In 2009, KDMC also pioneered strategic and business training for journalism entrepreneurs.

As many journalists left newsrooms amid cutbacks in traditional media, some started small community news sites. While most possessed digital savvy as well as passion for journalism and their communities, they knew little about gaining community visibility and developing revenue streams.

One indicator of the need for such a program was that the center received 120 applications for 12 New Entrepreneur Boot Camp fellowships in 2009. The boot camp, conducted in partnership with the USC Marshall School of Business’s Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, sought to provide foundational business training and entrepreneurial and strategic thinking to a group of proven journalists.

The five-day boot camp provided lectures and discussion with journalism startup experts each morning followed by afternoons dedicated to group discussion, independent research on their plans, and one-on-one coaching sessions with the faculty.  

On the final day, fellows made “pitches” to a panel that included an investment banker, a serial entrepreneur, an angel investor, a small business loan officer, and a tech innovator for News Corp. The panel provided solid and sincere feedback to the group. In addition, they were extremely supportive of the Boot Camp concept and its potential impact.  

As Robert Aholt, the angel investor, said to the group at the end of the week: “I’m so very grateful to be here today because I get to walk out of here knowing that the fate of journalism – which I was concerned about eight hours ago – is in good hands. What you guys have defined here I think is the start of the answer of where it evolves to.”  

Also in 2011, in partnership with the Patterson Foundation, KDMC hosted a multi-day boot camp for a dozen news entrepreneurs whose sites had been active for several years. The goal was to help them grow and stabilize their revenue and also to learn more about how an admittedly fragile cohort of startups could become sustainable.   

Topics included business plan development, building organizational capacity, metrics for growth, revenue development and retention with expert faculty with experience building revenue at a local level.

That invitation-only program, held in conjunction with the Block by Block Community News Summit, formed the basis for the Community Journalism Executive Training later offered under the direction of Rusty Coats by the Institute for Nonprofit News.

News entrepreneurship fellows included Laura Frank of Rocky Mountain I-News, Debbie Galant of Baristanet, Denise Civiletti of Riverhead Local, Howard Owens of The Batavian, Julia Scott of the bargainbabe.com finance site, Rita Hibbard of Investigate West, Teresa Wippel of My Neighborhood News Network, Glenn Burkins of QCity Metro, Laura Amico of Homicide Watch, Alan Gottlieb of Chalkbeat, and Lori Hearn of the Watchdog Institute.

Predictably in the start up field, we saw a wide range of results, from sites that never got off the ground or foundered early to sites that became vital community news services with a stable revenue base.

Denise Civiletti, who launched Riverhead Local on Long Island with her husband and business partner Peter Blasi in 2010, said the 2011 boot camp and the follow up coaching she received helped them see the need to increase spending on the business said before expanding editorial – a key learning for many journalists who start news sites. Within two years after boot camp, Riverhead Local had doubled its revenue to fall in a range of $250,000-$500,000.

“It helped us focus, have a business plan. We weren’t shooting from the hip.”

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