On Wednesday I spoke at the thoroughly enjoyable Journalism’s Next Top Model conference at Westminster University. Highlight of the day was keynote speaker Robert Picard, a media economist able to separate publishers’ sense of entitlement from the hard realities of economics and business (mis)management.

Journalism will survive, he said, because there will always be a demand for it. But most print publishers will die because over the past few decades they quite simply haven’t managed their accounts responsibly. While a typical business should have a debt-to-equity ratio of around 1:1, some publishers have racked up ratios ranging from 6:1 to 66:1.

“If you haven’t managed your balance sheet you get in trouble in a recession. Do I feel bad for them? No. They made stupid mistakes.”

One particular mistake highlighted by Picard was the switch in the 1990s from making acquisitions with stock to making acquisitions with debt.

“All the newspapers were making profits when they went bankrupt,” he pointed out. It was their handling of debt that killed them.

I asked Robert about the government’s plans to relax (and consider removing) local media ownership rules – and whether that would indeed create the environment for entrepreneurialism they want to encourage. His response was simple: “You don’t encourage competition by relaxing ownership rules.

“They don’t understand economics,” if they thought that would happen, he continued. “We need people to start more media organisations, not merge into fewer organisations.”

Picard seemed to feel that the Dutch government’s moves to provide funds to help news organisations restructure, or to re-skill journalists, were more intelligent responses.

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Innovative online journalism educators (particularly those under 25) may be interested in MacArthur’s $2 million of awards in its second Digital Media & Learning Competition. Awards “to innovators shaping the field of digital media and learning” will be given in two categories:

“1. Innovation in Participatory Learning Awards will support projects that demonstrate new modes of participatory learning, in which people take part in virtual communities, share ideas, comment on one another’s projects, and advance goals together. Successful projects will promote participatory learning in a variety of environments: through the creation of new digital tools, modification of existing ones, or use of digital media in some other novel way. Submissions will be accepted from applicants in Canada, People’s Republic of China, India, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States, countries in which HASTAC or MacArthur have significant experience. Winners will receive between $30,000 and $250,000.

“2. Young Innovator Awards are designed to encourage young people aged 18-25 to think boldly about “what comes next” in participatory learning and to contribute to making it happen. Winners will receive funding to do an internship with a sponsor organization to help bring their most visionary ideas from the “garage” stage to implementation. For this competition cycle, submissions will only be accepted from applicants in the United States. Winners will receive between $5,000 and $30,000.

“Competition winners will join an existing community of 17 awardees from last year, including a mobile musical laboratory, a digital humanitarian assistance game derived from existing military simulation technology, and a mobile phone project hat connects young African social entepreneurs with young North American professionals. Winners also will be invited to showcase their work at a conference that will include venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, educators and new media experts seeking the best ideas about digital participatory learning.

“Applications are due Oct. 15, 2008 and winners will be publicly announced in April 2009. Detailed information on the competition is available online at www.dmlcompetition.net.”

Press Release – MacArthur Foundation.

(via Danah Boyd)

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Here’s another one:

“If you are a UK based not-for-profit organisation or community group looking to extend your work through the use of the Internet you could be eligible for one of 30 cash grants available. Five overall winners will also win technology equipment of their choice and a one-to-one workshop with celebrity Dotcom entrepreneur and co-founder of lastminute.com Martha Lane Fox.”

Note that last year’s winners “used the grants to implement essential technology projects, from chat rooms on health issues to web-based support networks and other digital technologies.”

In other words, online journalism ideas are welcomed, even if news organisations are not. Indie journalists may want to start building those partnerships now…

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The best thing that I took from this week’s 2gether08 event was yesterday’s announcement by blogging MP Tom Watson and Ofcom’s blogging Tom Loosemore of Show Us a Better Way.

The site (also a blog – notice a pattern here?) is releasing a range of public data and inviting people to mash them up, or come up with ideas to do so. In their words:

The UK Government wants to hear your ideas for new products that could improve the way public information is communicated. The Power of Information Taskforce is running a competition on the Government’s behalf, and we have a £20,000 prize fund to develop the best ideas to the next level. You can see the type of thing we are are looking for here. 

To show they are serious, the Government is making available gigabytes of new or previously invisible public information especially for people to use in this competition.

While the US has a strong tradition of making public data available, which has enabled the likes of Adrian Holovaty to create pioneering mashups like ChicagoCrime.org and Everyblock, the UK’s public data has been much less open.

