This week Webbmedia Group held a chat for journo-entrepreneurs, providing business models and use cases for journalists hoping to launch media start-ups.

Here are eight tips and a few examples of entrepreneurial journalism projects you can launch or replicate in your community. You can also find these and more tips on twitter: #kwchat.

Tip #1: Don't be a generalist. Create highly-specialized content that you're  an expert on.

Tip #2: Content producers must syndicate across platforms, but the RIGHT platforms.

Tip #3: Try to fund your new entrepreneurial jurno venture alone. Projects have launched for less than $10k.

Tip #4: You must create a business and marketing plan, regardless of how small your new venture is.

Tip #5: Find a few people whose opinions your trust to serve as advisers as you start your new venture.

Tip #6: "If you are passionate about your idea, find some people you trust and then go talk to people you don't know."

Tip #7: Remember, if you're going to record a demo of your product, make it good. Bad demos can doom great projects.

Tip# 8: Remember, most ideas fail. A vast majority of ideas fail. But, get to that point quickly.

Patch.com is an example of an entrepreneurial model that can be run with a low budget in any community.

Spot.us is another innovative model that includes crowdfunding and most recently a new sustainability model based on advertising through surveys.

Other journo-entrepreneur efforts include projects like WindyCitizen.com and its NowSpots advertising model and Front Porch Forum among other Knight Foundation grantees in this field.

If you are a journo-entrepreneur the Knight News Challenge, the Knight Community Information Challenge and J-Lab’s New Voices are great opportunities to launch your start-up to inform and engage communities.

For grant application tips and and other resources for freelance and entrepreneur journalists visit: knightchallenge.net. And to learn about Knight funded innovations that are ready for you to use, please visit Knight Apps.

Jose Zamora is a journalism program associate at Knight Foundation

Stop the Presses: The American Newspaper in Peril, a documentary that traces the early history of the American newspaper, outlines what’s at stake in the current crisis and peeks into the future of in-depth and investigative reporting.

The documentary includes several interviews from people from the news industry, including Eric Newton, vice president of journalism at the Knight Foundation.

The documentary recently aired on PBS and is available on DVD .

            --Marly Falcon, Knight Foundation contributing blogger

The Knight Center for Environmental Journalism is awarding $1,000 to the journalist doing the most innovative environmental coverage.

If you’ve come up with a new idea that is changing the way environmental news and information is communicated -- if you are using social media or  iPhone apps.  to cover the environment or pioneering with a new economic model or type of coverage -- you are encouraged to apply.

To enter, fill out an application form. The contest is looking for innovations that are actually being tried or experimented with. In no more than 1,000 words, write about your idea. Include three letters of recommendation. A panel of experts will evaluate the idea and determine the winner.

Applicants must submit a proposal by April 30, 2010 to the Knight Center via e-mail at ej@msu.edu or by mail to:

EJ Innovator of the Year Award

Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, Room 382

Communication Arts Building

East Lansing, MI 48824-1212

The winner will also receive an all expenses paid trip to speak about her/his idea at a conference in Michigan State University to celebrate the School of Journalism’s 100^th anniversary the weekend of Oct. 22-24, 2010.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What are you looking for in an entry?

A: We seek examples of new technology, journalism techniques or other innovative efforts that advance environmental reporting and the public understanding of environmental issues. It could be a new way of financially supporting environmental journalism.  It could be something that tells an environmental story that otherwise would not be told. It could be a new way of publicly reporting an environmental issue. It could be a new way of engaging people to help report credibly on the environment. It could be something else. We’re looking for innovations and you may have tried something that doesn’t fit into any neat categories.

Q: That’s hard to envision. You got an example?

A: Hey, if it were easy there wouldn’t be an award for it. But maybe this will give you a bit of the flavor: Last year journalism students at Northwestern University developed a measure of how green the Congressional elections were swinging as the votes came in. Something like that would have been given consideration if we had the award then.

Of course, if you figure out a new way to financially support environmental journalism, all of us win much more than this award.

Q: What don’t you want?

A: This is not a contest for the best environmental news story of the year.

Q: Can it be an idea for an innovation?

A: No. It must be something that has been actually put to use between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31 of 2009.

Q: Must it be created by a news organization?

A: It can be. But we also encourage entries from people or organizations that are not necessarily affiliated with journalism. Anyone is eligible to enter.

Q: Can it be a Web site?

A: C’mon, we’re looking for innovation. The Web has been around more than a few years. A Web site might be the delivery platform, but the winner will have to do more than simply report environmental stories online.

Q: What can I win?

A: $1,000 and a handsome plaque.

Q: Will this contest continue in the future?

A: We hope that it will be an annual event. A lot depends upon what happens this year and whether we can obtain funding to support this competition in the future. This year’s contest is being supported by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Q: Will I win anything else?

A: Yes. Winners will be asked to discuss their innovation with students and faculty at Michigan State University’s School of Journalism during the J-School’s centennial celebrations the weekend of Oct. 22 to 24, 2010. All of your expenses will be paid.

