Columbia focuses on coaching journalism execs

Doug Smith
Executive Director
Punch Sulzberger Program

Sixth in a series on entrepreneurial journalism programs at universities and media organizations. 

Columbia Journalism School's Punch Sulzberger Program differs from other programs in this series in several ways. 

Like them, it is entrepreneurial in focusing on innovation and transforming of a media enterprise. But the biggest difference is that it focuses on changing the enterprise rather than on mainly developing skills of an individual.

The participant is supposed to recruit people within and outside the media enterprise (for-profit, non-profit, public) to drive measurable change. The success of any individual participant in the program is based on metrics of the enterprise. 

More proof that journalists need to brand themselves

Version en español aquí.

New York Times editor Jill Abramson says that half the people coming to the newspaper's website in the runup to the election were searching for Nate Silver, the political forecasting whiz who writes the blog FiveThirtyEight.

"He got huge, huge readership," she said at a conference covered by MediaBistro. "They weren't coming for the rest of the Times; they came for him,"

In other words, Nate Silver has developed a personal brand that is bigger than the New York Times when it comes to the niche of political forecasting.