#towknight

“It’s experimenting, looking the world through people’s eyes, sharing. And you get paid for that,” Deniz told me when I asked him what he loves the most about his job. “I could do it for the rest of my life,” he adds smiling. And for good reason! He spent the last four years travelling the world and covering the latest technology news: 

“I’ve always loved technology ever since I got my first computer. I was the only one using it in my house. I landed this job thanks to a blog article I posted a few years ago on my blog. I definitely love it.” 

So why did he apply to an entrepreneurial program? “I like new challenges and I want to see how far my virtual reality (VR) project, Journy360, can go. I am really excited about that. We, as journalists, should acknowledge once and for all how much our jobs have changed and avidly explore new opportunities. Launching creative media startups is one way,” he softly adds.

In 2009, Londoner Chad O'Carroll visited North Korea and realized how little information other nations had about the country. The next year, he launched NK News, an independent specialist site focused on North Korea. With no affiliation to any political organization or country, it is defined as "a one-stop-shop on North Korea, bringing together news, opinion & analysis, research tools, data, and subject specialists in one convenient place". After reaching a broader audience and growing in revenue, Tow-Knight's 2015 fellow plans to expand NK News model to cover other countries.

How did you come up with NK News?

I went to North Korea in 2009 and spent a lot of time reading about the country. There were a few websites covering it, but the mainstream content was very poor and sensationalized. That's when the idea of creating a news aggregator for people interested in the country came up. Today, we have become a single-subject specialist information provider on North Korea. Whether you are a business person looking for investment opportunities or a researcher, this is the place where you find news about it. We aim to deliver a wide range of information on one single subject, trying to be as impartial and objective as possible.

How is the business going?

We have a lot of subscribers joining, and the revenue is growing. This year we should be up in revenue about 30 percent over last year. Subscriptions are growing nicely and the big difference in 2015 is that we've cultivated a much bigger market of institutional clients. I mean, there are institutional clients coming to us now, rather than us just reaching out to them. We've started to be considered a reliable source on news about North Korea.

Which challenges have you faced?

The biggest challenge has been revenue. It is hard to deal with the erratic nature of subscriptions, especially the times of year they renew. For example, there were times in the middle of summer when revenue banked from subscriptions would get very low, and then on the next day $20,000 would come in. From the research that I've done it’s clear that it’s important to be able to survive two months with no new subscriptions at all, so you have to plan very carefully how to spend your money.

What are you up to do next?

Soon I'll be moving to South Korea, where I plan to spend one or two years. I want to learn more of the Korean language, and the location is key for what we are doing. We are also planning to launch a new website designed to attract readers from think-tanks and businesses – NK Pro. This will be a premium model, and we are spending quite a lot of energy to make that work. Then, we are also thinking of expanding our model to other countries. If the North Korea approach works, we can apply its model to other countries that have similar characteristics. Myanmar would be a potential target country, and Iran is another place that we have thought about. Basically, any country where finding reliable information is challenging.

Chad in North Korea in 2009, when he had the idea for NK News

What other startups have caught your attention?

The things that interest me most are other services focused on one subject. I really feel that we do more on NK News than other single-subject providers do on other countries. I keep a close eye on software startups and new business models in journalism. One that we came across during spring at the Tow-Knight was Spoon University, which was created by two women who recently graduated from Northwestern. That was one of the most impressive startups we saw. They have very good skills in that area, and they found an interesting business model. When trying to launch a media startup, a lot of people realize it's really hard to make money in this area. If you specialize in a subject, you can find better models and maybe build better businesses. Another one is IAReporter.com - I know the guy who runs it. On his website, you don't get even get a single story for free. It specializes in news and analysis on international arbitrations between companies and national governments. It is subscribed by lawyers who value that kind of information and pay good money for it. In contrast, I think we at NK News undervalued our work too long, always eager to give it away for free.  

What interesting thing you have read/watched/listened to recently?

Tons, it turns out.

As I prepare a Skillshare on this subject to present to my classmates next week, I’m amazed by all the advice we’ve heard from startup land this spring.

Since I’m a little overwhelmed by my outline right now, I’ll step back and write some of the common themes we’ve heard from the all the entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs who have so kindly made time for us.

1) Believe it -The most important thing (according to almost everyone) was to truly believe in and feel passionate about a startup project. That’s the feeling that drives you when you’re not getting paid and nobody is looking over your shoulder. 2) Find your people - Whether its a team, advisors or even investors, a big reiterated tip is to surround yourself with smart, dedicated people who care about/will take ownership in what you’re building.

