The April issue of Inc. magazine contains a fascinating interview with Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and Built to Last, two of the most famous and well-respected business books ever written.

The title is “In times like these, you get a chance to show your strength.” As you might assume, the focus is navigating through the recession as a business or an entrepreneur.

One of the concepts I’ve been trying to relay to to people at news companiesfor some time is: welcome to the world of business. Now that the internet has disrupted publishing monopolies, media houses find themselves dealing with the same unpredictable challenges that other businesses have faced for decades.

Collins deftly describes the situation using an array of metaphors and analogies. (I’d point you to the intervew, but it doesn’t appear to be online yet.) My favorite is his climbing analogy. See if you can identify the legacy news business in the following passage:

“Most poeple are in the comfort of base camp, and the can go on doing what they’re doing even if there is a big storm,” Collins said. “But the people who wake up high on that mountain in a howling storm are in grave danger, like the technology people after the bubble burst. It hit me that we’re all heading up there, whether we like it or not. We’re heading into a world characterized by big events, big forces, massive storms. We’re going to be vulnerable little specks high on the mountain when the storm hits out of nowhere. And if we’re not prepared, we’re going to die up there. Or we’re going to be in real serious trouble.”

For those in business today, and that means most every journalist, it’s time to get out of the bunker (mode) and find a way to get back down the mountain to the safety, warmth and comfort of base camp. Digging in and covering up and hoping the storm goes away just isn’t going to cut it; for a news company, or any other business competing in this uncertain world today.

It’s time for innovation, action and even risk.

My colleague at Serra Media, Scott Falconer, recently returned from the South by Southwest Interactive Conference with an interesting idea about paying for news, based on the Guy Kawasaki/Chris Anderson keynote.

Using Photoshop as an example, Anderson said that a free web version of Photoshop would not seem as high of quality to users because we have been conditioned that a premium photo editing program costs $900, therefore a free version cannot be as good.

“To me, the same seems to hold true to newspapers,” Scott said. “It’s a semantic issue; calling something a blog holds its own expectations because it has always been free. The same goes for CNN/Fox News/Talk Radio. It’s all in perspective.”

He suggested a different subscription model that might differentiate a journalism start-up from the rest of the Webosphere: Put together a team of experienced, accomplished journalists to participate in a small online collective and charge a one-time, $10 lifetime fee to read it.

Less of a revenue model, it could improve the brand value of the organization.

Of course, you’d need to be creative with marketing and making sure word gets out. Scott, who is a tech guy and not a journalist, suggested leaving holes in the paid wall and leaking out a few logins/passwords so, suddenly, people would feel like they’re getting a deal. Throw some Twitter and blogs by the writers into the mix for extra exposure and it just might work.

Not for big media houses, of course, since they have huge legacy cost structures to replace. But maybe for start-ups running lean and mean, it could be a way to create instant brand value. You wouldn’t be able to charge much, of course. The Web is not littered with free Photoshop software solutions, after all. But membership makes a difference, as NPR’s growth illustrates.

Big media houses should be paying attention to National Public Radio and the momentum it has right now. And I’m not talking about the non-profit, pledge-drive business model that gets tossed around as a possible panacea for newspapers’ revenue woes.

I’m talking about audience growth.

According to this profile in Fast Company, NPR’s audience grew 95.6% between 1998-2008 while newspapers saw their audience decline 11.4% and the audience for network TV news fell 28%.

Instead of standing pat, NPR has made a number of key hires, including a new CEO, Vivian Schiller, who came on board in January. In the Fast Company article, she provides the money quote:

“I’ve worked in a lot of big media companies now,” she says. “I mean, this is my fifth [The New York Times, Discovery Channel, CNN, TBS], and I’ve never seen such a connection between the institution and the audience members. The power of that is extraordinary. The journalism and the credibility — that’s the obvious stuff. It’s the personal connection that’s the secret sauce.”

A personal connection is something local newspapers and TV stations talk about but have yet to fully leverage. NPR, with its network of local anchors and reporters, provides the brand with local authenticity to complement its national/global gravitas. It’s a powerful combination.

NPR has also made the most of its new media opportunities, boasting 14 million monthly podcast downloads and 8 million Web visitors. On Inauguration Day, more than 40,000 people sent updates from around the world by YouTube, SMS, Twitter, Flickr and iPhone. (An NPR listener actually developed an iPhone app. Any newspaper readers done this yet?)

Kinsey Wilson, former co-executive editor of USA Today, is now general manager for digital media. Wilson has been traveling the online journalism circuit as a speaker at newspaper and related conferences for years (not sure I can remember attending a conference where Wilson wasn’t a speaker)  and knows the culture inside and out. So his take on the culture at NPR is especially instructive.

“One of the things that struck me as a newcomer is the strong sense of optimism that still pervades the organization,” Wilson said. “It stands in quite stark contrast to the atmosphere you encounter in newsrooms these days. There is still a very strong passion around the mission, what we’re able to do on a day-to-day basis. And that may be fairly unique.”

