{"id":197366,"date":"2023-04-12T07:45:36","date_gmt":"2023-04-12T11:45:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=197366"},"modified":"2023-04-12T07:57:52","modified_gmt":"2023-04-12T11:57:52","slug":"political-journalist-and-news-entrepreneur-encourages-students-be-really-good-at-one-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2023\/04\/political-journalist-and-news-entrepreneur-encourages-students-be-really-good-at-one-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"Political Journalist and News Entrepreneur Encourages Students: \u2018Be Really Good at One Thing\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jake Sherman got some really good advice from a fellow reporter when he joined the newsroom at the Wall Street Journal.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t try to be a generalist,\u201d he shared. \u201cFind your niche, and be really good at one thing, and people will always need you around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sherman offered that advice \u2013 and his thoughts on the current state and future of journalism in the United States \u2013 to more than 70 journalism and entrepreneurism students who attended a moderated discussion with the political journalist and author, held at the Toscano Family Ice Forum\u2019s Blue Line Club on Tuesday afternoon.<\/p>\n

For more than a decade, Sherman has worked in his own niche, covering national politics with a focus on reporting on the U.S. Congress, congressional leadership, and the politics of legislating. He worked for 11 years as the top congressional reporter on Capitol Hill for POLITICO and the co-author of POLITICO\u2019s Playbook newsletter. But after watching the news organization grow from a newsroom of 20 to a worldwide operation of more than 500, he decided to leave.<\/p>\n

And to launch his own online political news venture, forcing him to wear a familiar hat \u2013 that of the journalist \u2013 and a brand new one: that of the entrepreneur.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a huge risk,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I think, in life, you know when it\u2019s time to take a risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

On January 3, 2021, Sherman and his longtime collaborators Anna Palmer and John Bresnahan launched Punchbowl News<\/a>, a membership-based news community focused on the in-depth reporting on the individuals who power the U.S. legislature.<\/p>\n

Their initial launch depended on their own credibility and reputation as trusted and respected journalists within the beltway to garner subscribers. Three days later, when rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 and Sherman was reporting from inside the building, Punchbowl News\u2019 membership numbers jumped.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a huge boost for us,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause everyone wanted to know what was happening at the Capitol.\u201d<\/p>\n

Punchbowl News delivers its in-depth reporting to subscribers through three daily newsletters \u2013 a morning, an afternoon, and an evening edition. The morning edition is free, while the afternoon and evening are available only to paid subscribers.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a model that people once said could never be profitable, said David Noble, director of UConn\u2019s Peter J. Werth Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, which co-sponsored Tuesday\u2019s discussion with UConn\u2019s Journalism Department. But entrepreneurship, he noted, offers the opportunity for innovators to break new ground, even in a traditionally slow-moving field like news.<\/p>\n

\"Jake
Jake Sherman, the journalist, author, and co-founder of Punchbowl News, speaks with UConn journalism and entrepreneurship students about the future of the press in a moderated discussion held at the Toscano Family Forum on April 11, 2023. (UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThere was a period where people would say you cannot make money with emails,\u201d Noble said. \u201cIt\u2019s not going to work. People won\u2019t pay for it. And the reality is that, if you are the best at it, people will pay you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The best is what Sherman and his team strive for, and it\u2019s a message that resonated with Sophia Dover \u201924 (CLAS), a junior double majoring in psychological sciences and journalism who moderated the discussion.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a sink-or-swim kind of a field, and if you\u2019re the best at something, there\u2019s always going to be a place for you,\u201d she said. \u201cI think that\u2019s really important. You have to really be able to put yourself out there and to allow yourself the energy and the space to take those risks.\u201d<\/p>\n

It also resonated with Irene Soteriou ’23 (CLAS), a double major in statistics and cognitive science \u2013 \u201cYou can do really big things, and it doesn\u2019t really matter where you come from,\u201d she said \u2013 though she still finds political polarization in the country \u201ca little scary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sherman \u2013 who grew up in Stamford and whose parents, Bob and Stephanie Sherman, both graduated from UConn in 1979 \u2013 said he still considers himself a journalist, and that the road to journalistic entrepreneurship hasn\u2019t always been easy. He\u2019s not a website expert, and hiring staff and reporters, especially as a small operation, is an ongoing challenge.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also not trying to solve the polarization problem in American politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not going to solve journalism,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t think we\u2019re going to solve political polarization, nor do we think that\u2019s our job.\u201d<\/p>\n

But journalism is a business, Sherman said, and reporters don\u2019t work for free.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m in this business to break news, and make sure people read me and make money off that,\u201d he said, and it\u2019s an innovative model that\u2019s working for Punchbowl News.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also an example of how, although news has changed drastically over the past 25 years, and despite the myriad new ways of receiving, consuming, and interacting with news, journalism itself is still important, noted Marie Shanahan, an associate professor at UConn and head of the Department of Journalism.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re exposed to more information today than ever before, and smart responsible journalists do the hard and sometimes thankless job of helping us to find the signal within the noise and make sense of it,\u201d she said. \u201cGood journalism matters and it needs to be financially supported to survive. Entrepreneurship is one way that happens.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘Good journalism matters and it needs to be financially supported to survive. Entrepreneurship is one way that happens’ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":197369,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,1731,2317,2235,2227],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2168],"class_list":["post-197366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas","category-entrepreneurship","category-journalism","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-edu-homepage"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 17:55:17","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197366"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197374,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197366\/revisions\/197374"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/197369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197366"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=197366"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=197366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}