There’s a huge marketplace of ideas right now regarding the future of journalism, but here are a couple topics that I haven’t seen discussed much that I think merit more attention.

How do I start getting more entrepreneurial?

It’s an often-repeated idea that to be successful in the future, journalists will need to be more entrepreneurial. And just as often repeated is the fact that most of them are not. For future generations of journalists, that problem can be addressed through a bigger business component in their education. For current journalists, however, I haven’t really seen much in the way of guidance on HOW to actually get more entrepreneurial. Let’s say I want to strike out on my own and start a local news site. How do I figure out how much capital I need to maintain it? Where do I start looking for that capital? What are some potential sources I can turn to? What are the common do’s and don’ts of running a startup? I think such guidance would be immensely handy for journalists who have the desire to explore such a path but might be discouraged by their lack of know-how in this area, thus making the hurdles seem immense enough to discourage them from trying.

How do we get these great ideas for saving newspapers actually implemented?

It’s easy to brainstorm ideas for turning around the industry, whether via better advertising models, better content, or better means of delivery (or, more likely, all of the above). Bringing those ideas from your napkin or blog to reality is the hard part. There’s no shortage of ideas out there, yet I haven’t seen many people discuss HOW to get those ideas implemented. Unfortunately, that part is the key. That smart ad model isn’t going to magically catch on at newspapers across the country just because you wrote it and lots of people read it. It doesn’t matter if a million people agreed with your idea. If none of them are decision-makers at newspapers, your idea remains on the napkin on which you wrote it. What we need is more talk about how to convince those people to try these ideas, which involves identifying the hurdles in implementing these ideas and devising practical solutions.

Obviously the hurdles of implementation would vary widely from one newspaper to the next, but I think there are common, recurring issues, such as limited resources and manpower or intransigent mindsets. So let’s not just say, “We need to invest in more resources for innovation” or “we need to go away from that status-quo mentality”. Let’s actually put some of our collective brain power toward how to convince management to invest more and how to break down or at least work around the intransigence.