It’s more difficult than ever to foster a positive culture inside a media house – I recently heard one newsroom editor call the attitude “fatalistic” – but there’s really no other option. Find positive examples like NPR to guide you and develop personal connections with your audience.

It may not save the company, but it might improve your community and open some doors you didn’t know existed. Which, after all, isn’t a bad thing to do if you think you might be out of a job soon.

Quick reminder that I’ll be doing a live chat for Poynter today titled: “Entrepreneurial Journalism: How Journalism Can Survive Beyond Legacy Institutions.”

As a starter thought, consider two qualities essential to an entrepreneurial approach: risk and optimism. Turns out most journalists aren’t wired for either, and that’s been a huge problem during this painful transition into the digital age.

Join us at 1 p.m. ET for more: http://www.poynter.org/.

ABC World News Tonight anchor Charles Gibson entertained several hundred college journalists and their advisors in New York yesterday. He was witty, warm and engaging (see poor iPhone photo).

Unfortunately, he was also dangerously out of touch. The sky is falling and it’s your fault, he told the audience. But you can still make up for it if you buy printed newspapers while pursuing a career in journalism. (After all, “there’s no better career,” he said.)

Gibson began with a somber rehash of newspapers cutting jobs and going out of business. “The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is gone — gone,” he said with dramatic effect.

After blaming young people for getting their news online for free, he went on to blame Google (and his “good friend Eric Schmidt”) and even threw citizen journalists under the bus at one point.

Fortunately, during the Q&A, a couple of students resisted the star-struck approach of other questioners and asked him to account for such statements. One even asked Gibson to respond to Clay Shirky’s suggestion that we don’t need newspapers, we just need journalism. Gibson replied that Shirky is “full of crap” and that we are a “long way away” from any web site being able to provide the complete package of news and information in the form of a financially sustainable business like newspapers of the past 30 years.

Gibson is looking for an exact replica of the New York Times online that generates the same revenue as the print product did 15 years ago. He wants the complete package on one web site, apparently only able to recognize greatness by largesse. What if that same quality  journalism found on different sections of the Times web site today were actually separate web sites that were each profitable in their own right? How is that less important, effective or trustworthy than one organization that offers all of them?

I see a future where foreign reporting, local news, political coverage, business news, sports, arts coverage and more will thrive on separate sites, possibly under separate ownership. And this won’t be a problem for the user since aggregation makes it easy to get this as one package.

You have heard of RSS, haven’t you Charlie?

“The problem is we have to figure out a new way to report that will be remunerative to the point that it will support local journalism,” Gibson replied. “I’m afraid newspapers let the genie out of bottle when they put things on web for free.”

(He went on to say that Time magazine’s piece on micropayments “seems to be the most promising idea.”)

Disruption is not pretty. I have several friends who lost their newspaper jobs this week. But standing in front of the next generation of journalists without delivering at least a glimmer of hope for the future is simply irresponsible for someone of such stature.

Gibson had an opportunity to paint a picture of possibility, like Shirky, Johnson, Jarvis, Yelvington and Anderson recently did. Instead, he basically said “it sucks” and “it’s your fault.”

The students in the audience, who will cherish their snapshots of the famous newsman and were hanging on his every word, needed hope and possibility, not blame and regret.

There is no time to look back, only forward.

I’m in New York this week attending the College Media Advisers convention which brings together advisers and college journalists in the name of doing better journalism on campus. Yes, I feel very old.

Yesterday I spoke on a panel about building a web site with open source technologies. I’ve been doing some consulting in this area, helping navigate colleges through the maze of available content management system (CMS) solutions that are available.

But first things first. What do you want your site to do, I asked? Start with a list of wants, then prioritize them into needs, preferably ranked by importance. (The next part of the equation, of course, is to assess your resources, both in budget and staff. But that’s too deep a pool to jump into here.)

Since I had compiled a starter list for one my clients, I shared it with those at the session yesterday and am also posting it here. If you have have other suggestions or have seen better lists elsewhere, please chime in.

Wish list for college media CMS

I. Flexible design
- Separate layout for homepage, index pages and story pages
- CSS // XHTML
- CSS control over media player, blog pages
- Ability to launch blank pages and populate with embeddables or feeds
- Ability to add/delete sections

II. Powerful story publishing
- Headline, body, byline, tags, sections, geotag, related links
- Add photo, audio, video, Flash graphic, embeddables (eg. Google maps)
- One expiration for display, another for purge (so URL remains alive)
- Headline appears in title and URL for SEO
- Allow users to comment
- Option to moderate, approve
- Option to not allow comments on certain stories

III. Publish multiple blogs
- Standard blog features
- Embeddables OK
- Separate CSS theme control on every blog

IV. Publish video or slideshow
- Headline, body, byline, tags, sections, geotag, related links
- One expiration for display, another for purge (so URL remains alive)
- Headline appears in title and URL for SEO
- Allow users to comment
- Option to moderate, approve
- Option to not allow comments on certain stories

V. Event calendar tool
- Allow users to submit events

VI. Email newsletters
- Publish from section or blog or events category

VII. RSS feeds
- From sections, blogs, events category

VIII. Site registration
- Integrated with Facebook Connect

IX. Search
- Full text
- By byline of author, photographer or videographer

X. Advertising
- Schedule, track text and banner advertising
- Self-service text ads targeted by section

One of the issues that commonly arises in any discussion about independent journalism start-ups is liability. Working for a large news company, journalists feel protected against libel lawsuits since they corporate counsel on their side. But when you go it alone, you’re completely exposed.

