Need for instruction in entrepreneurial journalism: Perspective of full-time freelancers

ABSTRACT

Recent moves by journalism programmes to create convergence skills curricula may fall short of helping students to land jobs after they graduate. Students face dwindling prospects of full-time work as employees of news organizations, and that raises the question of whether programmes should teach them to generate their own work. For this study, freelance journalists were surveyed on their perspectives about whether journalism programmes should deliver instruction in entrepreneurial journalism. Most respondents exemplified the shifting career patterns now evident in journalism, as just over three-fourths of them held full-time media or communication jobs prior to their self-employment. Yet, when asked if their college journalism professors had discussed the career option of freelancing or instructed them in how to earn money freelancing, most said this ‘never’ or ‘rarely’ happened. Today, most say that such instruction should occur in order to better prepare student journalists for some of the obstacles and opportunities unique to self-employment — including running their own small business. At the same time, most also ‘disagreed’ or ‘strongly disagreed’ that self-employment is a feasible path for a newly-minted college graduate. A three-pronged approach is described for adding entrepreneurial journalism to the university journalism curriculum, ranging from changed course objectives in traditional journalism skills classes, up to a full graduate programme in entrepreneurial journalism. Such instruction or an introduction to entrepreneurial journalism would serve as a counterbalance to the traditional journalism curriculum designed to meet the employee needs of media industries. Such changes are important, given that new graduates still find it difficult to secure traditional employer-based news or media work. Instead, entrepreneurial journalists are self-employed, partly or fully, and these distinctions are illustrated as a continuum ranging from part-time freelance journalists to journalists who start their own news-information outlets, employ others and are involved in the full range of business decisions.

KEYWORDS:

• entrepreneurial journalism
• freelance journalism
• journalism education
• journalism jobs
• self-employment
• contract work