Can journalists make it as entrepreneurs?
Richard Branson shares top tips
As we enter a new decade that’s likely to hold greater challenges for freelance journalists than ever, Tom Hill asks whether we can combine our creativity with business sense to become part of the new breed of journalist entrepreneurs.
Four decades have now passed since 1969, the year portrayed in Withnail and I. Back then Danny The Drugdealer, inventor of the infamous Camberwell Carrot, was counting down to the end of the Sixties and predicting, “there’s going to be a lot of refugees”.
Bruce Robinson’s brilliant script doesn’t tell us what the future was to hold for his two penniless hippy thespians, but we’re left assuming it might be rep for Marwood and emotional wreck for Withnail.
But here’s a different ending to consider: spool forward to 2010 and Withnail and Marwood are both billionaire tycoons with Caribbean island retreats and they have both written bestselling books on making money.
Implausible? Well, maybe not. Consider two of their contemporaries, who might almost have been Withnail and Marwood’s neighbours. As fledgling journalists writing for teenagers and members of the so-called “counter culture”, Richard Branson and Felix Dennis were also learning lessons about the magazine business.
Their magazines, Student and Oz, may have disappeared from the newsstands, but their books Screw it, Let’s Do it and How to Get Rich have replaced them. Both books prove that journalists can be entrepreneurs and very successful ones at that.
However, the transition from reporting, subbing and story-telling to a world of margins, turnover and selling may seem like a perilous journey into the unknown for many journalists.
Embark on a journalistic journey
It’s a journey that I embarked upon about four years ago, when I decided to establish Up To Speed Journalism, a centre offering people who want to follow in my footsteps a chance to break into journalism. The idea of our journalism courses is to combine the traditional training I received from the National Council for the Training of Journalists with the lessons I learned while working as a reporter in newspapers, radio and television.
Our eighth Fast-Track course starts in a few weeks and the business now employs four people. Together, we’ve helped people to change career and our students have gone on to work as writers and reporters for newspapers, magazines and websites.
In recent months, Up To Speed has also begun offering a production service in video, audio and text for people running corporate blogs and social media pages. These journalism production skills are now very much in demand, but I have also found that the tenacity, creativity and energy I needed to be a reporter have also served me well as an entrepreneur.
Identify the gap in the media market
For Tom Nicolson, 25, the transition to business came while he was travelling in South America after taking a degree in Multi-Media Journalism at Bournemouth University. He saw there was a gap in the market for an English language newspaper aimed at backpackers in Quito and founded the Ecuador Reporter in September, 2007. Tom found he was able to draw on many of his journalism skills.
“As journalists you should be looking around you the entire time, looking for contacts, for opportunities to find stories and for news angles,” says Tom. “That is essentially what an entrepreneur does, it’s just that it involves money as well.”
Tom sold the Ecuador Reporter in April, 2009 and is now back in the UK preparing to invest in his next venture, an English language newspaper for Ibiza called The Ibiza Paper.
He finds that creating new newspapers satisfies his creative instincts.
“Journalists have all the tools for creation, it’s what we do every day.” And Tom has very simple advice for anyone concerned about financial management.
“Are you taking in more than you are spending? That’s the only question you need to think about.”
Pick your media launch venture
Ali Wood, 31, was a staff journalist working for IPC magazines when she identified an opportunity to launch a listings magazine for the Bournemouth area. She had been putting money aside for two years and invested her savings in her own publishing business in February 2007.
The first edition of Listed came out in April of that year. More than two and half years later and the magazine is going from strength to strength, but Ali has learned some valuable lessons along the way.
“Before I started I asked readers what they’d like to see in the magazine. However, if I were to do it again, I would concentrate more on what advertisers and customers would like to see rather than just focusing on readers.”
As the publisher of a smaller magazine, she feels the sales and editorial teams need to be very much aware of each other. However, as a businesswoman, Ali feels she is still using her creative instincts.
“For instance, in the summer months, when many of our readers are away on holiday, we have to look for stories with more appeal to families and so we produce a Family Section as a way of attracting different revenue.”
Choose a topic to specialise in as a journalist
Those family days out might well appeal to Mike Scott, who’d just bought a house and become a father for the first time when he decided to leave a staff job as a sub-editor on the Financial Times to form Mike Scott Communications.
Like many successful entrepreneurs Mike, 40, had identified a niche. He specialises in stories about business and the environment.
With a mortgage and a family to consider, Mike laid careful foundations for his enterprise, studying part-time for an MSc in Environmental Science and gradually building up a freelance portfolio in the area during his last year at the FT.
“When I started out I was writing pieces for the FT, which helped a lot, and it was also at a time when businesses were just beginning to get excited about the environment,” says Mike.
Mike recognised the importance of building up repeat business early on and he produces regular newsletters and editorial pieces for corporate clients as well as taking on one-off commissions.
However, he found it took some effort to adjust from freelance journalism to commercial work.
“When you’re writing as a freelance journalist, you tend to know what the rate is for a particular publication. In the commercial world, there’s no accepted price and one of the most difficult things when I started out was knowing how much to charge.”
The benefits of being your own boss
Mike has certainly found that his decision to work for himself has had a profound impact on the rest of his life.
“When I was at the FT I was working in London from 4pm until gone midnight every day. Now, my office is close to home and my working week is more flexible. When my daughter started school, I was able to take time off to be around.”
So, as we start a new decade, the challenge for many journalists is to shrug off the mantle of the reluctant entrepreneur and use their skills and instincts to get up to speed with business and create a new opportunity for themselves.
Tom Hill is running a short course on Entrepreneurial Journalism as part of a special mix and match MA in Media at Bournemouth University.
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Thanks for a really inspiring article. Now if only I had a million pound idea to get started….