Workshop 2: Jakub Gornicki

Building up a new journalism project/startup

 Purpose of this workshop is to give participants know-how how to focus on building their journalism activities – whether it’s creating startup or starting up a new projects.

Defining goals and audience

Ideas are nice but it’s very important to test them before even starting to work on them.

  • who is the project for?
  • who has done similar work? why they succeeded or not?
  • challenging your own ideas
  • understanding needed resources and team
  • coming up with a budget and timetable

 Building the team

How to create a modern team or newsroom to run project/startup.

  • why you need not only reporters
  • creating a flow in the team – from reporters, through designers, to coders and mentors
  • providing tools for internal work
  • motivating the team

 Fundraising

How to get money for your project? We will go through:

  • crowdfunding platforms
  • successful and unsuccessful campaigns
  • funders/donors map for journalism in CEE and globally
  • general rules for thinking about approaching donors
  • current trends which get funded easier

Delivering success

Or – how not to fail. Most of the ideas quickly run off after the early enthusiasm after hitting first hiccups. Understanding why this happens greatly increases your chances of successfully finishing started idea.

  • going through project phases
  • defining motivating yet achievable goals
  • keeping the team motivated
  • promoting the idea
  • creating buzz