Entrepreneurial Journalism is gaining in interest, first in the United States, but now also increasinglyin Europe and in the Netherlands. This can be explained by a combination of factors. Firstly,reorganisations and substantial lay-offs in recent years at news publishers, especially of regionalnewspapers, have resulted in a growing number of freelancers and self-employed journalists. Theyneed to be entrepreneurial in order to develop their specialism and brand, pitch their stories andnegotiate their contracts. Secondly, many newspapers or broadcast organisations are in a process oftransforming into fully digital organisations. They adopt a digital first strategy or develop new onlineservices that aim to provide added value for which users and advertisers are willing to pay. Thirdly,there is a growing number of journalistic start-ups that launch innovative journalism services andthat search for viable business models.Although self-employed journalists, traditional news organisations and start-ups are different entities,they have a number of challenges in common. They need to innovate faster and more frequentlythan before. They need to acquire new competences or collaborate in multidisciplinary teams, asdigital services often require a combination of traditional journalism skills with for instance ICT, data-analysis, visualisation and social media skills. They also need competences to communicate withaudiences, to invite them to contribute with their experiences or expertise, to build communities andto find and develop audiences not just for the full newspaper or news broadcast, but increasinglyalso for single stories or topics. Developing new business models, including new ways of advertising,user-payment, exploitation of user data, extra services, sponsorship, crowd funding or governmentsubsidies are also essential. Only by developing new business models can a future proof journalisminfrastructure be created that can continue to fulfil its public and democratic functions. Last but notleast, many of these activities require collaboration, within news organisations between individualsand departments with different skills, but also in many cases with individuals and companies fromoutside.Many of these activities used to be the exclusive domain of the marketing, sales and business departmentsof news and journalism organisations. They used to be separated by a ‘Chinese Wall’ fromthe editorial desks, in order to protect editorial independence against commercial interests. In thedigital domain this no longer works, as many of the innovations, audience development activities andnew business and collaborative models require involvement of both sides. This might cause tensionsbetween editorial and business objectives, but these tensions need to be solved in new ways.Our research group Entrepreneurial Journalism at Windesheim intends to support news and journalismorganisations in the Netherlands, both traditional and start-ups, with applied research and practicalresults. We focus on the factors that contribute to success and failure of a digital first strategyand other innovations, of developing an innovation minded learning culture and of new businessand collaborative models. We do this through a combination of qualitative methods, including casestudies and interviews and through analysing the failures and successes of journalistic organisationshere and abroad. We intend to shape and sharpen our research questions by listening to the needs ofjournalistic organisations and to organize an interactive process in which journalistic organisationscan benefit from our results.
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