Some thoughts on entrepreneurial journalism

I suppose it's time to seriously think about all the new Internet news sites being set up by formerly-employed journalists -- and some unemployed former students who can't find jobs. If one accepts the premise, as I do, that we've entered into an era of the entrepreneurial journalist who must create her/his job, then these sites become somewhat viable and something that all journalists, student or working, should be watching.

In the old era, there were entrepreneurial journalist already. They just created jobs within a larger organization. For example, I created a beer and brewing beat at the Milwaukee Journal, and leveraged it into a nationally-syndicated column that had some success (it was in 28 newspapers regularly at its high point) despite coming before the Internet made such syndication easy.

The point of all this is that journalists today can create their own job, even if they are in other areas. For example, I know one who is a dining columnist although her paying job is that of a webmaster for a magazine. Another is a successful free lance writer; her paying job is that of a nanny (an excellent occupation for one who wants to write). Another is a teacher, who is writing a book. The point is that there are options for journalists, and not being employed in journalism isn't a bar to journalism.