Kiyoshi Martinez - nerdlusus blog the geek wants out

Rethinking the byline: market your name as a brand

“You don’t go into journalism to be rich.”

I can’t recall an accurate number of times I’ve heard that phrase or some variation of it. From the moment I took my first introductory journalism course up until a few days ago speaking with a friend, this idea that there’s no money to be made in journalism seems to be hammered into stone tablets that we carry with us.

But I disagree. There’s money to be made in journalism. The problem is that we’re probably not wired to think about how we can leverage the hard work we do and start using that to our advantage — or at least protect our jobs from being cut out from underneath us.

Journalists need to start thinking like advertisers, brand makers, or marketers about themselves and the product they produce.

Today, Romenesko posted a memo about how respected and award-winning NASCAR journalist Ed Hinton left the Orlando Sentinel after they (and the Tribune Co.) decided to slash national NASCAR coverage. That was a huge mistake on their part to let Hinton go, but it could have a silver lining for him.

Here’s why: sports journalists can make their money outside of newspapers now. Big money, as The New York Times pointed out, ESPN and Yahoo! Sports are in a hiring war that’s poaching talent from newspapers. And not just any newspapers, either. We’re talking top tier places:

“We’re used to being a destination, not a stepping stone.” - Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, assistant managing editor for sports at The Washington Post

What the Tribune Co. should have done is something that I actually thought of, but unfortunately Jeff Jarvis beat me to the punch in blogging about it (can’t exactly blog during worktime): create a niche NASCAR blog based around the brand identity that Hinton has within the NASCAR community.

And now, as Jarvis points out, Hinton can probably either seek employment elsewhere or is free to use the brand he’s built with his name and market himself to advertisers in an independent venture on his own if he chose to:

And in the long run, it’s upside for Ed because, as the best in the nation, he should be able to market himself freely with many such deals and build up the best damned Nascar blog anywhere, something he now owns and controls. There’s more risk for Ed but, hell, he’s now unemployed anyway. But he also takes with him a brand the papers helped him build.

And that’s the problem with a lot of newspapers these days. They’re not recognizing in a lot of cases the brand-name talent they have in their star writers and marketing that.

One good example of what newspapers should be doing is what The New York Times did with Brian Stelter and the TV Decoder blog. Hire a guy who’s made a name for himself (at TV Newser) and let him blog the living hell out of something he knows.

So, if your newspaper isn’t marketing you, then you should start marketing yourself.

What have you got to lose? As this example illustrates, corporations would rather cut coverage and let their talent clean out their desks than try to innovate and come up with new ways to make money from their most valued resources: journalists.

And this doesn’t compromise anything. (Heck, even Edward R. Murrow hired a talent agent, and he’s held in high regard.) You’ll still have to strive to be your best. You’ll have to work even harder in your niche. But, the payoff can be huge. If you’re a known brand, maybe your employer will have enough sense to not show you the door during what seems like inevitable layoffs in the industry. Or you’ll have built up some sort of cushion for yourself if you’re not quite as lucky. It’s depressing to even have to think about these things in the newspaper industry, but it’s time that journalists start being honest with themselves and start finding a way to survive it.

Hey! Now that you’ve read this, check out my follow-up to this post: Why journalists need to build personal social networks now and for the future. It talks about why branding is needed to help you in what could be the upcoming change in pay structure for journalists where readership literally counts.

Technorati Tags: marketing, advertising, journalism, media, newspaper, branding, NASCAR, Ed+Hinton, sports, ESPN, Yahoo!, Tribune

I think that’s probably our conversation you’re referring to. I agree, though, building a name for yourself as a piece of talent could be a profitable venture, if not a number of hard years of work. Just like any creativity-based business, there’s a niche for the most talented and most charismatic. I guess it’s more about having an audience than it is about what you say, which I guess sucks. I’ve never been hung up on the money, and my audience is small but hardcore.

I did this a year ago and found that although I heard a lot of good feedback from others not in the business…I failed to gain much notice from anyone in the business besides Jayski. Good luck. I worked for three teams as PR rep but am outside the loop now. Thanks good luck to Mr. Hinton.

[...] Hey! Did you read my prior post on how journalists should market themselves as a brand? If not, you may want to read it first, because it serves as a foundation for this post. [...]

Ed Hinton will be missed, and will no doubt be looking closely at SPEED Channel and their SPEEDtv.com website. Luckily, the NASCAR TV scene has been covered at thedalyplanet.tv all season long, with as many as ten thousand users daily.

If you want to watch a brand-building journalism exercise, keep an eye on us.

[...] using your real name when you comment helps build your own personal branding online. Extending this to any service you use on the web, people recognize your name and are more likely [...]