3) Be Nimble - It’s all about occupying the white space, finding that niche that no one else has occupied, and then evolving. The most successful entrepreneurs we’ve met have found their niche, but instead of getting stuck in it they’ve used it as a starting point to grow, expand and follow their audiences to new heights.

kuangkeng: Hi Keng, can you share with us how you end up as a fellow at Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism?

Keng: Sure. During my final semester in NYU’s Studio 20 graduate program, I partnered with Foreign Policy to develop a training program for its journalists to integrate data journalism into their daily reporting. At the end of the semester, Studio 20 organized this event where students took turn to present their project to NYC journalism community. It was there that Tow-Knight Center Education Director Jeremy Caplan saw my presentation and approached me to join the 4-month fellowship. I always wanted to understand the business side of media. I see it as a must-have skill if I want to transform myself from a journalist to a media innovator or entrepreneur. So I said yes to him.

  kuangkeng: How different is the business side from the journalistic side?

Keng: First, I don’t think it is in the best interest of a publisher to draw a fine line between journalism and business. As Jay Rosen, my professor at Studio 20, said in his recent blog post, how can journalists make a good product, which can be either content or service or both, if they don’t understand how their colleagues are selling the product? This becomes more crucial when the traditional media business model that relies completely on advertisement is falling apart. Without advertisement to subsidize the journalism, publishers are struggling to figure out different models to monetize their journalistic products. It makes total sense for people who make the products to be a part of this struggle, right?

I guess the biggest difference between those two is the position of users in their product thinking. Journalists used to see the product as what they think is worth publishing, or in their language “agenda setting”, but entrepreneurs see it as what the users really want. In other words, they are more "user-centric”. The idea of putting users at the center, and delivering what they want through the channels they prefer, really struck me. 

When I was a reporter with Malaysiakini, my colleagues and I liked to say "we are serving the people”. But looking back, did we ever interact with our users to understand what they want, who are they, and why they read our stories? Did we ever collect their data and analyze it although we have the ability to do so? Not really. We were obsessed with metrics like the numbers of share and like, but we don’t see them as real human being. 

The concept of user-centric has started to grow on me when I was in Studio 20. The fellowship however illustrates the concept in a more concrete way - how other entrepreneurs put the concept to work, and practical techniques to approach users and carry out user testing.

kuangkeng: You sound like you have learned quite a lot from the fellowship although you are only in the fourth week. Maybe give us a summary of your takeaways?

Keng: Definitely. The best thing about such a fellowship is that it creates an environment for you to really geek out on the thing you want to build. You are surrounded with people who are equally passionate about their projects, great gurus who are sincere to transfer their knowledge, and real entrepreneurs who share their experience and ready to answer your doubts. Of course there’s information overload and you need to grasp many business terms and concepts in a very short time, but I enjoy it very much.

In the past 3 weeks, not only I was thinking hard about my own project, DataN, I was also wrapping my head around all the challenges faced by Malaysiakini. As I have spent 8 years with Malaysiakini, it serves as a good study case for me to think about how the recommendations and best practices shared by the speakers and gurus can be applied. While I’m training myself to be an entrepreneur, I guess I’m also preparing myself to be an intrapreneur.

DataN - Big Data, Small Newsroom (by NYU's Studio 20) from Kuang Keng Kuek Ser on Vimeo.

kuangkeng: Great, but I don’t think you have answered my question. 

Keng: Oh, right. Sorry about that. Well, I find many of the systematic approaches to problem-solving very helpful such as the project management framework provided by Jeff Mignon and Nancy Wang of Revsquare, as well as the business model canvas and Lean Business Model Canvas given by Jeremy. They provided me a framework to think through many issues around my project. If you really sit down and fill up the canvas carefully, it forces you to think really hard about all the details that you previously overlooked or avoided.

Other related events that I attended in the past one month, although not directly related to my project, exposed me to many provoking ideas. Many of those can be experimented in Malaysiakini to innovate the ways stories are told.

I still remember the short presentation by futurist Amy Webb during the IWMF’s Cracking the Code conference. She explored different ways to deliver news to user’s smartphone based on location, time, routine and activities of the user. That’s totally doable and very very cool.

Another thing that struck me was her view on the word “scale”

Scale doesn’t imply impact or attention. It implies “bigness.” What real good is that? #Code15

— Amy Webb (@webbmedia)

January 29, 2015

That makes a lot of sense on my project because DataN is more like a consultancy service, and my focus is not on scaling to become another multi-million startup but how to create value and impact for my clients. The number of clients that I can serve might be small but done properly it could lead to significant impact in the regions where the clients are operating.

During my time in Studio 20, I have been exposed to many ideas and concepts raised by Jeff Jarvis, but still he helped to refresh them. 

kuangkeng: Last question, can you update us the progress of DataN? 

