Media entrepreneurship: alternative paths for media producers

A new type of media professional, with entrepreneurial skills, has emerged in the contemporary media environment in Australia – a professional that is informing the public but stretching the boundaries of journalism. These professionals are following a path that is an alternative to traditional journalism by blogging, tweeting, aggregating online content, and producing online publications. This paper will discuss a research project that aims to conduct an investigation into these new media professionals: how have they adapted their skills in production environments; what technologies and software, including SEOs and social media analytics, are deployed by these new media professionals; what are the evolving business models they are using; and, what are the degrees of success of these new media professionals according to different locations in the mediascape. Media producers in the West have been faced with changes in the way content is produced and consumed with changes in technology, digitisation of content, and convergence each playing a part in a transforming media landscape. However, with these new technologies, different opportunities have opened up for media content producers, and there is an urgent need for empirical evidence on these new media professionals and how they work and survive in the digital media landscape. We know, anecdotally, that these new media professionals exist, and research in New Zealand has shown that bloggers are becoming increasingly active in the media domain and have “started to fill the gap in public interest journalism left by the commercially operated media corporates” (Myllylahti, 2013, p. 42). But as yet, there is little empirical data at the moment that demonstrates the Australian experience. Employment woes for journalists in Western media in traditional media forms have been well documented (Fulton & Balnaves, 2013). However, according to research by Economic and Market Development Advisors (EMDA), media jobs in Australia increased in 2012. The EMDA report noted a decrease in traditional employment with an increase in employment in media such as websites, online magazines and other Web 2.0 forms. The aim of this research is to examine workers in this Web 2.0 area. The Web 2.0 environment has enabled people outside the mainstream media to engage with an audience, and provide media, via platforms such as blogs, microblogs, social networking sites and websites.Because of the radical changes to journalism over the last decade and the different way it is now produced and delivered, and the rise of alternative sources of information, it is even more crucial to examine the newer styles of journalism and this examination will be done in this research by examining the producers themselves using ethnographic techniques such as semi-structured interviewing. This paper will report on the project and its importance including a review of literature in the area.