Editor’s note: If you know me, you know I wouldn’t normally suggest working for nothing. However, I know Tom Stites. I think his revolutionary, non-profit venture to serve less than affluent Americans has a real shot at success.

Tom Stites

Whether you’re at the intern level or a seasoned journalist willing to take a gamble on an exciting startup, you would invest a small amount of time to be in position for a full-time gig if the project takes off.  — Susan Older

By Tom Stites
Founder and President, the Banyan Project

The Banyan Project is moving toward launching a pilot project to test its pioneering new business model for Web journalism and is searching for a reporter/editor.  The project is devoted to serving the distinctive information needs of less-than-affluent Americans, a huge public that’s ill-served by mainstream journalism and has borne the brunt of the Great Recession.  At first this will be a volunteer position requiring 8 to 10 hours a week to research and write simple service journalism items for the pilot; presuming that the pilot is successful, for the right person this could grow into a challenging full-time paid job.

The ideal person for this position would be an experienced journalist with 1) empathy for the lives of the less-than-affluent and 2) interest in the life issues they face, including family health when uninsured or underinsured, credit and savings when money is scarce, and jobs in a down economy.  People who are neither affluent nor poverty-stricken make up about half the population, and there is almost no reliable reporting to help them with the things that keep them up at night.  This position’s mission is to help them sleep better.

Banyan’s aim is to create a new business model and institutional structure for Web journalism that can thrive in the digital future.  The model’s foundation is the consumer co-op, meaning that Banyan sites will be owned by their readers the way depositors own credit unions and shoppers own food coops.  The Banyan concept has won a Game Changer Award from the 2010 WeMedia conference and has led to a fellowship at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, which opened Harvard resources for detailed business planning.

Banyan Publishing Corp. is incorporated as a nonprofit and it has filed with the IRS for 501(c)(3) tax exempt status.  Fundraising efforts are well under way.  To learn more about the broad Banyan concept, go to banyanproject.com.

If you’re interested in a detailed job description, send me an email at the address on my website, tomstites.com.

By Jules Older

When you’re out of work, or, put more genteelly, underemployed, what do you do with your newfound leisure time?

Jules Older

By ‘leisure time,’ I mean time nobody’s paying you to use.

Everybody’s different in needs, time, mortgages and inclination, but I know what’s working for me. In hopes that some of it will work for you, here goes:

Learn new stuff. The new stuff I’m learning is videography. As the world grows more visual and more digital, it will be increasingly usefulblahblahblah.

That’s likely true, but the real reason I’m learning it is that I want to. I love it. I love watching my skills grow from naught to naught half bad. You can judge for yourself at http://www.YouTube.com/julesolder.

I’ve had three great aids in learning to shoot and edit.

One is a tiny, cheap, incredibly versatile Canon camera. I’ve used the pocket-sized Canon SD940 IS to shoot about 30 videos. I still can’t believe how good it is, most especially in low light.

The second is Apple’s iMovie, a tool that comes at no extra charge with every Mac. It’s made for enthusiasts, not professionals, but it’s met or exceeded my needs and desires nearly every time.

Third — maybe first — is the best bargain I’ve found, ever. It’s Apple’s One to One program. When you buy a new Apple computer, you’re given the opportunity to sign up for One to One. Take it.

Costs a hundred bucks for a year. For that hundred, you get to meet with an expert once every week or two to work on any aspect of Macology you like. Just about everything I know about videography, I’ve learned at the Chestnut Street Apple Store. Costs me, oh, $1.50 an hour.

Do good things. Last time I was in New Zealand, the earth moved. It moved in Christchurch, which experienced its first quake ever. This time, a few short days after I got off the plane, Christchurch had its second. And this was the big one.

On the theory that it might be me, I did what I could to ameliorate the horror. Through my Jokers list, I kept friends and relatives up to date on our safety, our friends, and what was happening in Christchurch. Because I’m a member of Ski Club of International Journalists, I did the same with the 200 or so media mavens I’d met only the week before. I used both lists to raise funds for the victims.

