here

Can any journalist be an entrepreneur?

Yes, says Adam Westbrook, they can. "It’s a mindset thing. Get that mindset and you can do it."

This clip is extracted from Masterclass 12 of Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide, which is an in-depth look at how the modern-day journalist can use multimedia technology to build their own job.
But being a successful journalistic entrepreneur - and creating a portfolio career -  is not something you can achieve overnight.
It took Adam 18 months to two years of thinking about it, reading, researching. Eventually he realised it was something he could do, and later that it was something he really wanted to do.
Some think its not journalism. They don’t want to be running a business, but infact, says Adam: "It's actually a really creative process".
And the recession has proved that there is very little job security in big publishing corporations, so the risk of branching out is much diminished.
There's much more about entrepreneurialism, portfolio careers and building  your own job in Masterclass 12 at Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/704

Developing a portfolio career

Instead of one full-time job, the modern-day journalist is likely to work at a combination of activities, some that pay (hopefully at least one that pays well), others that are done for free.
In this extract from Masterclass 12: How to Build Your Own Job at www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk, pioneering multimedia journalist Adam Westbrook talks about what goes into his portfolio.
Adam's portfolio looks like this:

• Teaching video journalism at Kingston University
• Video journalist for agencies and sites online sites such as VJ Movement
• Print journalism for clients including The Big Issue
• Blogging
• Selling information products, including e-books

For free:

• Running the UK Future of News Group

Masterclass 12: How to Build Your own Job is an extensive exploration of entrepreneurial journalism that will be going live at Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide's website, www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk over the coming days. Check back regularly for updates, or follow our Twitter alerts

Journalists: Build your own job

Adam Westbook is a pioneering multimedia, entrepreneurial journalist. He’s brought together his thoughts on what the Next Generation Journalist will need to do to create a successful career and published an ebook with that title.
What  Adam has to say offers a great introduction and overview to being an entreprenurial journalist, and in building what he calls a portfolio career.
You can either listen to the full 20 minute interview with him or go to Clips, quotes and links below for the essential highlights

MMJ Masterclass 12a: How to Build your own Job from Andy Bull on Vimeo.

Clips, quotes and links

Clip 1: The Next Generation Journalist

The next generation journalist is going to have to think differently about their career. Adam says you need to work out how to build your life around your work
Yep, journalism is a lifestyle choice, and if you aren’t happy having it suffuse everything you do, it's probably not for you. But if you enjoy doing it enough that you don’t really make a distinction between work and not-work, then you’ll do well.
To do that you have to love what you are doing, and that’s another key component of Adam’s journalism philosophy

Clip 2: Developing a portfolio career

Instead of one full-time job, the modern-day journalist is likely to work at a combination of activities, some that pay (hopefully at least one that pays well), others that are done for free.
Adam's portfolio looks like this:

• Teaching video journalism at Kingston University
• Video journalist for agencies and sites online sites such as VJ Movement
• Print journalism for clients including The Big Issue
• Blogging
• Selling information products, including e-books

For free:

• Running the UK Future of News Group

For more on BUILDING YOUR OWN JOB, check out the full Masterclass at Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide