Examining the New Conceptualization of Entrepreneurial Journalism

The dominant scholarly understanding of and approaches to journalism do not match the variety of practices that make up journalism today.The profession’s recent reconfiguration as a post-industrial, entrepreneurial and altogether atypical way of working calls for new ways to investigate, theorize and teach journalism.

Our fellowship project at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute will examine the new conceptualization of journalism that is increasingly popular in industry, professional education and academic scholarship: entrepreneurial journalism. Entrepreneurialism is considered one of the main answers to current professional and economic challenges of journalism. In the entrepreneurial model, the enterprising individual — rather than the institutional organization of the news industry — is attributed the role of informing society and performing the professional ideal of journalism.