Slides from workshop with masters students in journalism at Fh-Wien University, Vienna, Austria, January 23-24, 2015

1. Journalism as media venture:
A workshop & work plan
(first day slides)
Bill Mitchell & Tobias Göllner
23-24 January 2015
FH Wien University
Vienna, Austria
bmitch@gmail.com
tobias@shiftyard.io

2. Workshop teams
(please find & sit with these people now!)
1. Atzara, Gasber, Radner, Ziffer-Teschenbruck
2. Baczak, Holzmüller, Schwaiger,Tschabuschnig
3. Barthel, Khodai-Esfahani, Martín Figueredo, Sperlich
4. Beirer, Korunka, Pöggeler, Weiske, Skachkov
5. Bottesch, Gutiérrez Contreras, Herzog, Schrettl
6. Brandauer, Liebhart, Orler, Sedlbauer, Steinwender
7. Gahr, Leitner, Wulff, Breitmann
8. Dogan, Holzer, Triltsch, Brandstetter
9. Dorninger, Dunkl, Morales-Prieto, Schwindt
10. Feuschar, Forstner, Kühnapfel, Lehner

3. If anyone is missing from your team,
please jot down their name so you can
let them know where they belong!

4. What we’ll explore in this workshop
• Audience as the foundation of media
ventures
• Media Economics in the digital era: Beyond
scarcity
• Market & Media Trends as your roadmaps
• Emerging Media as your advance scouts
• Value Proposition Canvas as the heart of your
venture
• The Pitch as the key-point summary of what
you intend

5. What you’ll do in this workshop
• Examine & select an audience to serve
• Pinpoint an unmet audience
need/problem/pain
• Plan a venture to address that need
• Learn the basics of journalism & media ventures
developed with a process approach
• Pitch your venture as if to potential
collaborators, investors and customers

6. Friday:
• Audience focus
• Media economics in an era of abundance as
opposed to scarcity
• Media Trends
• Emerging Media

7. Saturday:
• Value Proposition Canvas
• Pitch Training
• Your Pitches
• Refining your ventures

8. Some logistics
• Attendance:
– Up to you to initial the sheet at end of each class
– If you arrive late or leave early, indicate that on sheet
• Grades:
– Quality of your venture idea
– Quality of your questions & comments in class
– Quality of your comments on classmates’ blog posts

9. Breakdown of grades
• 1 = exceptional
• 2 = good
• 3 = acceptable but needs work
• 4 = needs a lot of work to be good
• 5 = time to think about another field of study
and line of work

10. bit.ly/incubatecontest

11. No worship here at the altar of digital

12. Questions, concerns?

13. Three circles

14. On the primacy of audience
(sometimes referred to as “the
group formerly known
as the audience”)

15. Audience as the sine qua non
• The venture invests scarce resources to create
products and services (the new value)
• The audience decides if the value is actually
high enough for the venture to cover its costs
and/or make a profit…
• Or not – and then fail as a venture!

16. All of which explains Drucker’s view…

17. Focus on an audience
• A group you can describe geographically,
demographically or psychographically
• What do members of this audience have in
common?
• How might serving one member of this
audience serve many more?

18. How digital is changing audiences
• More participatory
• More discriminating (much more for the
audience to choose from)
• More personal

19. The shift from mass to personal audience

20. As if audiences weren’t powerful enough…

21. What else to say about audiences?

22. Logistics for your small group work
• Select someone to watch the clock so everyone
has a chance to speak.
• Select someone to take notes – this person will
also speak for the group during the full group
discussion.
• We’ll rotate these roles so different people will
be taking the notes, speaking for the group, etc.

23. Questions Only!
• Put yourselves in the shoes of each of the
audiences represented by your team members
• Ask questions that people in this audience
might have (the owner of that audience is taking
notes during this exercise, and will include the
most interesting questions in a new blog post)
• Spend five minutes on each audience
• Who’s your time-keeper? Be ruthless!

24. 10:30 a.m.: Full group discussion

25. Work on your individual audiences
• Write a new post to your blog reflecting the
questions asked on behalf of your audience by
your teammates.
• Don’t answer these questions yet – or even
worry about whether it’s practical for you to
answer them. Just record the questions!

26. 11:15 a.m.: Media Economics
• Economics (in general) as “the study of how
societies use scarce resources to produce valuable
commodities and distribute them among different
groups.” (Samuelson & Nordhaus)
• Media economics as “the study of how media
industries use scarce resources to produce content
that is distributed among consumers in a society to
satisfy various needs and wants.” (Albarran)

27. What is meant by scarce resources?
•Idea of finite resources
•Examples of finite resources in media production?
•Ah, but what about the formerly finite resources known
as space (in newspapers) and time (on TV or radio)?

