The School of Entrepreneurial Journalism

Tenore, M (2010). New CUNY program to equip students to start journalism-based businesses. Poynter Online. Retrieved from http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=101&aid=191210

This article and interview comes courtesy of Poynter Online, which is the site of the journalism-based Poynter Institute. Its first section summarizes the City University of New York’s recent decision to establish the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, which will be the nation’s first school to offer a master’s degree in that emerging field of study. It then follows with an interview from Jeff Jarvis, the center’s leader and a professor at CUNY. Jarvis explains that the “Entrepreneurial” Journalism degree will strive to familiarize students with the overlap – not the separation – that happens with reporting the news and trying to make a business/money from doing so. Students will learn how to establish businesses and then actually do so with the program’s support. According to Jarvis, the program’s demands of its students are extensive, and decidedly rooted in business, not news reporting: “[We want students] to be able to recognize opportunities, conceptualize and plan a business, research that business with customers, present that business to investors and customers, understand the essential skills of running a business and of media (e.g., how advertising works), be able to work with other constituencies (technologists, partners, salespeople, etc.), and be able to manage projects.” The degree will both be offered to current students, as well as career journalists who wish to enroll in the program. The article also notes other steps journalism programs are taking to remain relevant (NYU partnering with the New York Times, Columbia’s journalism/computer science dual program, etc).

CUNY’s decision to take a decisive, economically-centered slant with its graduate students further reflects the demands being made on journalists in the field today, and how those demands are shifting away from being one who simply reports the news. But more importantly, it reveals the reform taking place on the academic level. Academia is one of the last and strongest pillars of old media, and if the old ways of teaching journalism become obsolete on a university level, then it stands to reason that the kind of “journalists” that will surface in ten or maybe even five years will have a drastic effect on the climate as a whole. To hear Jarvis tell it, aspiring journalists (or at least journalism students) will need to develop a diverse range of skills in both the economic and technological spheres to remain relevant. This has always been true, of course, but for another reputable university to officially acknowledge this via the establishment of an entire new program certainly solidifies the notion. CUNY’s Tow-Knight Center follows the noted alterations made by NYU and Columbia, as well as CU-Boulder’s proposed reimagining/discontinuance of their program. Essentially what we are seeing with all this is the production lines for “old media” journalists dying off, and a broad imagining of the form that “new media” will take on – or at least how it will be taught. Frankly, it all seems to be suggesting that the practice of actually reporting the news is becoming incidental to journalism. For Jarvis and CUNY, it is clear that the new media scribes who successfully establish themselves will be those who are the most adept at website design and self-promotion, not necessarily who writes the most compelling feature articles. Which is fine. The key point here is to see how the directions in which these fragmented (soon to be) former J-Schools are moving, and how that will impact both future journalists and the future of journalism. What will take place when these new waves of “new” journalists enter the job market, bearing different skill sets and literacies than those of even their direct predecessors? And, tying things more directly to CUNY, what are the costs and benefits of openly conflating news reporting and commerce? Certainly, those are two spheres that will always come into contact with one another, but should they really be interpreted and taught as one inseparable body? If that is indeed the case (remotely or otherwise), then does one get privileged over another? Will CUNY professors instruct their students to shelve important stories if they threaten the successful commerce of a given “enterprise”?