The Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism

Today we at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism are announcing the founding and funding of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism.

The Center, which I’ll direct, received $3 million each from the Tow and Knight foundations, in addition to earlier funding from the McCormick, MacArthur, and Carnegie foundations and CUNY. We will:

* Establish the country’s first MA degree in entrepreneurial journalism for our students and also offer certificates in the field for mid-career professional journalists.

* Continue our research in new business models for news, following on our work last summer in the new ecosystem of local news.

* Help create new enterprises in news. More on that later.

See the entire release here.

This all flows from an essential optimism about the future of journalism. We just have to build it. That’s why I’ve been teaching entrepreneurial journalism — with seven students’ businesses in development now with a total of $100,000 in seed funding — and why we are expanding that into a degree and certificate program to prepare journalists to start and run businesses and make journalism sustainable. That’s why we will continue to bring concrete specifics to the discussion about new business models for news. And that’s why we will help create those businesses in and out of the school. We will also help lead the movement to teach journalists to be entrepreneurs at other schools. And we have other plans.

I’m grateful to the The Tow Foundation for giving us the challenge grant that led to today and to the Knight Foundation for pushing us to elevate our ambition. I’m grateful to the McCormick and MacArthur foundations the Carnegie Corporation for funding work that paved the way for the center. And I’m grateful to my CUNY colleagues — Dean Steve Shepard, Associate Dean Judy Watson — for having the vision to support this work.

Watch this space.

http://www.lawontheweb.co.uk brad

excellent news
http://tbd.com Steve Buttry

Congratulations, Jeff!
Steve

I love to see people actually doing something about their industry rather than complaining about it. Great news, Jeff! Good luck.
- http://www.buzzmachine.com Jeff Jarvis
  
  Thanks, Steve,
  That’s the idea: Enough with the complaining. This is all about doing.
- http://www.ericgauvin.com Eric Gauvin
  
  Yes. More money… less complaining…
http://unityjournalists.org/NewU/index.php Doug Mitchell

Great news indeed and congratulations. This is soooooo needed.

The website I posted is from an announcement earlier this year where myself and Alli Joseph lead boot-camp entrepreneurship training for minority journalists at the respective conferences this summer. Our project was funded by The Ford Foundation and we brought ideas into the same room with people who fund them. and we spent 1.5 days talking about everything from executive summaries, to elevator pitches, to legal declarations.
Now, we are about to launch a crowdsource vote among our 16 participants to decide which four get to split $20,000 in start up funds. This will be through the UNITY site.
I’m actually sitting in Room #330 right now teaching a radio section at the CUNY grad school.
Craig Roth

This is exciting news, Jeff! Congratulations.
Dave Winer

Just curious, what do you spend the $6 million on?
- http://www.buzzmachine.com Jeff Jarvis
  
  Dave,
  Teaching, research, incubation, scholarships. This is over five years. So we are hiring teachers to teach the new classes and hope to offer scholarships to the first students. We will continue research as we did over the summer with many projects (e.g., the economics of the link economy so we can get to a discussion of real numbers); this involves both finding hard numbers and best practices to share and also creating m. We are incubating businesses here now and will do more of that; I even hope to be able to find a way to invest, to put money where mouths are.
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Timo Koskinen

Exciting news, Jeff!
These truly are steps the industry needs.
Congrats, and good luck !
http://www.digidave.org Digidave

Awesome stuff Jeff.
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http://www.ursamajorassociates.com John Callan

Congratulations, Jeff! You continue to inspire with thought, word and deed. And, we will hope to follow your lead in the postal ecosystem with soon to launch PostalVision2020. Your readers may remember your Post Postal Post of March 23!
http://adrianematkovich.com/blog Adriane

Where would I find more information about enrolling in the MA program? I just graduated from SIU Carbondale with my BS in journalism (photojournalism) and minor in marketing. This program sounds like it might be what I’ve been looking for.
- http://adrianematkovich.com/blog Adriane
  
  Just to clarify- The journalism education and experience I received at SIUC was OUTSTANDING, but I’d also like to continue to build on what I’ve already learned. :)
- http://www.buzzmachine.com Jeff Jarvis
  
  Adriane,
  I’ve asked our director of admissions to respond.
  jeff
  - Nick
    
    You asked your director of admissions to respond to Adriane? Or to add a post to this thread? Because I sure would like that info as well!
    - http://www.buzzmachine.com Jeff Jarvis
      
      email me about this and i will pass it on to Steve Dougherty, the head of admissions. or contact Steve directly. His email is here: http://www.journalism.cuny.edu/admissions/
http://www.futurechanges.org Stewart Mader

Jeff,
Congratulations – it’s great to see people taking action to improve the industry, and getting the necessary support.

Where will you be posting announcements about the teaching positions you’ll be filling to teach courses in the new M.A. program?

Thanks,
Stewart
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Jose

Great news Jeff, wish we had this kind of programs back in Spain….
http://www.therisetothetop.com David Siteman Garland

Fantastic, Jeff. Let me know if I can assist in any way.
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http://www.newsbreak.com.ph Gigi Go

This is great news, Mr. Jarvis. I hope the program will be open to journalists/news managers from other countries.
Joey

Why does anyone listen to Jeff Jarvis? Print is where the profits
are- always has been. Arianna Huffington has blown thru over
$50 million dollars and is nowhere close to breaking even. Yet this boob keeps saying the internet is the future like it’s 1998 again. People should look at the growing indie print newspapers like the Rock Creek Free Press, The Sovereign, and Liberty Voice. The higher the advance degree equals less common sense, I’m guessing is what’s at play here.
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alex

hang on…
people are paying to become entrepreneurs?
i don’t get it.
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http://shsjc.hamptonu.edu Battinto Batts

Congrats on your new venture. I would like to speak with you about what you are doing. Could you email me back on the address I provided? Thanks.
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