My first thought on reading the title was that the news does not have to fit a commercial for-profit model, and so entrepreneurs aren't always needed. I draw on a long-standing analogy with education, where this is much more clearly true. Ben Werdmuller makes the case through a descussion of news product design. "In most newsrooms, the Product lead needs to lead strategy, product, platform, technology, brand, design, and audience; they need to figure out how to build revenue into the offering; they need to be hyper-focused on the underlying needs of the people and communities they're addressing." This, though, is a broader role than we see in most digital operations. It needs "people with the right kind of prototype-driven, experimental mindset and a bias towards action." These, he says, are entrepreneurs, people who "aren't afraid to take big risks, have the cross-functional skills to execute, and can forge radically collaborative cultures that are centered on the needs of their communities." I see the point, but I'm stiull not buying it. This is a classically provider-consumer based model; that's why there's "big risks". When a community is building for itself, though, what we perceive as 'risk' looks completely different.
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