--Marly Falcon, Knight Foundation contributing blogger

Researchers from Intelligent Systems Informatics Lab (ISI) at Tokyo University have developed a robot that explores its environment and reports what it finds. The robot can independently detect changes in its surroundings, decide if they are relevant and take pictures. It can also ask people for information and search the Internet to find out more about a topic. Newsworthy findings are written up by the robot and posted online.

Scared yet?

For more information, read this article.

— Marly Falcon, Knight Foundation contributing blogger

Vince Stehle, Knight Foundation contributing blogger

Philanthropy New York recently convened a debate and discussion about the future of journalism and the vital role of news and information in healthy communities. Columbia J School professor Michael Schudson, co-author with Leonard Downie of the The Reconstruction of American Journalism, elaborated on the controversial report’s call for increased government support for news gathering activities, pointing out that there has long been public support of publishing activities through postal subsidies and many other streams of support. Besides which, he argued, many liberal democracies – United Kingdom, Sweden and France among them – have shown that robust public media can flourish without political pressure and influence.

Ford Foundation Program Officer Calvin Sims acknowledged some appropriate roles for government support of media, but cautioned against rash reactions. Sims, a longtime reporter with The New York Times, with significant experience in multimedia production, agreed that journalism is a field in transition, but did not concede that we have reached a crisis point demanding dramatic federal intervention. Despite some differences in emphasis, Schudson and Sims agreed that there is a role for some government support of media.

Although the Downie-Schudson report has gained most notoriety for its recommendations regarding government support for journalism, the report also calls on philanthropy to increase its support for news organizations and accountability reporting. In addition, it urges academic institutions and public broadcasters to step up their local news reporting activities. And perhaps its least controversial suggestion is that journalists, nonprofit organizations and governments should all do more to increase the accessibility and usefulness of government information – a recommendation that echoes in large measure the findings of the Knight Commission report, Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age.

J-Lab’s Jan Schaeffer gave a speech Wednesday night at USC Annenberg on the role of new media makers.  Here’s a piece of  her comprehensive look at start-ups:

Many of these clues suggest that while news consumers certainly need watchdogs, they also need guide dogs as well. While they certainly need news, sometimes all they need is good information. And while they want conversation and participation, they also appreciate a level of connection that demonstrates an attachment and some caring about their community – not detached, clinical observations. They want to know about issues, choices and possible solutions. And they’d also like to know where people agree and not just where they are shouting in disagreement.

Some of these clues, I believe, tell us that professional journalists need to reexamine some of their old habits, their journalistic conventions, to meet the genuine information needs of their communities.

To read the rest, follow the link. Knight Foundation funds several J-Lab projects, including the Knight Batten Awards, the Knight Citizen News Network and New Voices.

NPR won big at the White House News Photographers Association’s "Eyes of History" contest, which recognizes achievements in photojournalism. With 15 awards, the list of winners is long but can be found here. Congratulations NPR!

The video below won first place for the best use of photography and audio (without narration).

— Marly Falcon, Knight Foundation contributing blogger

This year’s Sunshine Week contest, which will be announced March 14-20, will honor local heroes of open government.

The efforts of these local heroes, whose work has made their communities a better place to live, will be recognized among media organizations and other groups throughout the nation.

Since 2005, Sunshine Week has been held annually to discuss the importance of open government and freedom of information.

The American Society of News Editors will conduct a contest to identify the top three Local Heroes of 2010.

For those interested in nominating a local hero, please fill out a nomination form. The deadline is Feb. 26.

-- Marly Falcon, Knight Foundation contributing blogger

How great would it be for web sites to let us know when news stories we’ve been following have been updated or corrected? How about also seeing a box of information explaining the type of sourcing used within the story, as well as a link to the organization’s editorial standards?

According to an article released by the Columbia Journalism Review, hNews is trying to make all of these features possible.

hNews is a microformat for news being developed by the Media Standards Trust and the Web Science Research Initiative. It is also a winner of last year’s Knight News Challenge grant.

For an example of how this would work, take a look at this article. Scroll down to the bottom of the text and place the cursor over the blue box labeled “Value Added.” A small box of text will pop up that lists the article title, author, date, published and the last date the article was updated. This information is automatically generated, thanks to hNews. 

The goal of hNews is to:

Design a way for content creators to add information on their sources to their reports, as a form of “source tagging.” For instance, a reporter could note that an article was based on personal observations, interview with eyewitnesses or specific, original documents. Filters would then use this data – the “story behind the story” – to help find high-quality articles. A reader searching the phrase “Pakistan riots” for example, might find 9,000 articles. But filtering by “eyewitness accounts” would yield a more selective list.

Currently, the Associated Press and AOL are encoding articles using hNews.

hNews is hoping to bring more transparency to news. Its features will provide people with the back story of an article they’re reading.

Visit the CJR Web site to read the complete story on hNews.

-- Marly Falcon, Knight Foundation contributing blogger

With an election year coming up, The Texas Tribune is targeting candidates for governor in a new kind of political video series, “Stump Interrupted."

New kind of video? Reporters at the Knight investigative reporting grantee  "mark up" the speech by fact-checking what's being said. You need to see it to understand. Click play.

Stump Interrupted: Bill White

-- Marly Falcon, Knight Foundation contributing blogger