But that is changing. The Guardian’s ‘Free Our Data’ campaign has successfully heaped a lot of pressure on government to “Make taxpayers’ data available to them”, and when I was recently invited to take part in a government white paper workshop around “community empowerment”, I got the impression that I was knocking at a semi-open door when I said that public availability of data would be my number one priority (more on that workshop here).

Anyway, back to that new website. Murray Dick has already come up with some stonking ideas, and I would suggest every journalist in the country with any interest in the future of journalism should at the very least be watching this and thinking about the possibilities in their area. The Power of Information Task Force blog is well worth following for further examples internationally.

If you think FOI requests have transformed journalism in recent years, and the battle to retain those, think about this: if we don’t make the most of this opportunity, we’ll have no excuse when the government decides to withdraw the offer.

• Related links (via Nick Booth):

Bill Thompson

Justin Pickard: “This is what it’s all about”.

Shane McC: “Surely this can’t be government? But it is…Brilliant”

Guardian Tech: ” It would be fantastic if a Guardian Tech reader could win this”

Ideal Government: “we offered an OS map and a Google lava lamp”

Richard’s Kingdom: “what’s even better is that this competition is accompanied by a whole raft of new public APIs”

Ed Parsons: “I’m Impressed”

Skuds Sister: “I have more confidence in motivated geeks than in large companies”

Daveyp “does this mark a sea change”

Ideal Government: “Power of Information work is gathering pace and getting quite exciting”

Bob Piper: “My suggestion was going to be ‘Where’s my bloody post office gone’.”

Open: ” it behoves me to offer a little praise when they get things right”

100 ideas already Tom Watson: “we might have to find some more prizes.”

Personal Democracy: “Kudos to all!”

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I’ve had an email about The Sky Young Journalist Awards which “aims to find and celebrate the very best journalist talent across online, television, radio and print.” Its aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds to report on local, national or international news stories that matter to them.

It sounds pretty worthy, so here’s the rest of the fluff:

“Throughout the competition, the Sky News team will be running a series of blog posts which can be found on Sky News Editors’ Blog where different members of the Sky News team are blogging about their daily life as journalists and how they got into their career – a few recent examples below:

· My Week – Liz Lane (Sky News Radio Journalist)

· How I got where I am – Tejas Kotecha (Sky News Sports Desk)”

PS: If you have any questions to put forward to the Sky News team about their careers, post them in the comments and I will get them answered on the blog.

Further details of the competition below

Sky Young Journalist Awards

What

Entries can write about any news worthy story that they feel to be important to them and enter one or more of the following categories: TV, Online, Radio and Print. Contestants need to be 14-19 years old to enter and can write about any subject area they find interesting. Entrants can write about anything from politics to show business to the environment so if you know any aspiring journalists, tell them to get writing! The judging panel will be made up of members from the Sky News team and will be chaired by Sky News TV Presenter Kay Burley.

How to Enter

The competition closes on Monday 1st September at noon.

You can enter one or more of the following categories:

· TV – provide an outline of the TV interviews, locations and spokespeople that would make up a TV news story, to be submitted with an overview of the whole story angle and ideas for additional footage.

· Online – write an article on a local, national or international news story for Online publication, with relevant links.

· Radio – provide a written outline of the interviews, locations and spokespeople that would make-up a news story, to be submitted with an overview of the whole angle.

· Print – write an article on a local, national or international news story.

Entries can be submitted by email or post, see the Submit your entry page for details

Prizes

The overall winner will win:

· An iMac plus Final Cut Express for your school

· A tour of Sky News Studio plus a workshop with a Sky News specialist

· An iMac plus Final Cut Express for the winners school or college.

The four category winners will win:

· A Sony Cybershot DSC-W35 digital camera

· A tour of Sky News Studio plus a workshop with a Sky News specialist

·

The four category runners up will win:

· Hi Tech pen with 1GB MP3 Player / Voice Recorder / Radio

Other links that might be useful:

· Sky Young Journalist home page

· Sky Learning Bebo Page

· Sky News Editors’ Blog

· Terms and Conditions

· Sky Learning Home Page

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Valerie Kirshner has asked me to spread the word about the Knight News Challenge – here’s the info:

“It is open to community-minded digital news innovators worldwide — journalists, software designers, bloggers, and students of any age.

“This competition is sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, who fund excellence in journalism and freedom of expression worldwide. They are offering up to $5 million this year alone to winning participants. It’s something that can really change a person’s life.

“Applications will be closing Oct. 15.”

Here is a link with all the information you need. Also see http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/070604colombo/ and http://journalism.wikia.com/wiki/Knight_News_Challenge

And even if you don’t enter, help improve the entries by visiting the Read & Comment page of the site.

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