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 Logan Braman
Special for Displaced Journalists

I’m a journalist, but I don’t consider myself displaced. If anything, I’d say I’m a journalist who has been set free. I, along with three co-founders, just launched the first part of Rooted Austin, a local news portal for Austin, Texas. We think it’s the best time to be in the business of journalism, and you should too.

The journalist part of me started growing when I was very young. I remember reading two newspapers a day, every day. Surprisingly, Fort Wayne, Ind. is still a two-newspaper town. I loved every bit of the papers, but the features and comics sections always got my attention first. I was a voracious reader anyway, and the newspapers became part of my daily routine. I thought it would be neat to be one of the people writing the stories or taking the pictures, but I didn’t really think I would do it in the future. I thought I was going to be a Blue Angels pilot. I never thought I could find something more exciting than that in journalism, but I have.

I didn’t use the computer every day when I was young, but my time with it increased quickly as college approached. By the time I got my first laptop, about 90 percent of my news consumption took place online. This trend continued through my time at Ball State University when I was completing the requirements for my magazine journalism and journalism graphics majors. I worked for the student newspaper and magazines (both print and digital) and eventually found myself creating and consuming news in an almost purely digital format.

When I got a smartphone, the amount of information I consumed in any kind of print medium dropped to almost nothing. I tend to be interested in how the tools I use work, so the next step of my journalism education included mobile development. The mobile aspect of things also pushed me to familiarize myself with social media more than I had in the past.

I worked at a professional newspaper, and the state of the industry was scary. People were taking buyouts, layoffs were in the future, and everyone was working at breakneck pace to get the basic product out the door. It was (and still is) a great paper, but it was an environment where the revenue generator (the paper) came before everything else. It needed to be that way, but I wanted to focus more on the Web and its potential. I lived on the Web, and the people like me did too.

All that goes to show you why I think the way I do about journalism and information in general. The future (at least for people like me) will mean everything comes on a screen of some kind. According to a 2009 study by the Council for Research Excellence, we already spend an average of about 8.5 hours a day in front of some kind of screen. It doesn’t seem like that can increase, but I know my average is around 12 hours in front of a screen on a work day.

It’s simple then. The future is on screen, whether it be a television, desktop computer, laptop, netbook, tablet, mobile or something completely new. What isn’t so simple is figuring out the future and, for some, switching gears to make it work.

That’s where the idea of Rooted came from. I knew I wanted to continue my work in digital journalism, and there just weren’t any jobs in traditional media that fit the bill. At best, the digital jobs involved limited multimedia creation, and at worst they were all about social media and shoveling everything out of a print product to the online space. Fortunately, three other talented journalists were in the same boat, so we decided to make a run at a journalism start-up on our own.

If we couldn’t find the jobs we wanted then we would make them.

We want Rooted to be Austin’s home page. We will curate the best of existing news and give users the tools to tell us what’s important. When we find a story our community loves, we’ll step in and fertilize the story with our own special blend of storytelling.

We think storytelling that is based on what the community wants can be monetized. We also think the storytelling should be deep, immersive and interactive on the Web. Text and photos are fine for presenting information, but we also want to take advantage of sound, video and motion graphics to help us tell the stories of Austin. Perhaps most importantly, we want the people themselves to tell the story in their voice or with their likeness as much as possible. Eventually, we plan on including text, photos and videos from our community on Rooted as well.

Another crucial component for Rooted’s success is interaction with the community. We think it’s important for journalists to be completely transparent and open with information. We already do it on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and we’re going to do it in our work as well. We want to be seen as the people we are, and we hope that will lead to richer and fuller community interaction. On the Web, it’s less about the organization and more about the people – when it comes to both creators and users alike.

Can we make it profitable? I think so. More importantly, can we provide something of value to the Austin community? If we do it right, certainly. What should other journalists do? That’s where the answers get a bit harder.

I decided to do what I love. You should too. If you have an entrepreneurial streak, find a good idea with a revenue stream to support it and go for it. You’ll notice I didn’t say, “If you have a good journalism idea,” and that’s because there are opportunities everywhere for people with the skills we journalists have gathered over the years. You also don’t have to have the great idea in the first place. If you see a start-up you want to work at, go pitch yourself with all the passion you have

Get outside of your journalism-only mindset if that’s where you find yourself. If you’re an information junkie, find someone who will pay you to gather data. If you’re a wordsmith who loves finding the exact word for the job, then find someone who needs beautifully written copy. If you’re a designer, branch into a different area that utilizes your specific skills. If you’re interested in the Web, get a programming book and start learning a new language.

I followed my passions and the result is Rooted. You can follow your passions to anything, so long as you have the passion. As a fellow journalist, I know finding something you can pursue with relentless energy isn’t the problem. So get out there and do it!

Send Logan a message at logan@rootedaustin.com. Find Logan on Twitter at twitter.com/lmbraman.

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.

[Jeff Israely, a Time magazine foreign correspondent in Europe, is in the planning stages of a news startup — a "new global news website." He details his experience as a new news entrepreneur at his site, but he'll occasionally be describing the startup process here at the (Neiman Journalism) Lab. —Josh]

I realized not long ago that it’s been one full year since that night I drifted off to sleep, (suddenly) secure in the knowledge that this was going to be the new passion and focus of my professional life. With the future looking grim for any single foreign correspondent, it was time to commit to the one good idea I’d been mulling for awhile: a unique, cost-efficient way to produce high-profile world news content online. It would be a few more months before I would actually be operative, but I dozed off that night knowing that with a lot of hard work, a few good friends, and a couple of million pesos of funding, all would fall into place.

How I got to that late-night clarity is a long, not very fascinating story. But what has happened since — both much more and much less than I could have envisioned that night — may be of some interest for those tracking or taking part in the figuring out of where the news business is heading. Banging it out here will certainly be of use to me, to give a quick hard once-over at my past mistakes, and return to the counsel of Lesson No. 11 below.

So here’s the run down of the would-be lessons that I’ve learned — and keep on trying to learn.

1. ‘Plan A’ will not work…. Read more at Neiman Journalism Lab