Entrepreneurial journalism: de bijdrage van ondernemerschap aan de publieke functie van journalistiek

Entrepreneurial Journalism is gaining in interest, first in the United States, but now also increasingly in Europe and in the Netherlands. This can be explained by a combination of factors. Firstly, reorganisations and substantial lay-offs in recent years at news publishers, especially of regional newspapers, have resulted in a growing number of freelancers and self-employed journalists. They need to be entrepreneurial in order to develop their specialism and brand, pitch their stories and negotiate their contracts. Secondly, many newspapers or broadcast organisations are in a process of transforming into fully digital organisations. They adopt a digital first strategy or develop new online services that aim to provide added value for which users and advertisers are willing to pay. Thirdly, there is a growing number of journalistic start-ups that launch innovative journalism services and that search for viable business models. Although self-employed journalists, traditional news organisations and start-ups are different entities, they have a number of challenges in common. They need to innovate faster and more frequently than before. They need to acquire new competences or collaborate in multidisciplinary teams, as digital services often require a combination of traditional journalism skills with for instance ICT, data- analysis, visualisation and social media skills. They also need competences to communicate with audiences, to invite them to contribute with their experiences or expertise, to build communities and to find and develop audiences not just for the full newspaper or news broadcast, but increasingly also for single stories or topics. Developing new business models, including new ways of advertising, user-payment, exploitation of user data, extra services, sponsorship, crowd funding or government subsidies are also essential. Only by developing new business models can a future proof journalism infrastructure be created that can continue to fulfil its public and democratic functions. Last but not least, many of these activities require collaboration, within news organisations between individuals and departments with different skills, but also in many cases with individuals and companies from outside. Many of these activities used to be the exclusive domain of the marketing, sales and business departments of news and journalism organisations. They used to be separated by a ‘Chinese Wall’ from the editorial desks, in order to protect editorial independence against commercial interests. In the digital domain this no longer works, as many of the innovations, audience development activities and new business and collaborative models require involvement of both sides. This might cause tensions between editorial and business objectives, but these tensions need to be solved in new ways. Our research group Entrepreneurial Journalism at Windesheim intends to support news and journalism organisations in the Netherlands, both traditional and start-ups, with applied research and practical results. We focus on the factors that contribute to success and failure of a digital first strategy and other innovations, of developing an innovation minded learning culture and of new business and collaborative models. We do this through a combination of qualitative methods, including case studies and interviews and through analysing the failures and successes of journalistic organisations here and abroad. We intend to shape and sharpen our research questions by listening to the needs of journalistic organisations and to organize an interactive process in which journalistic organisations can benefit from our results