I’ve long argued that the news industry’s current economic crisis is due in large part to a lack of R&D. It’s not in the DNA. For too many decades, the products didn’t change and the profits rolled in.

Now, entrepreneurial journalism is working to fill that void.

In the recent issue of Inc. magazine, William Dunkelberg, chief economist at the National Federation of Independent Business offered this key insight in the overview piece on the Inc. 500:

“Entrepreneurs are the R&D for the economy.”

Hopefully, they will be the R&D for the news business, too. We all know it needs them.

True research and development means painstaking pursuit of an idea. It’s not the try-it-today, ditch-it-tomorrow model that most news organizations are forced to use since the innovators are the same people managing the daily news report.

I think it’s up to them – dare I say “us” – to help save the news business.

I was pointed to a recent column in the Philadelphia Weekly written by a Temple journalism professor who argues that there has never been a more inspiring time to be a journalist.

It’s an argument I tried to make in Journalism 2.0 and one I still believe.

Of course it’s a difficult argument to make these days since the institutions that conduct a majority of the journalism in the U.S. have fallen on such hard time.

But the author argues, that’s not the point. News companies are struggling, but journalism is thriving. Then he offers some sage advice:

The future of journalism isn’t working for the Man, I tell my students. It’s being the Man.

As someone who is in the process of leaving the newspaper business after 15 years, I couldn’t agree more.

I’m casting my fate in a movement called entrepreneurial journalism because the practice of informing an audience with interesting, important information will always be part of our society.

But the current business models are broken. So let’s go find what’s next.