MIKE MONTALTO

October 9, 2014

8 Tips for Entrepreneurial Journalists

Anyone can launch a website and the content a web site owner can post is limitless. This is why entrepreneurial journalists have to come up with a way to really make their website or proposed project stand out from the crowd. Follow these tips to come up with a successful entrepreneurial journalism project.

Planning the Project

1. Solve a small pain

Is there a problem that you have always wanted to find a way to solve. For example, as gas prices climb higher and higher, people are always looking to get the best value for their dollar at the pump. An idea that an entrepreneurial journalist may come up with as a solution would be a website with a map of local gas stations with their current prices, so bargain hunters know where to go. This problem/solution approach can be taken to almost any topic.

2. Read up on Current Events

If you are having a problem coming up with an issue to solve as an entrepreneurial journalist, it can help to read up on current events to find out what other people think some pains that need a solution for are.

3. Look at what’s already there

It is an entrepreneurial journalist’s nightmare to come up with a great idea for a website, complete the project and launch to find that a similar website is already in existence. It is a good idea to “scout your competition.” You may even be able to improve on and /an/ idea that is already out there.

4. Keep it Fresh

Old news is never good news. Come up with an approach to your website that is new and innovative. The demands of an audience can change at any given time and it is important to keep on top of these changes and adjust content accordingly.

Preparing the Pitch

1. Networking

Once you have a great idea for a new entrepreneurial journalism project, reach out to all of your connections, especially those in positions of authority. It is important to pitch your idea to as many places as you can. You never know who will think you have a great idea. Reach out to the closest and farthest contacts in your networking web.

2. Illustrate Your Pitch With Multimedia

You may think that going in front of people and verbally presenting your pitch may be your best option to get your idea recognized. However, consider using multimedia in your pitch presentation. A video supporting your verbal pitch can better illustrate your goals. A pitch video should answer the questions: Why is the problem you are trying to solve important? How does the solution work and what is innovative about it? Who’s leading the project and how will others get involved?

3. Make the most of spontaneous pitch opportunities

You will not always have time to make the ideal pitch complete with multimedia. Make sure that you are able to summarize the goal of your project in one or two sentences in case you find yourself in an elevator pitch scenario. It also helps to tell an anecdote or story about how the project got started. Also don’t go into heavy details until you are sure the person you are pitching to understands the basic concepts of the project. And always, make sure to follow up on your pitch.

4. Always Be Prepared

Aside from having your thoughts together and having any supporting materials on hand, consider the fact that you will likely have to tailor your pitch to whet whatthe palate of the person you are presenting to. It is important to not only adjust the pitch to the audience, but to also try to improve the pitch each time you present it. Think about what went right and what went wrong and how you can improve it for next time.

I thought this was a good summary of how to get your ideas for websites off the ground…maybe a few spelling mistakes that I wasn’t sure if I could just change or should have brought to your attention but all in all it was good. I liked how you did the step by step route…it’s easier for a column like this that really needs to be told in a step by step process.

September 25, 2014

During late June and July, media outlets across the United States reported on an increasing number of undocumented immigrants crossing the border from Mexico into Texas. The reports focused on significant spike in the number of minors who were making the journey from Latin America to the United States.

According to an article on the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s website, these unaccompanied minors have spread throughout the United States. The site features a table documenting the number of undocumented and unaccompanied minors living in each state.

Many of the states with high numbers make geographical sense, including Texas, Arizona and California, but considering its small size and distance from the Mexican border, it was shocking to see New Jersey was home to 2,171 unaccompanied minors.

One way to localize this story would be to take the streets in communities near my hometown with high numbers of undocumented immigrants, like Red Bank, Freehold and South Amboy.

Aside form my personal knowledge of these towns, I could check with census.gov to get more information on the demographics of each community, and maybe even find information about what parts of the town large numbers of undocumented immigrants live in.

In these communities specifically, I would first ask questions around churches, specifically if there was a Catholic Church in the town. Most of the Hispanic population practices Catholicism, so maybe a priest or a nun would know about an unaccompanied minor in the community.

Another place to get a lead on where an undocumented minor could be living would be at a library. An minor immigrant would likely have no way to access the internet, but would probably want to do so to stay in touch with family, or even search for their family if they don’t know where they are. Today, all library’s have public computers, so if I could ask the librarians if they noticed any young undocumented immigrants in the library recently.

Once I got in touch with a unaccompanied immigrant, communication could be a problem, since I don’t speak any Spanish, but I would want to localize my story by finding out where the child came from, why they chose to come all the way to New Jersey, and how they got here.

Maybe I could even uncover a story as moving as the one told in Sonia Nazario’s book, Enrique’s Journey.

On the book’s website, enriquesjourney.com, the most compelling visual image hits you as soon as the page loads. The cover of the book, a young boy who is assumed to be Enrique is riding on top of a train, looking forward. It makes you wonder what kind of journey he must have had, and what made him so determined to make it to America.

