Tom Davidson

I can tell there was another round of layoffs at one of my old newsrooms: I’ve had a flurry of LinkedIn invites from former colleagues. There’s been the usual grumbling about the heartless bastards at corporate, at how these cuts will only further diminish our Noble Religious Calling, etc. – but the reality is these [...]

I’ve often commented that the future of news will be distributed among smaller, nimbler and collaborative organizations. And when anyone can publish, the point of  “sustainability” – the amount of cash each needs to keep going – will vary wildly. My former colleague Buddy Nevins today writes about the perfect illustration – an independent blogger [...]

My friend and former colleague Bill Day and I just finished a great six-week course in entrepreneurial journalism for 18 graduate students in American University’s Interactive Journalism master’s program. We set out to be intentionally provocative, because Bill and I have seen too many great ideas for projects and products turn into smoldering wreckage because [...]

Some of them, anyway. Over the past month or so, I’ve been plowing through an extensive stack of resumes to fill some openings on my new team at PBS. Many of the resumes were sort of sad – those of journalists with impeccable traditional credentials, and no clue what I meant when I asked for [...]

The very interesting social-media curation tool Storify was released in private beta on Tuesday at TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference. It neatly twists the idea behind Flipboard. Flipboard automatically generates a list of stories that might interest you, based on links suggested by people you follow on Twitter or your Facebook friends. Storify reverses the flow – [...]

… while I started a new gig. I’m now serving as a senior director and publisher for a news and public affairs project at PBS.org. My time working with both GrowthSpur and Localist.com has been a blast. But the chance to work with Christine Montgomery and the crew at PBS was too much to pass [...]

My friends at the Online News Association put together a terrific program at the University of Alabama-Birmingham for entrepreneurial journalists and others interested in starting news and information sites. (Thanks to the Gannett Foundation for the necessary financial support.)  I spoke a bit about emerging business models to support these kinds of sites (and – plug [...]

The Knight Digital Media Center’s entrepeneurial bootcamp at USC has been terrific. (Search #uscnewsbiz on Twitter to get a feel for how terrific.) Here’s a bucket o’ links and resources I referred to in the discussion at the Knight Digital Media Center’s Entrepreneurial Boot Camp. (They may be useful, of course, to other journopreneurs.) First [...]

I’ve been preparing a presentation to the terrific News Entrepreneur Boot Camp at the Knight Digital Media Center next week. I’m part of a panel of folks who have transitioned from the newsroom to business-side roles. As part of the prep work, I’ve re-read a hefty stack of posts about emerging revenue models for news – [...]

Most of what I hate about the newspaper industry was encapsulated in a single session at the American Society of News (not Newspapers! Really!) Editors meeting in D.C. a few days ago. An otherwise smart agenda took the inevitable detour down the rabbit hole with yet another discussion of pay walls. Walter Hussman, publisher of [...]