And I volunteered to go to Christchurch. I volunteered three times to three organizations. And while none took me up on it, I couldn’t have even made the offer if I’d been gainfully employed.

Stay in touch. The Christchurch quake was only one way of many I’ve been in closer touch with friends and colleagues since those monthly checks stopped rolling in. I’ve used the down time to pick up lapsed relationships and to start new ones. That’s been nice.

Hasn’t always worked out the way I planned, though. When I left a message for an old friend who’d moved to L.A. asking if he was ok, he admitted “My first thought was — what’s he want?”

I suggested he’d been in Los Angeles too long.

Hard times roll. Renewing my freelance ‘career’ has reminded me how bloody hard freelancing really is. For instance, from New Zealand I wrote what I think was a pretty fine op-ed piece about the quake, Why it’s good it happened here. Sent it to, oh, seven or eight papers and three magazines in five countries. My hometown paper didn’t bother replying — thanks a lot, San Francisco Chronicle. Others said no, not for us. In the end, one paper and one magazine took variations on it, but it was hard yakka getting the thing sold.

That’s all, folks… except for one thing. Remember: Life is what’s left when you’re out of work. Better learn — or re-learn — to enjoy it.

— jules

Jules Older (amazingly, no relation to Displaced Journalists Founder Susan Older) is a freelance travel writer, the author of children’s books, the creator of the iPhone app San Francisco Restaurants, a speaker, a broadcaster and a consultant. Learn more about Jules here. To become a Lifeguard, just drop Jules a line at jules@julesolder.com, saying, “I’m a writer.  Sign me up!”

Editor’s note: We have plenty of members of the Displaced Journalists community who work at news operations (online or print) and  fear they won’t keep their jobs unless they  boost their digital and multimedia skills. This Maynard Institute month-long fellowship is  a great opportunity to get that training. — Susan Older

Multimedia Editing Fellowships Available

Who should apply
:

This program is ideal for editors and reporters who want to sharpen their multimedia skills, journalists who work on Web sites and design and graphic editors who want editing training.

Program Cost
:

$6,000, which includes tuition and housing and some meals.

Fellowships

Twelve fellowships to attend the Maynard Institute’s Multimedia Editing Program are made possible by a three-year grant from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation.

To be eligible for the Reynolds Fellowship, you must work at a U.S.-based newspaper with a circulation of 50,000 or below. Journalists who work for online operations of such newspapers are also eligible to apply.

The fellowship covers tuition, housing and some meals, and includes a travel stipend of up to $500. There are no exceptions to the eligibility requirement.

Twelve fellowships to attend the Maynard Institute’s Multimedia Editing Program are available to journalists from small and medium size publications. The fellowships are made possible by a three-year grant from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. 

Fellowship applications are invited from journalists who work at U.S.-based newspapers with circulation of 50,000 and below. Journalists who work for online operations of such newspapers are welcome to apply.

Since 1979, the Maynard Institute has trained journalists of color to become editors and Web site editors, helped assignment editors improve their copy editing skills, and prepared news professionals for supervisory roles. This program has produced effective newsroom leaders of all races who can promote team work, introduce and manage change, and improve the quality of journalism.

Like all Maynard programs, the Multimedia Editing Program is open to people of all races.

The month-long Multimedia Editing Program runs during summer, 2011 at the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno. The program will equip participants to help their news organizations build a robust online presence and strengthen the print product.

Instruction will be in-depth and hands-on and cover the breadth of digital media tools: video, audio, blogging, slideshows, tagging, databases, basic HTML, analyzing the success of your Web strategy, using social networking to draw more people to your site and an overview of content management systems.

Skills will be taught in segments that build upon each other. The length of the program will allow participants to do more than simply touch upon each skill. At the Multimedia Editing program, participants will have time for practice, critique and improvement, giving them a working knowledge that can be applied immediately. As always, strong copy editing skills, including headline writing for print and online, and design will be emphasized throughout the program.

Apply here.

