I’m spending the rest of this week prepping the sickest PowerPoint presentation the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ annual convention has ever seen. The show, going down in Denver next week, certainly won’t be for the faint of heart — lasers, a smoke machine and vuvuzelas will be used to drive my bulleted points home. Combine that with the mile-high altitude, and there’s bound to be at least one nosebleed in the audience.
For those who won’t be in attendance, here’s the abridged version of what I have to say: Entrepreneurial journalists must be entrepreneurs first, journalists second. Period.
That’s not to say that hyperlocalists and other journopreneurs must toss out the separation of church and state, that quality content and good reporting should fall victim to greed. I’m a big advocate for the “emotional value” of hyperlocal journalism. As I’ve written previously:
But keeping a newsroom in that high gear requires money. Writers’ salaries must be paid. Equipment must be maintained. Transportation to and from news events must be covered. Even the most altruistic volunteer would find it difficult to run a news organization full time without an income to pay the rent or mortgage, or at least some compensation for expenses incurred.
The news business is just that — a business. It’s how big-box operations like AOL and Yahoo! News approach things, and hyperlocalists should do the same. Hyperlocalists are likely to leverage that emotional value to earn sponsors and donors, whereas the big boxes rely on volume to drive page views and advertising revenue.
But the goal — to generate profit or at least revenue — is the same, regardless of the news organization’s size or even its nonprofit status. (Yes, nonprofits need money too. They just reinvest it into their core missions, instead of distributing it to investors.)
It’s a bitter pill. Choke it down.
Photo courtesy of Flickr user Micah Taylor.