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In my last BlogHer post, I shared some of my confusion about where the news industry is going. Tonight I want to share some of the wisdom I've come across about the sources of opportunities in the midst of what feels like cataclysmic change. I hope you'll share your thoughts as well.
First, everyone's a potential entrepreneur now. For years, I've been telling my students that even if they land a job with benefits, they should develop an entrepreneurial mindset. That means reading the trades for whatever industry you're in, understanding your organization's competitive position and niche, being clear on how your work fits into your company's value chain, and taking responsibility for your own professional development.
It's a lesson I first learned at Bell Labs 20 years ago when I watched systems engineers who had been accustomed to working in large teams suddenly being forced to become brand managers when the company moved to a line of business structure, making them completely responsible for their own niche product. Suddenly, they were doing trade show exhibits and press releases, monitoring sales and dealing directly with customer issues. Their compensation was tied to the product's performance in the market.
BlogHer CE Elana Centor recently noted that although it might seem counter-intuitive, economic downturns can be a good time for starting a business. Be sure to read her post and related links if you are thinking of hanging out your own shingle.
If you are looking for some media-related business opportunities, Online Journalism Review editor Robert Niles recommends looking at citiies whose newspapers are going belly up. Commenting on the demise of his own former paper, the Rocky Mountain News, Niles observed:
But with thousands of now-former Rocky readers looking for a new daily news source, there's a huge opportunity here for someone to get rich. Just put some of those readers together with some of those advertisers, using a fresh new online publication, and without the capital and corporate overhead, JOA obligations and debt that's weighing down so many newspapers across the country.
To position yourself for those opportunities, you have to hone your 21st-century reporting and business skills. Let's take the first part first. If you are laid off and gettiing unemployment, you might be able to get money for retraining or further professional development. If you aren't in a position to go back to school right now, there are a host of free online classes and guides on topics ranging from multimedia reporting to legal issues for onlie publishers.Many of them are from leading institutions such as Poynter's News University, MIT and Tufts Universities.
As you think of retraining, think about specializing in a niche where there is likely to be an ongoing demand for expertise, even in a down economy. For example, there's always going to be a need for people who can explain the weather, like my friend Andrew Humphrey, a Detroit meteorologist. In a conversation we had a while back, Andrew pointed out that people are always looking for reliable information about what to wear, or whether their fruit trees are in danger of freezing. Beyond that, though, natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and threats such as global warming mean weather stories are on everyone's radar these days.
If you've got a strong portfolio as a beat reporter, consider trade and specialty media. I know a former obituary writer who got a job editing trade magazines in the funeral industry. Financial industry publishers such as Bloomberg LP feed their customers information on a host of issues that might affect supply and demand for stocks, bonds and commodities -- including the weather, or the impact of an athlete or entertainer's latest scandal on endorsement or advertising.
Even as you consider a specialty, Robert Niles pointed me to an important insight from Steve Yelvington about the difference between this media world and the one in which I was trained to function:
Everything I've learned since 1994 leads me to believe that business approaches built around an assumption of scarcity will not work in an economy of surplus. And imagining that newspapers have some sort of defensible monopoly on the consumer value they provide is delusional.
In other words, even as you develop your niche, your business success might be contingent on your ability to tap into communities of pooled expertise, not just on your skills as a single subject matter expert, writer or investigator.
If you are thinking of a business idea, be sure to avail yourself of the
