The UMass Amherst  Journalism Program has about 500 majors. We have been building out our multimedia offerings over the past five years, and in fall 2009, I introduced an undergraduate course, Entrepreneurial Journalism. The goals: 1. to help students understand and connect with the freelance marketplace and 2. to develop a "for profit," web-based project that they could turn into a business.

During the semester, students developed ideas, researched competition and customers for their sites, and struggled with revenue streams and audience-building strategies. They honed their "pitches," five-minute presentations, and their "prospectuses," four-page executive summaries of their projects. We also covered query letters and how to approach legacy media with stories, along with the ethical dilemmas of journalistic entrepreneurship, and the understanding of the skills needed to be a successful independent journalist

The final class was a "Dragon's Den" like competition, in which students presented their projects to  a retired media entrepreneur and a new media professor, who awarded (fake) venture capital funding to the winner. No businesses have yet emerged, but some very good ideas got developed.

Students learned what we old-timers have come to understand: this new media world requires not only skills and talent, but a degree of constant self-promotion that is anathema to most  journalists, who prefer to be the flies on the wall. (They all HATE Twitter!) But this "salesmanship" was perhaps the most difficult skill for students to master. I don't know if that's because we're at a lowly state school or not, but self-confidence is a real problem for my students, and I worry that they may be left behind because of that.

ASSIGNMENTS

I used three chapters from a business textbook called "Entrepreneurship" to introduce the concepts of entrepreneurship, how it differed from working for "the man," what skills it required. I also used the "10,000 Hours" chapter of Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, along with chapters from Guy Kawasaki's book Reality Checks. Students were requested to read Website magazine, an online publication with a lot of "how-to's" about building audience, etc. We also looked at entrepreneurship personality tests so students could see their strengths and deficiencies.

Each student presented three case studies to the class. The first was a media entrepreneur, which included a mix of tech people like Marissa Mayer and Carol Bartz, to journalists like Kevin Sites and GlobalPost founder Charlie Sennott (who is a UMass alum), to others like Gawker founder Nick Denton, Arianna Huffington. The goal: To see the different paths to success. And always, the question: how do they make their money?

The second was on online news organizations, their structure, content and revenue streams. We looked at sites like MinnPost.com, The New Haven Independent, Politico, Voices of San Diego, The Daily Beast, Bleacher Report.

Then we looked at niche sites to evaluate their success or failure at evolving their brands. We looked at Mint.com, (which was perfect, because it had just been flipped for $140 million! Talk about generating entrepreneurial fervor!); Mignon Fogarty's Grammar Girl, which has evolved into a very successful, all-round advice site; Dooce.com; and at sites like Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door, which we concluded is an aging brand, and thus vulnerable to the kind of competition we were developing right in the class.

SKILLS SETS

In the first class, students started to build their own online portfolios using Google sites. They were also required to get business cards at Vistaprint, and, if they could, to purchase their domain names on the web. Several also bought the domain names for their projects.

They developed public presentation skills, writing skills, revising skills, and focusing skills. Few students had ever revised a piece of writing as much as they had to revise their prospectus, which changed every time they found a close competitor or a flaw in their thinking about revenues or content generation.

Most, particularly the women, gained confidence and real improvement in presentation style as a result of so much practice.

STUDENT RESPONSE

We had  hard time getting students to enroll in this new course. Students didn't know what "entrepreneurial journalism" even meant. I and my colleagues lobbied hard on individual students, and we dropped a prerequisite, an introductory web-writing course. I ended up with 13 students, 11 of whom completed the course.

For those who stayed with it, the course was a real departure from what they'd had in the past. One of the hardest attitudes to grasp was that it was okay to "fail" at something. After nearly 20 years of being graded on a certain scale, it was hard for kids to try something out and take a "risk" on an idea that might not work. Many abandoned two or even three ideas before hitting on one they could work with. And, they learned, that was how it all worked.

Still, almost to a student, all said that it was one of the best courses they'd taken, and that it helped them think about their journalism skills in different ways. Someone else on this wiki mentioned the phrase "life-changing," and I heard that phrase from my students as well.

WHAT I'LL DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME

At UMass, we are building out our new media offerings every year, and at some point, we will probably make this the capstone in a sequence that requires previous multimedia courses.

I would also love to bring in business school students and match each of them with a journalist to better develop the business and marketing aspects. This is difficult, because at UMass, we are in a separate college. It's the same with IT students. These "silos" represent one obstacle to these kinds of efforts on our campus.

Also, the thinking on this campus about what constitutes "entrepreneurship" focuses on the technical: computer science and engineering  or business departments--those that produce "tangible," patentable products. So I need to do more to get our program on the radar screen of the campus organizations that focus on entrepreneurship, so my kids can get access to the grants and mentoring that these agencies provide.

I'm continuing on the them of entrepreneurialism with guest speakers. We had Lisa Williams, founder of Placebloggers.com speak to the program on Journalistic Startups in the fall, and I hope to bring or Skype in some more entrepreneurs in the spring, to help build a program-wide consciousness about entrepreneurship.

Overall, this class invigorated my teaching and thinking about the business. I look forward to teaching it again next year.