Here’s video of our information session for the new Entrepreneurial Journalism program at CUNY.
Entrepreneurial Journalism Information Session with Jeff Jarvis and Jeremy Caplan from CUNY Grad School of Journalism on Vimeo.
More information on the program — and details on how to apply — here.
Here are the courses that make up the new Entrepreneurial Journalism curriculum at CUNY. We plan to offer these courses this spring–to our own students and to midcareer journalists. Once approved by the state, we’ll award a certificate and then an MA in entrepreneurial journalism.
This Monday evening the 29th at 6p, we’ll hold an information session at the school–219 W. 40th St. in NY–and we’ll stream it for folks who can’t be there. Details here. We’re accepting applications now–admissions addresses here.
We’ll teach a course in business basics in the media context and a course in new business models for news–which is really, I’ve discovered, a course about disruption (whether you cause it or have to cope with it). Students will create their own business plans and incubate them in a third course. We’ll give students an immersion in relevant technologies to inform their plans. And students will work on an apprenticeship in a New York startup to be exposed to startup and engineering culture. I’m delighted to be teaching these courses with my colleague, Jeremy Caplan, and others we’re recruiting in various specialties.
Students may leave starting their own businesses and making their own jobs. They may work for startups. They may bring entrepreneurship into legacy companies. And legacy companies may send them to the program. In my Entrepreneurial Journalism class at CUNY — an inspiration for this program — we have a few midcareer professionals in the class this term and I’m finding the mix with students to be good. So we plan to continue that mix in the larger program.
This educational program is one of the three legs of the stool that makes up the new Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism. We will also continue research on new business models for news. We are also starting in incubator and investment fund. The research will inform the students businesses and those in the incubator and identify new opportunities we can help start. The courses we create for this program will also bring in resources to help teach and support businesses in the incubator. And having more services in the incubator will help the students with their businesses. That’s the idea.
At the end of the day, we hope to bring more innovation and innovators to journalism. That’s the hope.
Here are the syllabi (don’t ya love that word?) for the courses. If you would prefer, you can see them on Google Docs here.
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.
Jim Brady, daddy of metro/hyperlocal startup TBD.com, sent me pictures Tim Windsor sent him from our summit on new business models for news at CUNY two years ago. In the session on the new newsroom, Jim got up and started sketching the structure and size — little knowing, as he said in testimony before the FTC a while ago, that he’d end up building it at TBD.com. Jim at the whiteboard:
The detail. Note the reference to a blog network of experts — which TBD wisely built.
For the history books. If there still will be books.
I have a little room in my entrepreneurial journalism class at CUNY.
I’d especially like a few under- or unemployed journalists looking to start businesses in the class to add to the mix of experience among the students. I’ve also had students from other schools in the past. Tuition is about $1k (sorry; I’m looking for scholarship money for various categories — such as unemployed, career-shifting, journalists and ethnic and community journalists — but don’t have it yet).
In the class, you will create and present a business plan for a sustainable (read: profitable) journalistic enterprise. We will work through:
* Your elevator pitch; the essential description of your business.
* Product plan.
* Needs statement — why does the world need this thing?
* Market research and analysis — who are your customers and what do you know from them?
* Competitive analysis.
* Revenue plan.
* Distribution/marketing plan.
* Operations plan.
* Technology plan.
* Launch plan.
* Investment ask.
At the end of the class in December, you present your plan to a jury of investors, entrepreneurs, journalists, publishers, and technologists (it’s great fun, that day).
The class meets Monday afternoons, 130-430p at CUNY.
If you’re interested, I have just a few spots. Email me at the school: jeff.jarvis at journalism dot cuny dot edu. Tell me what you want to build — an entirely new business or a hyperlocal site. Tell me about you and your experience. I’ll select a few based on the mix of the class and how complementary you, your business, and your experience are with the other students and their projects. If it doesn’t work out this time, fret not. We’re going to launch a larger entrepreneurial journalism program soon. If accepted, you’d need to be in class starting Sept. 13 (we’ve held one class so far).
