Elizabeth Spiers’ media-entrepreneur summer school
This summer Elizabeth Spiers is teaching summer school, and you can apply for a seat in her class.
The media consultant, founding editor Gawker, and builder of DealBreaker, several Mediabistro blogs, and other sites is looking for a handful of people with smart ideas for a small business — but not experience launching one — to join her two college interns in a 90-day class. By the end of the summer, Spiers expects her students to have learned everything they need to get their media projects off the ground.
Here’s Spiers’ take on why you should apply:
What you get in return: dialogue with other beginning entrepreneurs, some good contacts for your project and what’s essentially free consulting from me (the latter of which would be price-prohibitive for most beginning entrepreneurs if I were charging.)
I spoke with Spiers about the project and why she decided to do it. Turns out she’s a kind-hearted boss: She didn’t want her two interns completing only menial tasks all summer. So she’s requiring them to spend at least 10 hours a week on their business idea and to meet weekly to discuss their progress. Her idea, she notes in her Tumblr post, is ripped off of a similar project Seth Godin ran that he called an alternative MBA.
Spiers, who teaches at The School of Visual Arts Design Criticism program (and is off for the summer), also said she sees a lack of support for entrepreunerialism in journalism schools. Her current interns are writers with the editorial skills you need to run a new media project, but not the business savvy.
“That’s one thing that I think — in journalism programs, they don’t really equip people to start new media products,” Spiers explained. “They equip them to work within the context of an existing publication. I’m just trying to fill in the gap a little bit.”
There are, of course, j-school professors already teaching classes which require entrepreneurial spirit. Among them is our Lab colleague C.W. Anderson at CUNY, whose course Entrepreneurial Journalism requires students to cook up new media ideas. (He’s also working on a white paper on innovation in j-schools. If you know of a school working on something innovative, let him know.)
For j-schools wondering how much time to devote to more business-side coursework, consider Spiers’ 10-hours-a-week-for-90-days argument. “Starting a new company seems more intimidating than it is,” she told me. “I do think it’s the kind of thing you can transform and ramp up in 90 days. As long as you have a process in place, I don’t think it’s as difficult as people think it is.”
(If you need funding, though, then you’re looking at a longer timeframe. Tack on extra months to the process to get your project actually going.)
When I asked Spiers if she would keep readers posted on her students’ progress, she said (earnestly, no Gawker snark) she has high hopes for her students. ”I sort of expect that some people are actually going to go out and launch their projects, and I’d be happy to promote them. And intend to do that anyway,” Spiers said.
Photo by Robert S. Donovan used under a Creative Commons license.
Laura McGann | June 11 | 11:24 a.m.
Tags: business model, Elizabeth Spiers, entrepreneur, fundraising, internships, j-school, journalism schools, Seth Godin
I’m eager to see what comes from Elizabeth’s lab.
I just have to add that there is entrepreneurial journalism rising in schools. I have taught it for three years and have given $100k in seed grants (thanks to the McCormick Foundation) to seven graduates’ businesses now incubating at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism, where I teach.
Earlier this year, I also organized a conference (call) for journalism educators who are teaching or plan to teach entrepreneurial journalism and we rustled up three dozen.
Yes, it’s beginning. I think five years ago I’d have been shot elsewhere for daring to contaminate young journalistic ambitions with the business skills needed to sustain them. But no more. Now there’s eagerness. What we need is more of what Elizabeth is doing: getting experience, starting things, learning, failing, succeeding.
This is awesome and excellent news!
As a journo turned entrepreneur, I applaud and am happy to assist in any effort that gives journos the practical tools to control their own destiny. The world needs more of this!
Congrats Elizabeth!