Mentors 2: On teachers and being a great one

The best ones demanded our best and left us with words to live by You’re reading the My News Biz newsletter. My goal is to help digital media entrepreneurs find viable business models. This is the second of a series about mentors — whether friends, family, coaches, guides, or teachers — and how we can […]

Read More »

Help springs from many sources for media startups

Global study recommends new tactics for funders, universities, tech platforms What follows is an edited excerpt of the Recommendations chapter of SembraMedia’s Inflection Point International study of 201 digital native media in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Read the full report here–also in Spanish and Portuguese. It is republished under Creative Commons 4.0 ShareAlike international […]

Read More »

How to be a leader rather than a manager

It starts with identifying your own strengths, and then those of your employees In my continuing search for learning better leadership skills, I saw statistics from the Gallup organization on the reasons people gave for why they quit their jobs. Half left to get away from their boss, and we can imagine all the possible […]

Read More »

Experts explain ‘How to make meetings less terrible’

The title of this blog post is taken from a Freakonomics Radio podcast by Steven J. Dubner, and I recommend listening to all 42 minutes of it. But if you can’t find the time, here are some of the key points. How terrible are meetings? Steven Rogelberg, an organizational psychologist, says research has shown that […]

Read More »

People are more important than the product

Reflections on several decades of managing news publications A student in a media management course had to interview a media professional for his final research project. I agreed to be his subject, and in the course of an hour, he got me to talk about my philosophy of management in the digital era. Reading over […]

Read More »

Women are making their mark in digital news startups

Women are taking a leadership role in the development of digital journalism in Latin America, according to a new study of 100 startups. The study, Inflection Point, by SembraMedia in partnership with Omidyar Network, offers many clues to achieving the elusive goal of sustainability for new digital media. Click to enlarge. One clue is that women have the skills and experience […]

Read More »

People problems in a small media organization, Part 1

Versión en español. If you are leading a team in a small media organization, you need to get the best out of your people. Everyone has to be a contributor. This is not just a selfish thing. You get the best out of people by helping them develop their own talents, overcome obstacles and reach […]

Read More »