Teaching Entrepreneurship to Media Students

Anthony Adornato@AnthonyAdornato

BEA 2017

Teaching Entrepreneurship to

Media Students

Fostering Innovation

Business models + funding streams

Collaboration with other majors (computer science and emerging media)

Use of social media to build brand awareness and trust

Early-adopter culture

Building Your Brand

“I like to see that they’re an early adopter of new platforms and social media features, not someone who is going to wait for me to say, ‘okay, you have to start doing this.’”

-Amber Smith, Gray Television

Brand = Credibility

Credibility shifting from institution to individual

Provide context for the “noise”

Finding a niche/beat

Building Your Brand

Building Your Brand

“When the moment came in August 2011, you can say I was prepared in a sense. When Irene was coming, I said this was an opportunity to create a pop-up news outlet that is two-way and can democratize news where I live because there was nothing else that existed at that point.”

Building Your Brand

Who do you want to be?

Digital skeletons: social media/brand audit

Find A Niche

Become the go-to person for a beat

Create and curate useful material

Rely on your community

Blog posts, original reporting, and social media activity related to your beat

The Assignments

Two blog posts every other week

Original reporting every other week

Social media to-do list includes: Twitter, FB, Snapchat, social videos and graphics, and more

Experiment with one “new” tool

Innovation Strategy Analysis

Read NYT Innovation Report and Pew Research studies

Follow one outlet for the semester

Analyze outlet’s business model and products

Analyze outlet’s and two reporters’ use of new media

Anthony Adornato@AnthonyAdornato

BEA 2017

Teaching Entrepreneurship to

Media Students