If you have questions, contact Evelyn Hsu, program director, at Ehsu@maynardije.org or Elisabeth Pinio, manager for outreach, at 510-891-9202 or epinio@maynardije.org.

By Alan D. Mutter
Reflections of a Newsosaur
Monday, Jan. 31 2011

The Daily, which is set to launch this week, could be a captivating hit, a spectacular miss or something in between. But one thing is sure:

Rupert Murdoch, the last swashbuckling publisher of our time, will shake up the media world on Wednesday when he introduces the first iPad-only news product, which is expected to be sold in subscriptions costing 99 cents a week.

While it is too early to tell how well The Daily will do, here are the key factors that will determine its fate:

Why it could succeed

• No baggage. As an all-new product built specifically for the iPad, The Daily can take advantage of the full multimedia and interactive capabilities of this exciting new platform. Thus, The Daily can avoid the common mistake among the legacy print and broadcast media of trying to replicate their existing products on the iPad, instead of creating something refreshingly new.

• Wealth of content. As the pet project du jour of Mr. Murdoch, The Daily is likely to be able to pull from the global, cross-media content resources of News Corp. This includes not only such varied publications as the Wall Street Journal, The Times of London and the New York Post but presumably also the rich media and reporting produced by Fox Cable News and the Fox Television Network, which has outlets in almost every market in the United States.Powerful promotion. The unsurpassed reach of News Corp.’s diversified media properties means The Daily will have millions of free (or deeply discounted) marketing impressions every hour of every day, around the world and around the clock.

• Deep pockets. With $33 billion in sales and $5.7 billion in operating profit, News Corp. is well positioned to subsidize The Daily for as long as Mr. Murdoch cares to pursue the project.

How it could fail

• It’s not free. While publishers from the Augusta Chronicle to the New York Times increasingly are moving in the direction of charging for the news they digitally delivered for free for 1½ decades, any number of alternative news sources are likely to eschew charging for content for as far as the eye can see. The business models of ventures like Huffington Post and Patch.Com call for them to generate as many page views as they can to build their ad inventories. HuffPo, among many others, specializes in summarizing stories originating at other sites. When The Daily publishes worthwhile stories, it’s likely that HuffPo will want to crib from it, too. And they’ll be free.

• Embedded competition. Widely presumed to be a general-interest national news product, The Daily will compete with well-established…. To read more of this post, click here.

Alan D. Mutter is perhaps the only CEO in Silicon Valley who knows how to set type one letter at a time. Mutter began his career as a newspaper columnist and editor at the Chicago Daily News and later rose to City Editor of the Chicago Sun-Times. In 1984, he became No. 2 editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. He left the newspaper business in 1988 to join InterMedia Partners, a start-up that became one of the largest cable-TV companies in the U.S. Mutter was the COO of InterMedia when he moved to Silicon Valley in 1996 to join the first of the three start-up companies he led as CEO. The companies he headed were a pioneering Internet service provider and two enterprise-software companies. Mutter now is a consultant specializing in corporate initiatives and new media ventures involving journalism and technology. He ordinarily does not write about clients or subjects that will affect their interests. In the rare event he does, this will be fully disclosed. Mutter also is on the adjunct faculty of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. To see his entire profile, click here.

A new publishing venture has launched which takes advantage of mobile devices.

A group of magazine journalists and editors have formed to publish a weekly digital magazine, Nomad Editions, specifically for mobile technology. Content will be created by freelance journalists with area-specific expertise; readers, who will subscribe through a mobile app, can receive an “exclusive, high-caliber, elegantly designed digital publication” on an array of different subjects, according to the company.

Former Newsweek editor Mark M. Edmiston, CEO of Nomad Editions, says the idea of high quality journalism specifically for mobile devices came to him early in 2009 as ereaders like the Kindle began siphoning readers from print editions, reports The New York Times.

Freelancers will be culled from unemployed or underpaid talent, and will be paid as much as 30% of subscription revenue per week; editors will earn 5% of subscription revenues, as well as a cut of ad dollars. Technology will dynamically format content to “look great” on any device with a browser, without the need for an app.

