Tomorrow's News, Tomorrow's Journalists

Q + A with Adam Westbrook

Adam Westbrook is an an award winning broadcast journalist. He has reported for radio from Iraq, has been nominated for several press club awards and now produces films for the VJ Movement and others. Here he talks about his forte and the subject of his book, entrepreneurial journalism.

You’re very active in championing entrepreneurial journalism, how did that come about?

I guess it came about in a couple of ways. Firstly, looking around the industry a year or so ago, you could see the decline in mainstream jobs and the increase in young people wanting to be journalists: it’s clear the maths don’t add up. But alongside this, it’s become a lot easier for people to become online publishers in the last few years: you can be up and running with an online business in hours with just a few pounds spent on web hosting.

Nowadays, I see all the A-level students who have been told, right after getting the results they’ve studied hard for, that the doors to university have been closed, and I realise if they had an entrepreneurial mindset that wouldn’t be a problem. Journalism or not, society isn’t going to provide the all jobs we were promised when we were growing up; it’s up to us to make them ourselves.

Young journalists these days simply can’t just be good at writing. Do you think it’s a bad thing or a chance for innovation?

It’s a great thing, especially for young journalists. It’s a chance to learn new skills which we never would have gotten the chance to try out a couple of years ago. Writers can learn how film making works, how to design motion graphics, organise events and even sell stuff alongside their work.

Of course, it’s criticised for spreading journalists too thin; but I think we’re all capable of being good at more than one thing. The aim, I would say, is to become a jack of all trades, and a master of one: do one thing extraordinarily well, but know your way around the other disciplines too.

In terms of innovation, that’s a mindset thing. We’re all taught in school that failure is bad. The naive, curious, experimentation that really leads to innovation is beaten out of us, so to speak, in the classroom. That’s a big problem for the UK in the future I think.

A lot of students will still feel the pull of big media organisations. How can more be encouraged to set up their own projects and startups?

From the outside, starting your own business or project is often seen as both scary and non-creative. With my blog and book, Next Generation Journalist (www.nextgenerationjournalist.com),  I’m trying to spread the word that it’s become easier and less scary than ever before, and that actually it’s a really exciting and creative process.

The benefits of being your own boss are pretty great too – you have the freedom & income potential a newsroom journalist would never dream of. People are making lots of money with websites they only spend $60 setting up: why can’t journalists do the same?

In the UK it’s harder, I think, because there’s just not the entrepreneurial attitude which is so embedded in other countries, especially the US. While American kids are setting up their own lemonade stands, British kids deliver newspapers for someone else.The system in the UK doesn’t make it as easy for startups as, again, it is in America.

But despite this, in a year or so we’ll start to see more successful startups emerge and more people will be prepared to put faith in their ideas.

How about formally teaching something that might lend itself to entrepreneurial journalism? A joint honours in Business/Journalism?

I am about to undertake some research on behalf of Kingston University, where I teach, on whether there is scope to include an entrepreneurial element to the curriculum. Some say you can’t teach entrepreneurship, but I think we can get students thinking about business earlier, and teach them some of the nuts and bolts.

My research will hopefully recommend some ways of teaching it on j-courses in the future.

The NCTJ dictates the course content of a lot of journalism courses. Would you like to see a change in their attitude to encourage more “forward thinking” amongst students?

Absolutely. I think as journalism educators we have a duty to prepare students for the world they are entering. That’s hard because not many of us even know what that world looks like!

Stephen Mayes, the head of the VII multimedia agency said recently that “this is the for entrepreneurs to roam the earth” and he’s right. The old systems which wanted people to work in offices and factories are on the way out. The playing field has been leveled and younger, smaller businesses have an advantage over the bigger lumbering institutions. The good news is if you’re prepared to take initiative and volunteer responsibility, there’s no limit to where it’ll take you.