I appeared on a panel at a recent workshop in Seattle sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists when the question came up. Those of us on the panel and several veteran freelancers in the audience seemed to agree that, given the cost of liability insurance and the unlikely event that someone with shallow pockets would get sued, it’s not something to lose sleep over.

So I asked David Ardia, the director of the Citizen Media Law Project at the Berkman Center at Harvard for his take.
He acknowledged the cost concerns, but is strongly in favor of insurance:

I think liability insurance is very important.  While legal counsel can help to fend off liability, if a publisher loses the lawsuit, they will be on the hook for damages.  Unfortunately, most insurance carriers price their insurance products well above what a small journalism startup can afford.

So one option is the “high deductible approach:” find a good lawyer to use if you get sued instead of paying monthly premiums for liability insurance. If you’re just starting out, this might be your only option.

David added that this issue is covered in detail in the center’s legal guide, which is a must-visit site for anyone launching a new journalism start-up:  http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/finding-insurance.

Recently I put a call out for votes and suggestions on what my next book should be called. I want to thank everyone who responded and figured I owed you a look at the results. (I will let you know when we settle on a title, too.)

I received 59 responses via my LinkedIn query and 15 from my blog survey. Unfortunately, the winner was “D: None of the Above.”

Here’s the breakdown:

A. Journalism 3.0: 17
B. Interactive Journalism: 20
C. Journalism 2010: 6
D. None of the above: 27
Most recommended suggestion: Journalism 2.1 (3)

My favorite suggestion was “Journalism Next.”

Continue Reading »

By Jason Preston, Eat Sleep Publish

When you’re looking at making the transition from print (as a medium) to the internet (as a medium), one of the most important things that you can wrap your brain around is the concept of failure.

Online, failure is not only common, it’s celebrated. Just recently the New York Times ran a short spot on Evan Williams, one of the founders of Twitter, and about his record of failed or errant startups.

Speaking of the New York Times, does anyone think much worse of them for having tried Times Select? Although they might mince words saying so, it was a failure.

Are Facebook users leaving in droves after the recent outcry about the unannounced changes in their terms of service? Nope – in fact they’re signing up at the rate of 1 million per week.

All of this is to say that there is no rule book online. There are no pre-set Right Ways and Wrong Ways. There are literally thousands of people who will charge you lots of money to tell you what you should and shouldn’t do online. Screw ‘em.

Here’s what you should do: jump.

The internet is not a kitchen appliance. There is no manual that tells you where not to stick your fingers, and how to set the clock. Even better, there’s no risk of electrocution.

If you can embrace this spirit of experimentation, then you are a new media pioneer.

That’s all there really is to it – a willingness to sign up on a new service, click on links and buttons, and see what happens. Think about how it might work for journalism. Think about how it might work for you.

Jason is the founding editor of Eat Sleep Publish, a blog about the future of publishing. You can subscribe to his RSS feed here.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time recently extolling the virtues of entrepreneurial thinking for journalists in today’s digitally disrupted world. At a newspaper conference in Las Vegas this week, I’m seeing some exciting examples of entrepreneurial approaches for the business side of online newspaper operations.

Mostly, however, I’m hearing stories of the same organizational structure challenges at news companies that have long prevented them from keeping pace.

With 40-some new exhibitors at the conference, it’s apparent that many businesses see the disruption in the newspaper industry as being ripe with opportunity. Naturally, I agree. But there remains a significant gulf separating what newspapers want to do in terms of innovation, and what they are able to do.

One online newspaper executive told me it doesn’t matter what new project a site wants to launch; if the VP of advertising doesn’t get behind it, it won’t go anywhere. Others have told me new projects still go through the publisher.

It should be obvious by now: Newspapers (and every other company) need to be organized so that innovative projects can be launched much quicker.

As LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman said in a seminar at Stanford, entrepreneurial thinking means “taking wild but focused risks” and his approach to decision-making put a premium on speed. “I always tried to make the decision right away and then think about whether to un-make it,” Hoffman said. (He went on to explain that this entrepreneurial approach is how Steve Jobs was able to turn Apple around.)

Having Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh speak at this conference was certainly a step in the right direction.

Unfortunately, newspaper companies are forced to juggle too much these days. Online executives, the change agents that hold the keys to the digital future, are drowning in a sea of new ideas, new technologies and new companies attempting to solve their problems.

These are smart people who are committed to bringing change and innovation to their organizations. But unless the structure allows them to move quickly with new projects, they may end up just spinning their wheels.

Attendees to the NAA MediaXchange conference seem to be flocking to panel discussions instead of the exhibit floor