“There is clear demand for good content on mobile devices as evidenced by the amazing growth of ebooks and the terrific response the the magazine ‘apps’ launched on the iPad,” sys Edmiston. “We believe that there is even greater potential for content designed from the ground up for mobile rather than taking an existing format and converting it to mobile. For example, freed from over-dependence on advertising inherent in printing monthly magazines, Nomad Editions are produced on a natural cycle of once a week.”

Read the entire story at MediaBuyerPlanner.com.

If you didn’t catch Thursday’s Knowledgewebb webinar “10 Steps to a Tech Savvy You,” you will find it through Aug. 20 posted here.

All of the notes and links are up there, too, so you can grab those if you didn’t take notes during the webinar.

More than 300 of us were online for the webinar — sponsored by Displaced Journalists in celebration of our partnership with the premier digital media training provider. Aside from the 10 steps — and critical websites, social networks and gear — to help you become more tech savvy, Knowledgewebb CEO Amy Webb gave us all a primer on how to manage information overload. It all follows the Knowledgewebb tagline: Don’t sweat the tech!

While you’re on the Knowledgewebb site, check out the offerings. If you reach the KW site through Displaced Journalists, you get 30 percent off the price of a year of unlimited training in digital media tools and entrepreneurial skills. Just go to the Knowledgewebb site and use the discount code: DISPLACED.

Learn and enjoy. — Susan Older

]]> http://displacedjournalists.com/2010/08/07/missed-the-dpj-sponsored-knowledgewebb-webinar/feed/ 0 http://displacedjournalists.com/2010/07/29/debunking-5-myths-of-entrepreneurial-journalism/ http://displacedjournalists.com/2010/07/29/debunking-5-myths-of-entrepreneurial-journalism/#comments Fri, 30 Jul 2010 01:50:34 +0000 Susan Older http://displacedjournalists.com/?p=496 By Jeremy Caplan, Poynter Online Entrepreneurial journalists spot the seeds of start-ups where others see remnants of the news industry’s retreat. Earlier this month, I worked with 19 forward-looking journos who convened at Poynter to get a jumpstart on their new micro-businesses. One narrowed the focus of her niche news site for Filipino Americans, while another refined his [...]]]>

By Jeremy Caplan, Poynter Online

Entrepreneurial journalists spot the seeds of start-ups where others see remnants of the news industry’s retreat. Earlier this month, I worked with 19 forward-looking journos who convened at Poynter to get a jumpstart on their new micro-businesses.

One narrowed the focus of her niche news site for Filipino Americans, while another refined his plan for RootedAustin.com, a local portal for Austin, Texas. The early-stage ideas — like many of the new notions flowing across the journalism landscape — spanned from micro-local sites to services aimed at bolstering journalism’s infrastructure. In prepping to launch their businesses, the journos are moving past some common myths.

Myth No. 1: Journalists lack entrepreneurial skills and spark

Reporters can’t do numbers. Creative types and money don’t mix. So go the stale myths. Stepping beyond that bunk, the reality is that top journalists actually have a range of relevant skills. Many have strong analytical skills, a reportorial mindset and a knack for storytelling, all of which are invaluable in helping a start-up thrive. Read the entire story here on Poynter Online.

Posted on Poynter.org by Andy Medici at 6:25 AM on Jun. 3, 2010

Let’s role-play for a second.

Imagine you are working in an industry that has been battered by the recent recession and rapid advances in technology. Instead of paying for teams of professionals, people are going online to find new content like yours or create their own. The Internet has opened the door to thousands of competitors, all offering content that appeals to just about any niche or taste.

Meanwhile, your legacy company is burdened with an outdated distribution system and is trying desperately to adjust to a new world in which having a local monopoly is not an option.

Sound familiar? Well if you have been working in the adult entertainment industry for the last few years, then this isn’t really news.

In normal times, journalism and the adult entertainment industry would make strange bedfellows. After all, the first is tasked with upholding our democracy and the second is … well, sometimes literally about strange bedfellows.

