Media entrepreneurship takes hold at universities

Journalism professors are adapting to the realities of a historically tough job market. Their graduates are struggling to find stable work in an industry whose biggest players have been cutting staff for a decade.

So universities are teaching new skills -- multimedia production, community management, data management and visualization, among others -- as well as the traditional reporting, writing, and audivisual production skills.

They are also finding new business models. While the traditional media companies are hamstrung by mountains of debt and declining revenue, universities are stepping up to innovate and create new forms of journalism for the digital age.

A Facebook group for those interested in teaching media innovation and entrepreneurship has reached 800 members. And the City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism is about to hold its third summit for educators in this growing field on July 15. Jeff Jarvis and Jeremy Caplan have been leaders in this field. I participated in the first two summit.

Universities are driving innovation in media

The true role of universities has always been the improvement of society. Developing leaders is a key part of that.

The scholars of universities immerse themselves in the values, ethics, culture, and history of a society and then communicate it to the students.

Those of us in the humanities tend to think of innovation as something that happens outside, in the world of business, especially in the digital world. However, courses in innovation and entrepreneurship have started to take hold in schools of communication.

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Beyond commercialization

For academics, who seek knowledge for its own sake, there is something slightly perverse or unclean in considering their work from the point of view of its application in the business world. But innovation goes far beyond mere monetization.

CUNY aims to incubate new media

Stephen Shepard, dean of CUNY

 Journalism School: "We are

 researching ways to support quality

as the old financial order erodes." 

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

City University of New York's Entrepreneurial Journalism program aims to be an incubator of new media projects as well as training the next generation of digital journalists.

To that end the faculty research is aimed at helping entrepreneurs directly, as with its survey of 500 local businesses' the online presence and marketing needs; its students do apprenticeships at startups that need help solving a problem; and each student develops a capstone project that could be a business plan or new media prototype. 

In addition, the school hosts events where some of New York City's digital entrepreneurs can present their projects and get feedback. “We want to play a role in the community,” says Jeremy Caplan, director of education for the program. “We want to be a place where people will come and share their ideas.”