A Way Forward: Solving the Challenges of the News Frontier
One increasingly important real world skill is an entrepreneurial spirit and drive that leads to new models for journalism. We talk with entrepreneurial journalists who have changed the rules for the profession.
Bio
Rafat Ali
Since founding paidContent.org in 2002, Rafat Ali has overseen the rollout to three new verticals and the expansion into revenue generating events for the parent company ContentNext Media.
Before ContentNext, Ali was managing editor of the Silicon Alley Reporter. Editor & Publisher has called Ali "journalism's poster boy for career independence from news companies," and CBS MarketWatch has called him "a pioneer in using the Web for an almost real-time business news feed."
In July 2008, Ali sold ContentNext Media to UK-based Guardian News & Media. Ali and his executive team continue to run the company as a stand-alone business.
Ali was the Knight Foundation Fellow at Indiana University, his alma mater, where he completed his Masters in Journalism, 1999-2000.
Phil Balboni
Mr. Balboni is the President and Chief Executive Officer of GlobalPost. He is the Founder and for the past 16 years was the President of New England Cable News (NECN), the nation's largest and most honored regional news network, reaching more than 3.6 million homes in the six-state region.
John F. Harris
John F. Harris is Editor in Chief for The Politico, a Washington DC based newspaper about politics that launched on January 23, 2007. Harris, formerly of The Washington Post, is the author of a book on Bill Clinton called The Survivor, and the co-author with Mark Halperin of The Way to Win: Clinton, Bush, Rove and How to Take the White House in 2008. He is a 1985 graduate of Carleton College.
Jeff Jarvis
Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do?, blogs about media and news at Buzzmachine.com and writes the new media column in the Guardian. He is currently director of interactive journalism at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. He is consulting editor of Daylife and has been an adviser to the Guardian, Sky.com, Burda, and Publish2.
Earlier, he was president and creative director of Advance.net, the online arm of Advance Publications; creator and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly; Sunday editor and associate publisher of the New York Daily News; TV critic for TV Guide and People; and a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner.
Geneva Overholser
Geneva Overholser holds the Curtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting, for the Missouri School of Journalism, in its Washington, D.C., bureau. She is a frequent print and broadcast media critic, and is currently co-editing a book, The Press as an Institution of Democracy. Overholser was editor of The Des Moines Register from 1988 to 1995. She has also been a syndicated columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group, ombudsman of The Washington Post and a columnist for the Columbia Journalism Review. She has been a member of the editorial board of The New York Times, deputy editorial page editor and editorial writer for The Des Moines Register and reporter for the Colorado Springs Sun. Overholser was a Nieman fellow at Harvard and a congressional fellow with the American Political Science Association. She was named Editor of the Year by the National Press Foundation. Under her leadership, the Register won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Public Service. In 2002, she received the Anvil of Freedom Award.
John Thornton
John Thornton has been a software and media investor at Austin Ventures (AV) since 1990, and was the managing partner of the firm from 2005 to 2008. AV is the largest non-coastal venture capital firm in the U.S., with $4 billion under management. Prior to joining AV, he was with McKinsey & Co., where he served clients in the U.S. and Europe. He was a co-founder of the Austin Entrepreneur's Foundation; a former trustee of Ballet Austin, where he co-chaired a successful capital campaign; a former trustee of the Austin Museum of Art, where he chaired strategic planning; and a former trustee of Trinity University.
He currently serves on the advisory boards of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas and the New American Foundation. He graduated first in his class from Trinity University, and received an MBA from Stanford.
Collection, preparation, and distribution of news and related commentary and feature materials through media such as pamphlets, newsletters, newspapers, magazines, radio, film, television, and books. The term was originally applied to the reportage of current events in printed form, specifically newspapers, but in the late 20th century it came to include electronic media as well. It is sometimes used to refer to writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation. Colleges and universities confer degrees in journalism and sponsor research in related fields such as media studies and journalism ethics.
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