If the website did not have this top banner artwork, and simply started with the links on the top of the page, the viewer would not be nearly as compelled as to what took place on Enrique’s journey and the plight of undocumented immigrant children.

September 18, 2014

There is no doubt that the rise of digital media has changed the face of journalism forever. Gone are the days of reading the Sunday paper to find out about local events, or tuning to a major news television network to get the latest national and global news.

Instead, today’s form of journalism, dominated by online media outlets, news delivery is expected as soon as an event happens. No one wants to wait for the six o’clock news or the weekly paper anymore. This has led to a major ethical issue for today’s online journalists.

In Stephen J.A. Ward’s article on the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Journalism Ethics website, he states that “speed puts pressure on newsrooms to publish stories before they are adequately checked and verified as to the source of the story and the reliability of the alleged facts.”

Part of this new form of journalism is not only to deliver the news as fast as possible, but also to engage the audience in a discussion with the news media through social media platforms. Journalists at Forbes today are encouraged to build their own brands and take accountability for their own success.

At Forbes and other adapting news corporations, journalists use social media to banter with news consumers, giving a new meaning to the term news analysis.

In chapter two of his book, Entrepreneurial Journalism, Mark Briggs gives advice to aspiring entrepreneurial journalists about launching their own website. His fist bit of advice relates directly to how the staff at Forbes is currently working.

Briggs urges the reader to remember that their journalism project is a consumer product as well as a piece of media. In other words, the content on a website must be appealing to readers, not just the website’s author. In a world where new websites are sprouting up every day, consumers have an endless amount of sources to choose from.

Briggs argues that the media product needs to be designed for the consumer in order to attract an audience in today’s oversaturated media market.

Another piece of advice that Briggs offers in chapter two of his book is to find a niche, meaning that a website should have one specific topic to focus on. This allows readers who are interested in a certain type of information to become loyal to a niche site that caters to their interests.

Trueblueiamaranger.wordpress.com is a niche website that gives users detailed information about the New York Rangers NHL hockey team. The website is supported by social media via Facebook and Twitter and provides breaking news and rumors about all things Rangers, including game previews, recaps, trade rumors and prospect updates.

Not only does the website provide up to the minute news and information on the New York Rangers, it keeps users coming back with ticket giveaways and raffles for Rangers games and by encouraging feedback from users. On their Twitter and Facebook web pages, users engage in conversation with each other and the True Blue administrators. True Blue – I am a Ranger is doing just what other new and successful online media sources are doing, creating a consumer product out of a media project.

The new wave of journalism is here.

September 11, 2014

It is no secret that the Internet has a profound impact on the way that the world works today. In fact, simply writing and publishing this column would have been nearly impossible 25 years ago, when the Internet was invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

Since its begging in 1995, the percentage of American adults who use the Internet has steadily increased. In 1995, only 14 percent of American adults used the Internet, compared to 87 percent in 2014 according to a report by the Pew Research Internet Project.

According to the report, digital technology is becoming increasingly viewed as essential to adult Americans, even over older mediums that Americans previously saw essential. In 2006, only 38 percent of Internet users said they would have found the Internet hard to give up, compared to 53 percent in 2014. On the contrary, in 2006, 44 percent of people said it would be difficult to give up television, compared to just 35 percent in 2014 according to the report.

It is apparent that the Internet is rising to the forefront of how people want to receive and share information, and in today’s world, is viewed by many as essential for communication, work and entertainment.

This study also reported that people who use the Internet are now using it much more often than they were 15 years ago. In 2000, just 29 percent of adults claimed that they used the Internet every day, compared to 71 percent in 2014.

Because of this rise in daily usage, the Internet has had a lot of impact on the coverage of one of the most tragic events of the last 15 years, the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Ever since the dust initially settled from the attacks, people desperate for answers have often become susceptible to believing conspiracy theories about the attacks. People believe a wide array of misinformation about the attacks, including that they were an inside job by the United States government or believing that bombs, not passenger airplanes, destroyed the World Trade Center.

In an article published earlier today on ibtimes.com, author Maria Vultaggio claims that the rise of the internet in the time since the attacks “made it easier than ever to spread alternative suspicions about what ‘really’ happened.”

Vultaggio wrote that United States citizens have a growing distrust of the government because of events like the Vietnam War and the Watergate wiretapping scandal and with the secrecy of government agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency.

Because of this distrust, Vultaggio said that the Internet has helped conspiracy theorists to convince more people to believe them. She claims that the Internet makes it easier for people to spread false information and combined with people using the Internet to validate their own opinions, many 9/11 conspiracy theories gained momentum in the months and years following the terrorist attacks.

While it can be argued that the Internet has made discovering new information and communication a part of daily life over the past 25 years, it is apparent that in some cases, misinformation can be spread over the Internet and can alter people’s views and conceptions. This is apparent in the Internet’s role in the evolution of 9/11 conspiracy theories.