Is professional journalism dead? A controversial question which continues to generate significant debate due to the rise of citizen journalists and savvy bloggers in a converged media environment.
This has placed media companies in a state of constant invention to try to keep ahead, as the traditional news model is obsolete. The Chinese wall is gone. The days of keeping journalism and business separate are over. This, however, provides opportunities for journalists to create and run their own news models.
Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, source: Wikimedia Commons
Entrepreneurial Journalism Defined
The Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism in New York City describes entrepreneurial journalism as ‘a field of media where journalism is the underlying discipline upon which to create content-based businesses and services that can make money, rather than the popular view of journalism as a type of objective professional public service to be provided to the citizenry of the world.’
Many would agree the greatest challenge for journalists in this new era is the idea of managing their journalism ethical codes, if they take responsibility for both sides of the business. The Tow-Knight Center now offers world leading university programs for students on how to create their own news models and adhere to convention.
Arianna Huffington, Founder of The Huffington Post presents in Madrid
source: Wikimedia Commons
HuffPost Leads The Way
The Huffington Post, headquartered in NYC is one of the globe’s greatest examples of a successful online news business model. Arianna Huffington, former journalist, launched HuffPost Chicago (a news aggregation service) in 2001. It is now considered the most successful online newspaper in the world, and will be launched soon in Australia in partnership with Fairfax Media.
A Morphing Sensation, Not Cessation
Entrepreneurial journalism presents many opportunities to advance the profession by having convention and codes embedded in business decision making as we see in the courses from the Tow Knight Center in NYC as well as the Huffington Post news model.
Words by Katrina Savell
BYTEme NYC 
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