We didn’t even realize there were eight pointers in Dorian’s talk with executives, staff and teachers at the Poynter Institute last week, but that’s how many the ever able Steve Myers of Poynter found when he wrote it up for the Institue’s e-Media Tidbits column (awful name, but great stuff), to which Dorian also contributes. The pointers, via Steve:

- Cash makes the difference
- Keep a close eye on how quickly you get paid
- Strive to create revenue streams that complement each other
- Be conscious of the advantages and disadvantages of different forms of revenue
- Be open to building a revenue stream that’s different from your perceived core product
- Strive to increase advertising revenue with content-specific ad networks
- All page views aren’t equal

And the full piece is here.

Some of Dorian’s recent writings on PBS MediaShift and Poynter’s eMedia Tidbits:

How Journalism is Getting Better
Portability, Participation Rule for New Media Consumer
Why Android Should Matter to Media
How The New York Times, Others Are Experimenting with Augmented Reality
Testing New Business Models with Adjusted Assumptions
How to Develop the Facebook Strategy You Need

Through our partnership with BGV Media, focussed on helping educational and not-for-profit institutions, we are proud to provide this example of a success:

When folks at the oldest journalism school in the country needed to know more about the world of Web publishing, they called us.

In October, 2008, the University of Missouri’s Reynolds Journalism Institute brought us to Columbia, Mo., for an intensive day-long seminar on the topic of content management systems, or CMS. They had learned of our expertise through our white paper on the topic (available in the right sidebar on our homepage).

Principals Dorian Benkoil and Adam Glenn, along with Amy Webb, our CMS expert and lead author of our CMS white paper, briefed some 30 journalism faculty, staff, fellows and students, as well as representatives from the Missouri Press Association and National Newspaper Association.

Among the topics we guided the group on were the current state of the CMS industry, media trends affecting CMS choices, and how individual organizations can find a direction and make initial decisions on their choice of CMS. We also helped them delve into workflows and business issues in a digital media environment.

Meeting organizer Jane Stevens described how we jumped in to help with this informative overview of the gathering. “If you’re trying to figure out what CMS to choose for your news organization, and you’re confused by the plethora of choices, [their paper] is worth every penny,” she writes. “Even better than reading the white paper is to talk with them in person.”

RJI and Stevens later brought Adam and Dorian on board to help with a related project called the RJI Collaboratory, a social network of entrepreneurial journalists looking to find support and advice for starting up niche news projects. Adam helped launch the Collaboratory in early 2009 and continues to jointly manage it, while Dorian shared his insights on the business of news in a series of detailed blog posts and other resources in the summer of 2009.

After being asked recently to give some “blue sky” thoughts on ways to make a trade show more interesting in the near and further future, perhaps using technology, Dorian fired off a few ideas.

Here they are, in bullet point form, in no particular order.

Over on the site of Scribe Media, our partners in the ‘Finance for Media Professionals‘ series, Peter Cervieri writes about how we’re trying to figure out how to price the video course. It’s not as easy as it might seem. There are real costs involved: equipment, studio, staff, marketing, etc. We want to make it as widely available as possible, and need to cover our costs, and make at least some profit.

Price it low, and we might sell more copies. Price it higher, and we may sell fewer but make more money. We want to make it widely available. Those who attended the shoot told us they thought we could charge $149-$179. We know there’s great interest, but can’t know exactly how much demand. We’re thinking of selling as low as discounted $99 (for those who come in with a membership or through a group). Tell us what you think, and give us any ideas. We’re grateful for the input.

Here’s Peter’s full post, which is pretty open in revealing our discussions and numbers. You can leave comments there or here.

On our show Naked Media, produced jointly with Scribe Media, we often take the opportunity to ask entrepreneurial types what it takes to be a media entrprepreneur. Dave Morgan, founder (and $275 million seller) of Tacoda (to AOL) and newly named chairman of the Tennis Company, took the first shot. Then MIchael Wolff of Newser.com and Vanity Fair stopped by with Steven Kotok of The Week, as did Next New Networks co-founder Fred Seibert. We’ll keep adding to this list as we get more and more.

1. Keep control. But know when to give it up. Make sure the capital structure is such that you can keep control of the business, do the things you need to to make it grow, etc. Don’t go for the biggest valuation, but rather the right valuation. If the money you get is too big, and sets too-high expectations, the pressure to generate enough cashflow and create a large liquidity event (meaning get someone to buy the company at a high value) will be a lot of pressure that’ll hurt your ability to make choices you may need to ensure the health of the biz. Don’t take the biggest amount of money, take the best. Corollary: Don’t be the last investment in a venture fund, because then the cycle will be shorter, and they may need to have you sell in, say four years, rather than 7-10. You don’t need that pressure. In other words, it’s not just which venture (or other) fund puts its money behind you, it’s also which of their funds it is. Wollf added: Yes, control is important. But know when to give it up.

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Keys to making money in Web video:

1. keeping your production costs low
2. marketing marketing and marketing — and thinking of marketing in a very traditional test, rinse, repeat kind of way
3. having something else to sell besides the video. IE, your services as a live performer

These from Jennie Bourne, author, Taking Your Video to the Web, at the Web 2.0 conference at Pace University.

More on these lessons at MediaFlect.com.

See our Teeming Media Tips on How to Organize Staff in the digital age.

Are you struggling with how to structure the organization to make your digital media most effective while keeping everything else running smoothly? Take a look at our tips and watch the video of our panel with the Magazine Publishers of America, recorded and produced by our partner (and all around great folks) Scribe Media. There’s video on the Scribe site, which is also linked from the tips page.

First a word on what a blog is (and isn’t). A blog is a publishing platform – a rich, multifaceted and very easy one that’s search engine optimized, and easily linked to and from. It’s an easy way for anyone to control their own “press.” But whether that press is used for lengthy diatribes, scholarly analysis, running humor, video, audio, graphics, photos, breaking news, reporting, analysis, links to other things or myriad other possibilities is up to you.

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