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REPORT ONBringing Entrepreneurship to the Journalism School

Michael Edward Lenert, PhD, JDProfessor and Reynolds Chair inCritical Thinking and Ethical PracticesReynolds School of Journalism andCenter for Advanced Media StudiesMail Stop 310University of Nevada, RenoReno, Nevada 89557email: Lenert@UNR.eduwebsite: www.unr.edu/journalismDept. tel. 775.784.6531Dept. fax 775.784.6656Mobile 646.245.6200

Lenert Page 1 1/27/09

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Bringing Entrepreneurship to the Reynolds School of Journalism, TheUniversity of Nevada, Reno

Can journalism students imagine new businesses that serve their communities and make a profit? Can journalism students write award-winning business plans that attract theattention of venture capitalists? The answers to both these questions from the recent 2007 Nevada State Governor

s Cup competition is, "Yes!"At the end of a 15 week class in entrepreneurship, two Reynolds School of Journalismgraduate students, Abbey Smith and Melissa Voigtmann, each with no prior businessexperience, placed third in a statewide business plan competition, and took home a$5,000 cash prize.Drawing upon the curriculum and coaching in a special topics class, Journalism 691, New Journalism Entrepreneurship, journalism students Smith and Voigtmannconceptualized and articulated a Web 2.0-inspired business plan for a company called

Simply Healthy Foods

. In the judging, the panel of Governor’s Cup judges recognized both the power and the practicality of their Simply Healthy Foods idea of creating anonline community that brings together local food producers and consumers. Whenimplemented, Simply Healthy Foods will be an advertiser-supported site that directlylinks farmers and consumers, while hosting forums and presenting independent journalistic content about organic and other types of health food.What’s more, two other teams from the class of 14 students made it to the finals.At the graduate level, journalism students Emily Setzer and Jeff Stephens wonrecognition and praise from the judges for their business plan for

Wildermaps.com

, a richmedia, wikipedia-style collaborative online guidebook for non-motorized outdoor recreation. As one of 6 statewide graduate finalists, they left the contest with $1,000.00 in prize money.Undergraduate journalism major Stevi Wara, along with her partner, business major Jocelyn Pulido, also took home $1,000 as one of 7 statewide finalists in theundergraduate competition. Their business idea,

parfamilia.com

, is an advertiser-supported website where local Hispanic/Latina mothers communicate with one another and create a culturally aware community where marketers, community health professionals and journalists can directly reach a growing target market.By some measures, an extraordinary event had taken place. Journalism students have for the first time won statewide recognition while directly competing with teams headed byMBAs and graduate-level engineering students.In a university context, how did this entrepreneurial success come about?

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Implementing the class

Overcoming the journalism school culture

Universities, like large lumbering warships, are slow to react to change. Typically, aUniversity’s change of course needs to be plotted months, if not years, in advance. Mostoften, its movement is executed slowly, and its progress toward a new destination is bestmeasured by a calendar rather than clock.A professional journalism school is no exception to the slow to change model of management. Like all professions, teaching practices and assessments have deep roots,and as institutions, journalism schools are resistant to change.However, at the Reynolds School of Journalism from 2004-2006, there was an exceptionto the general rule, and it is not an exaggeration to say that the reason for this forward-looking perspective was a single man: The late Dean Cole C. Campbell.Coming to academy from industry, Dean Campbell, a former editor of the

St. Louis Post Dispatch,

supported change and expected the Reynolds School of Journalism to respondto change more like a corporation than an academy. His support for a new course inentrepreneurial journalism made the critical difference. He recognized the need for rapidand substantial change while insisting that we maintain the best traditions of journalism.In the planning stages, six months before the course was offered, Dean Campbell wrote inan email:I think the course would need to be a 400/600 course to serve both our undergraduates and any graduate students who want to take it. [...] We wouldneed to supplement them with business and computer science/engineering folks ata high count to get a full roster, I think.I would like such a course, perhaps in its second iteration, to feed into the business plan competition sponsored by the Reynolds Foundation. And in thecourses I took on entrepreneurship at Stanford lo these many years ago, the business plan was the central document. Should this course require developmentof a business plan (plus whatever summaries and pitches are required to bring the plan to life in presentations)?How far down the path of conceiving a business must students be to get valuefrom this course? Several of the topics in the syllabus seem designed to help themsort through possibilities, not merely advance a given idea brought to the class bystudents.Some topics, such as social entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship(entrepreneurship within an organization) seem like great extensions of the mainidea. I'm wondering if they might wait until toward the end of the course, to allow