Startup experience, grad school, and opening up new opportunities in media entrepreneurship

BY ELAINE RAMIREZ

As soon as I obtained my undergraduate journalism degree, I knew my career path would stray from the beaten trail. The desire to experience the world overpowered any need to find a conventional entry-level reporting job in the dying U.S. media industry, which at the time was badly hit by the Great Recession. So I did the most reasonable thing: I fled the country, first to Chile, then to South Korea.

Because I took an unconventional path, I was thrust into roles I didn’t believe I deserved. I went from starting an indie culture website in Chile to editing an English-language newspaper in South Korea and running an expat print magazine on the side. Through my experience leading these publications, I found that I contributed the most value not in the stories I wrote, but in the editorial vision I helped others achieve.

It was not until I was forced to reckon with the financial turmoil of a print magazine that I realized I was still ill-prepared for the leadership roles I sought. AAJA’s Executive Leadership Program in 2018 pushed me come to terms with who I was, what I valued and what I wanted, and as soon as I walked out the door of that five-day workshop, I began searching for new paths toward my goals.

While I was comfortable covering technology and entrepreneurship as a freelancer in South Korea, I needed more, and a pivot would require drastic action. Medill School of Journalism’s media innovation and entrepreneurship degree at Northwestern University in the U.S. attracted me with its lessons in the fundamentals of business and technology through the lens of content innovation.

Compared to other reputable programs at Berkeley and Missouri, the program was relatively short — four quarters — and gave me exactly what I wanted: a comprehensive experience exploring the gears working behind the scenes, considering innovative business models, and thinking about content from the perspective of the reader rather than the editor. Medill also prides itself on its unique alumni network, through which I’ve connected with inspiring journalists from reporters to engagement editors and CEOs at all types of publications.

Best of all, I was able to apply and enroll within months thanks to coincidental timing. Through my program’s activities in Chicago, San Francisco and New York, I’ve been able to connect with like-minded people who care about making journalism sustainable and exploring ways to do it, expand my storytelling toolkit, and take part in entrepreneurial projects barely related to journalism but that push me to see innovation in media through product development.

Of course, there were costs to consider, and many aspects of the experience did not live up to my expectations. The diversity pipeline problem is fully exposed in the faculty at Medill, where I did not take a single class by a tenured professor who was female or a person of color. Although our interim dean is a black man, diverse faculty members are few and far between.

Compared to Northwestern University as a whole, Medill has the whitest tenured faculty at 82 percent, according the university’s 2017 diversity report. Some cohorts such as sports have mostly white male students, while others like mine are international Asian and female, and there is minimal integration of students from different specializations. Moreover, no diversity scholarships are offered to graduate students, and I can list by memory every black, Hispanic and Asian American student in a class of 140. My own scholarship covered about one-third of the estimated cost of $100,000; the rest was doled out in loans. International students are expected to pay the entirety on their own.

My program was created specifically for journalists who don’t want to pursue the path of reporter to editor to whatever comes next as defined by the traditional trajectory. My classmates with at least five years of work experience had the most to gain from this perspective. Does a master’s degree give me the answers to solve dying news? Certainly not, but it has shown me frameworks like user-centered design and agile development that help me consider how content businesses can be more responsive to audiences and changing market conditions.

Few people, if any, in this program will go off to start media businesses. But if they enter the newsroom, they will have a fresh perspective for studying a media outlet’s audience, tailoring the content and distribution channels to them, and working with teams from tech developers and audience analysts to the editors and reporters to realize the best ways to reach their consumers. Having more people knowledgeable about the product and business sides of journalism brings more minds to the table to use creative approaches to address the systemic problems of faltering media companies.

I don’t know if or how this degree will pay off, but it has given me new opportunities to challenge my leadership skills and to network with inspiring entrepreneurs in the field. Now I’m less bound to my past and have new tools to choose my future. Grad school isn’t for everyone, but those who are considering it should evaluate what they want from the experience, where they hope it will land them, the added value of each particular school such as alumni network or location, and what they must leave behind to take this step. For me it was the opportunity, if I chose it, for a fresh start. 🗨️

Elaine Ramirez is a journalist and founding editor of N3 Magazine.