European Federation of Journalists

EFJ Webinar: Entrepreneurial Journalism


If you missed the Webinar on Entrepreneurial Journalism, you can catch up the key points and tips provided by our guest speakers, Heike Rost, freelance photojournalists and Tim Dawson, entrepreneurial journalist.

German freelance photojournalist, Heike Rost, spoke about her experience in “selling” her journalistic work and share some useful tips on how to build an audience.

How to build an audience? 10 Tips from Heike Rost, a photojournalist in Germany.

  1. Before building an audience, you need to build yourself an image that is attractive for the audience. It is not just a professional image but also a personal one (‘integer’ in German).
  2. Promote your work online.
  3. Keep your eyes open and take inspiration of what others are doing.
  4. Feed your (potential) audience with interesting content regularly.
  5. Remain connected with your customers/employers even though they may not pay you well.
  6. Always listen to your audience.
  7. Be an opinion leader.
  8. Make friends with fellow journalists/media/clients who may end up giving you a job.
  9. Use social media tools to publicise your work but you must present them professionally.
  10. Taking good pictures is not enough. It is important to tell the story through your picture too.

You can see Rost’s work and more tips at http://www.heikerost.com.

Tim Dawson, the British entrepreneurial journalist (and a member of the National Union of Journalists in the UK & Ireland) has shared some tips and successful stories in finding new models to finance journalism.

A Successful Story

Peter Jukes wrote the book “The Fall of the House of Murdoch” on the phone hacking scandal that has shaken Murdoch’s News Corporation. Jukes was successful in building a group of new audience because he used Twitter to report the trial live. Having gather a lot of interest from the audience, he mananaged to raised 18000€ through crowdfunding in order to publish his book. While drafting his book, he realised that publishing a hardcopy would be expensive. He decided to publish an eBook and managed to get the audience to do fact-checking for his book. This has helped him to build a huge audience and boost the sale of his eBook.

Tips on publishing an eBook:

  1. Find a story and tweet it. It helps build a wider audience.
  2. Produce an E-book. It is simple to produce and sell. The E-book market is hugh
  3. Find your own niche (Tim’s niche is cycling)

If you are thinking about publishing an eBook, you can visit his website to find out more tips at http://newmodeljournalism.com/2014/01/can-ebooks-save-journalism/.

The webinar is organised by the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and the Deutsche Journalisten-Verband (DJV). Around 30 journalists from all over Europe have participated in the webinar.