Keng: There was some progress made in the past one month, but everything is still in a very early stage. I’m talking to a media VC which is interested to use DataN with 2 of their clients which are news outlet in eastern Europe. I also scheduled a training with Malaysiakini in early March. In the coming month, I need to prepare the training modules and tools customization and integration for Malaysiakini. 

by Kuang Keng Kuek Ser

A strong sense of curiosity in a wide range of fields have made journalism a perfect career choice for Maria Sanchez.

If I study biology, I would only focus on science, but if I become a journalist, I could write about science and politics and others. It is a profession that involves a little bit of everything.

Born and grew up in Madrid, Spain, Maria however started her journalism career in Mexico. After graduated from a journalism program in University Carlos III of Madrid, she was awarded an unexpected fellowship to intern at El Mundo de Tehuacán, a newspaper based in Puebla, Mexico.

She was immediately fascinated by “the political situation, corruption, poverty and inequality” in Mexico and realized that being a journalist can really make a difference to a society. There Maria also understood that stories written in Spanish can have a wide reach and impact in a long list of Latin American countries.

Following the short stint at El Mundo de Tehuacán, Maria returned home and joined Soitu.es as a reporter, helping the Spanish news startup to win the ONA excellence award, twice. The news website pioneered several bold innovations which Maria described as “ahead of its time” such as allowing journalists and communities to curate content on the website. It was also where Maria acquired all the valuable skills on multimedia storytelling, social media, live blogging and collaborative journalism.

Unfortunately, the startup was forced to fold up when Spain was hit hard by the 2008 global financial which led to a media advertising crisis. Taking a break, Maria, who was once a guitarist in a post-rock band, embarked on a three-month road trip travelling the US, from New York to Los Angeles, Seattle to New Orleans, to investigate the roots of American music. The journey and findings were later published as a blog called ‘Motel Americana’ in El País, Spain’s largest newspaper.

She then worked as a social media consultant and strategist for a company that produces cultural publications, managed an online shorts documentary festival called Notodofilmfest, and later assumed the position of digital editor-in-chief of Condé Nast Traveler based in Madrid. After successfully launching digital versions of the travel magazine, she was awarded a Fulbright scholarship by the US government to pursue a masters degree in CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, followed by the Tow-Knight Center fellowship in entrepreneurial journalism.

I want to learn how media do things in the U.S. in order to apply to future projects. I learnt my lesson (from Soitu.es), I don’t want that to happen again.

By Heather Martino

It gives me great pride to announce that Hashtag That was selected by General Assembly to participate in the User Experience Design Immersive course. It's a three week program that allows students to apply their UX design skills in a real-world setting with real-world impact by working on - you guessed it - a real project (Hashtag That - go sign up!).

Thanks in part to an intro from my Tow-Knight fellow Kabir Chibber (who runs an awesome startup called Pitch Me), we began working with three rad design students - Rachel, Jessica and Quinn, on Monday, April 21, at GA's New York office.  

At the close of week one, I couldn't be happier with this team. They're extremely organized and efficient, and have done a great job of clarifying expectations and following through on tasks. We currently use a combination of Asana, Google Docs and Slack to share project tasks, goals and resources, and I highly recommend all three software applications for any collaborative team working both in person and remotely.

During our initial meeting at GA, I prepared a deck that contained a summary of my project and goals, and also brought some snacks - two great ideas that I learned from reading Do Cool Shit. Being organized and offering some free food always helps to motivate people - right Miki! The team also had their own observations, ideas and list of questions ready to go, which was so helpful. It's amazing to see how passionate, organized people can collaborate - and I'm so thankful to have these superstars on board.

Great collaborating w/ @GA #UXDesign students @cunyjschool for http://t.co/LRJ15ciOhR - a @tkcuny project #tkcuny pic.twitter.com/0GrlGIeMav

— Heather Martino (@HeatherSaidTHAT)

April 23, 2014

In addition to our initial meeting at GA, the team was also kind enough to come to the CUNY J-School's Times Square campus on Wednesday to meet with our developer, TC. Jessica (pictured below) interviewed a CUNY student Max Willens as part of their market research interviews.

Thus far, the GA Team has completed a Statement of Work (SOW) and Research Analysis, which included Competitive Analysis Findings, Survey Results & User Interview Insights, and Personas & User Stories. I've also been sharing my own research with them, as well as an updated Haiku Deck.

We just had a really productive Sunday afternoon chat, where we discussed the results of the Research Analysis. They're currently working on User Flows and Sitemaps, as well as Sketched Wireframes and Paper Prototypes. I personally can't wait to see what they do next, and really value their dedication to Hashtag That.