28. Relationship between “scarcity” and “value”
• Economists define value as “the worth of a particular product or
service. It is a subjective process that is linked to individual
satisfaction… based on individual wants and needs.” (Albarran)
• And the scarcer that such a needed and wanted product or service
may be, the higher the value.

29. Implications for sustaining an enterprise
in times of less scarcity?
• For demand?
• For price?
• What else?

30. A defining characteristic of traditional media
industries: “dual product markets” (Picard)
• Content provided to individual consumers
• Space/time (& access to potential customers) provided to advertisers
• But what’s happening to those markets?

31. Starting point for discussion of
current media landscape

32. “Creative destruction
is the essential fact
about capitalism.”
-- Austrian economist
Joseph Schumpeter, 1942

33. “News organizations today are experiencing a continuing
crisis of value destruction …They must find ways to
create new value to replace that which is being
destroyed. If they do not, they risk their demise.”
-- American economist Robert G. Picard, 2006

34. Audiences voting with their feet
(and their eyeballs)

35. Documenting the decline

36. The fundamental problem

37. Ongoing challenge:
Old media is
collapsing more
quickly than new
media can be
created.
(Clay Shirky)

38. After a decade of diminished value,
how to begin creating new value?
• Innovation
• Intrapreneurship
• Entrepreneurship

39. Innovation
“Innovation is the specific instrument of
entrepreneurship… the act that endows resources with a
new capacity to create wealth.”
-- Peter Drucker

40. Innovation = “creation of new value”
-- The Economics and Financing of Media Companies,
By Robert Picard, 2010

41. “Innovation is not the result of
thinking differently.
It is the result of thinking deliberately (in
specific ways) about existing problems
and unmet needs.”
Razeghi, Andrew. The Riddle, 2008

42. Means of sustaining innovation
• Bootstrapping
• Crowdsourcing
• Membership
• Grants
• Events
• Custom Publishing
• Selbst Ausbeutung

43. How to respond to all this destruction & disruption?

44. Small group work
• What audience wants/needs will you focus on
first?
• What resources will you need to create a
minimum viable product or service?
• How might you sustain the innovation required
by your new venture?
• How will you avoid resorting to
Selbst Ausbeutung?

45. Logistics for your small group work
• Rotate these responsibilities:
• Select someone to watch the clock so everyone
has a chance to speak.
• Select someone to take notes – this person will
also speak for the group during the full group
discussion.

46. Noon: Full group discussion

47. 12:15: Write a new post to your blog:
On the economics of this venture
• What audience needs/wants are you focusing
on first?
• What resources will be required to achieve a
minimum viable product or service?
• How will you sustain this work?

48. 12:45 p.m.: Lunch
• Please return by 13:45 for discussion of Media
Trends

49. 8 Media Trends you can use
(especially relevant to your projects)
• Aggregation & curation
• Data Journalism
• Crowdsourcing/cognitive surplus
• Verification
• Social surpasses search as linker to content
• Optimism/Solutions
• Standards as a differentiating value
• Multiple revenue streams

50. 7,000 users pay Robert Cottrell $20 @
year to skim 1,000 articles @ day
and post 5 or 6 of the best

51. Data Journalism

53. Roman Payer’s Fh-Wien Masters Thesis

54. Optimistic/Solutions Journalism

55. Audience: Pregnant Poles & families
Problem: No reliable info on care
Solution: Enlist the women to evaluate
the hospitals

59. Verification

61. Florida lightning: Real or fake?

62. The Storyful verification process

63. It turns out that verification is a
trend that can be monetized!

64. Social passes search as
traffic driver

66. Standards as a differentiating value
• Poynter’s three original guiding principles for
ethical decision-making:
– Tell as much of the truth as possible
– Act independently
– Minimize harm
• Revised guidelines:
– Tell as much of the truth as possible
– Act transparently
– Engage the community as an as opposed to a means

67. Multiple revenue streams:
Memberships, training, events, etc.

68. 14:15 Discussion in teams
• Which media trend(s) make most sense for your
venture?
• What additional media trends might you
incorporate?

69. Logistics for your small group work
• Select someone to watch the clock so everyone
has a chance to speak.
• Select someone to take notes – this person will
also speak for the group during the full group
discussion.
• We’ll rotate these roles so different people will
be taking the notes, speaking for the group, etc.

70. 14:30: Full group discussion of trends

71. 14:45: Individual work
• Write a new post to your blog discussion which
trend(s) you might incorporate and why

72. 15:15: Emerging Media

78. Discussion in teams
• How, specifically, will your ventures be
entertaining or informing or engaging? Or all
three?

79. Full group discussion
• How, specifically, will your ventures be
entertaining or informing or engaging? Or all
three?

80. Write a new post to your blog
• Addressing the same question: How,
specifically, will your venture be entertaining or
informing or engaging? Or all three?

81. See you tomorrow!