Why subscribe?

If you are already an independent media entrepreneur, or about to become one, this newsletter can help you. You’ll find out how other media entrepreneurs are creating products and services to attract new audiences. You’ll discover new business models for news. You’ll learn tactics and strategies for sales and marketing, how to create a community and how to get people to pay for your products.

My News Biz helps you discover tools and tips for going independent and prospering with your journalism. All of the focus is on finding new ways to solve the problems you face when you decide to start a business. It’s aimed especially at journalists who need to learn business skills. Here is a sample of some of the first entries. If you’re already persuaded, you can sign up at this link.

Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter every week. My News Biz will also link you to some of the most relevant articles—in English and Spanish—from my website, Entrepreneurial Journalism.

About me

My name is James Breiner, and I have spent the last decade helping entrepreneurs overcome obstacles to establish viable media businesses.

For several decades I was a journalist, editor and then publisher, mostly with business publications. So I have been on both sides of the industry—doing investigative journalism and later leading the marketing, sales and editorial teams of the Baltimore Business Journal. Journalism is a public service, but it is a public service that has to be profitable, and I have experience with making journalism profitable.

Public service in Latin America, China, Europe

I left publishing to go into teaching and training publishers and editors in Latin America—first in Bolivia and later in Mexico. (I am bilingual, English-Spanish.) Both of those assignments were as a Knight Fellow for the International Center for Journalists, ICFJ. It was there that journalists asked me to help them launch their own media organizations; so I developed several courses focused on marketing, sales, technology and adminstration of a publication. Later ICFJ selected me to be co-director of their Global Business Journalism program at China’s prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing.

In between I have done seminars, training courses and consulting for a number of universities as well as the Poynter Institute, the Global Investigative Journalism Network, Crain Communications, Bizjournals, the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, the Fundación Gabo, Deutsche Welle’s DW Akademie, the European Journalism Centre and the College of Europe in Poland (details of all of these engagements are on my LinkedIn profile.)

My latest work has been teaching courses in Economics, Media Economics and Multimedia at the University of Navarra in Spain. My most important volunteer work is as the treasurer and executive committee member for SembraMedia.org, which helps digital media entrepreneurs in the Spanish-speaking world.

Join the conversation

You can sign up for My News Biz at this link. You can help me serve the community of media entrepreneurs better by suggesting topics to me at jamesbreiner@gmail.com or commenting on some of the topics on Twitter at @jamesbreiner.