Can a good journalist be a good capitalist? Yes.
Carnival of Journalism is a monthly event when a group of us share our posts on a common topic to bring discussion to the goings on in our trade. It’s also a great place to exchange ideas with smart people! Comments welcome.
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I’m excited to contribute to this month’s carnival, because I’ve blogged about this topic before. As personal background, I worked in marketing before I went for my master’s in journalism and can relate to vocation driven by the bottom line, perhaps more than the average journalist.
Now, I work with a technology startup (innovating in the news space) which is key to my argument here. As noted, “ there is an instinctive aversion to the idea of making money amongst most journalists.” Even when I worked at a luxury lifestyle magazine (in Orange County, no less) it seemed assumed that I should be content with perks and an opportunity to write, and never expect to make much in terms of salary.
These varied experiences have given me a bit of insight into why news startups aren’t raking in cash. They don’t want to. They want to break even. They want a working business model. They want to run a lifestyle business.
The difference between a lifestyle business and a venture capital funded company is that a company funded by VCs expects to bring a 10x return to its investors within a couple years. Startup founders are taking a risk in hopes of getting rich, but for the most part, they’re not greedy — they’re creative. They want to build something totally new, that makes people’s lives better — in many cases, gives back to society. But, despite this, their work and innovation is driven by the bottom line. They don’t just have to make enough money to cover expenses, they need to turn every dollar spent into $10.
Journalists don’t have this drive. They’re creative in problem solving, in words, in many areas. Some journalists do make it big, becoming authors of bestselling books, or moving into media consulting. My hope is that entrepreneurial journalism draws a crowd of new-generation journalists who desire to create, to give back, but also ready to make bank (and not be apologetic about it).
Diamonds are created by pressure (a popular analogy). I think great innovation needs the kind of pressure that comes only from something powerful like cash flow. It’s one of those things, like religion and politics, that we’re not supposed to talk about at cocktail parties. It hits us deep in our psyche.
Saying that journalists need to nurse a greater desire for financial gain seems a weird argument. But at the end of the day, I think the despair in our industry is not because our business model broke, but because we weren’t innovating our product. But more on that later.
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