The two industries share many of the same problems, and a lot of the handwringing can easily be copy and pasted …. Read more at Poynter.org.

By Susan Older

Founder, Displaced Journalists

We have a rapidly growing, multi-talented Facebook community. What shall we do next with this initiative?

As one of our writers, Melanie Kolden, pointed out on our site in March, we really don’t know one another. (Of course, we just started in January.) We share articles, links, and comments. But we seem to have more trouble sharing advice or ideas that we could implement together to improve our collective dilemma.

I’m slowly redesigning the actual site to be more flexible — reinventing myself as a web developer along the way.

Do you want to post yourselves on the site for headhunters and companies seeking smart, seasoned, multi-talented people who just happen to be displaced?

Do you want to find additional tech training, get into other fields, find and finance continuing education? Should we go the route of career fairs, reaching out to headhunters and specific companies?

Could we create one or more content co-ops (definitely not sweatshops) of some sort?

Would you like to do something on an international level? I’m working on one idea already.

We’ve done big things before. Let’s do big things again.

Bring on the ideas — here or on the Facebook page: Displaced Journalists.

By Marcie Eanes

March 17, 2010

Recent upheavals in journalism have left people scratching their heads at this unprecedented level of uncertainty. All the hard work of building a career can easily disappear with a pink slip. After packing up your desk, commiserating with colleagues, and trying to put on a brave front, the question of what to do next is one that’s not easily ignored.

I know. I’ve been on the path of journalistic rediscovery because of residual injuries I sustained in a near-fatal car accident in 1985. I was physically unable to return to the newsroom. At that time, there were few resources, support groups, or even the Internet to help me.

It would have been easy to hold pity parties for myself, especially since my accident happened only six months after graduating from Marquette University in Milwaukee, but unyielding support from family, friends and even my doctors kept me motivated to practice my craft.

The fact that I love being challenged has served me well. In college, professors labeled me as “unfocused” because I took internships in public relations and magazines. I even freelanced instead of just concentrating on school and newspaper reporting. Now I have the satisfaction of knowing that I did the right thing. I am applying nearly every skill I learned from those experiences to create new opportunities. I’ve done copyediting, written for anthologies and promoted authors. Not everything resulted in revenue comparable to what I made as a reporter, but the experiences have kept my skills current.

I’m not afraid to say I’ve failed, either. Ghostwriting is something I won’t do again. After working with three different clients, I found I didn’t have the patience to handle the details required to do it. Difficult clients who didn’t understand the mechanics of editing presented a challenge at first. I would get them to hire me by telling them to do their own comparison shopping before contacting me again. I lost a few, but most returned with few complaints. Still, ghostwriting is not for me.

Exploring related talents that are not newsroom skills has brought me much more satisfaction. After experiencing the deaths of several close relations, including my parents and youngest brother, I began writing poetry.

Initially, I balked at the idea because I didn’t think I could do it. But a friend’s persistence helped me put into words my intense grief. This genre has led me to unexpected places: I’ve been a poet-in-residence for a cable television show and I’ve made appearances on college campuses and other venues around the country.

I recently published my first book, “Sensual Sounds,” which explores love in various forms. I’m also preparing for several book signings – the most special of which will be at my hometown library in Racine, Wisconsin. I’ve also connected with former journalists who are now playwrights, actors, and chefs by joining several groups outside of the journalistic arena.

My advice to any and all displaced journalists is this: Don’t be afraid to try. All those skills you used to perform your job in traditional journalism settings are precisely the ones that will help you find your niche again.

It’s easy to be skeptical, detached and cynical, but it won’t help you pay the bills. Nor will it bring lasting meaning to your life. So widen your social circle. It’s great to have friends in journalism, but myopic thinking will keep you locked in inertia. So many people today are experiencing career upheaval in one form or another. If you have the time, give something back through volunteering or mentoring. Or just breathe. It feels good.

New opportunities often come in unexpected packages.

Our Community member Marcie Eanes explores love in various forms in her new book “Sensual Sounds,” which is now available on Amazon.com.