The Department of Communication and Journalism added a new entrepreneurial media course this semester.
The course, CJ 393, is being taught by both Communication & Journalism professor of practice Michael Marcotte and instructor Carolyn Flynn. The course is focused on innovation and media entrepreneurship, combining business and journalism to keep up with the modern needs of the field.
"Many people entering journalism will at some point or another probably start their own business or be an entrepreneur...so we want to offer something to equip students to navigate this rapidly changing market," Flynn said.
Marcotte said that mixing business with journalism is a prevailing idea because in the past, news organizations could afford to separate the journalistic side from the business side.
Now, the business model caved because of the disruption of the internet and the advertising model that had the news bundled together and made a profit, Marcotte said. The advertising model has stopped working, resulting in a need for new models.
"We need to be more business-minded in our journalism instruction and this is a class that flips it all the way around. Let's go right at the question of what are the potential new business models for journalism," Marcotte said.
CJ 393 is part of the Innovation Academy, UNM's own startup experiment, and having a natural entrepreneur mentality and background helped lead to the creation of the course.
Both instructors have been in media for most of their careers. Flynn said her experience as a senior-level editor at the Albuquerque Journal for 23 years and working as a senior associate with Creative Circle Media Solutions inspired her involvement in the course.
Marcotte has worked in broadcasting, and said his true inspiration came from spending a year in the John S. Knight fellowship at Stanford in 2011. During that time, he said he was in a program that combined journalists from all over the country to work on the future of journalism and how to save it.
Students in this course will get real world experience from guest speakers that have such experience, he said. That includes Joe Cardillo and Margaret Wright, founders of New Mexico Compass, in addition to many more.
Further, the course also won't be confined to the classroom, as students will venture to the Albuquerque Journal as well as FatPipe, a collaborative, community workspace that brings startups, existing businesses and entrepreneurs together to get more first-hand observations of businesses in Albuquerque.
Both Flynn and Marcotte said they believe that their students will be walking away with more knowledge on both the journalism side and the business side, and how to utilize them for both a profit and for further innovation of the industry.
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"(The goal is for them to) leave with a supreme amount of confidence that no matter where they find themselves in their careers, they will be able to innovate and they can pitch," Marcotte said. "Some of them may catch fire and start their own company."
Denicia Aragon is a staff reporter for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @dailylobo.
