Tom Davidson

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 – [...]

I’m doing this, well, just because I can. (People who make up asinine policies first need to understand the underlying technology.) Hat tip @JeffJarvis – who will not seek damages for me linking to him.

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 [...]

My favorite ballclub opens their brand-new stadium today, so forgive me if I seem a bit preoccupied. Watching all the hoopla – on multiple media platforms at once – gives us all another lesson on the folly of the paid-content argument from some traditionalists.

  Economist Robert Picard has always been one of the sharpest thinkers about the nexus of economics and media. Today, he nails a topic that has long vexed me (and others): the willingness of journalists to stay in their newsroom cocoons, woefully ignorant of the business workings that for so long provided bountiful resources for [...]