Ashley Milne-Tyte

Entrepreneurship diaries 9: who are you when you wear multiple hats?

September 30, 2012

Photo: Google Images

Most entrepreneurs have little trouble describing themselves. They have their elevator pitch down and are confident in their mission (until they pivot). But things are more complicated if, like me, you wear many hats as you attempt to navigate the brave new workplace – and build a media brand at the same time. This is a reality for many of us in the new working world where you don't have one day job, but rather juggle multiple roles to make a living. For me, yes, I'm a public radio reporter, still the role I most identify with, but these days that's just one of many things I do. I still work as a radio reporter and write for print but I also teach at Columbia Journalism School, have recently launched my own podcast (with all that entails, from making it to monetizing it), and I'm developing another arm where I use my writing and audio skills to teach those in a corporate setting how to be better at their jobs (all this is necessary a) to earn something approaching a living and b) the diversity helps to protect me when one of these areas isn't bringing in the bacon). So what do I say when people ask me that commonest of questions, 'What do you do?' This post was inspired by this cri do coeur by Manoush Zomorodi asking how those of us in these situations are meant to brand ourselves. (Not that long ago this conundrum would have been referred to simply as ‘describing yourself’ but these days we’re all brands, and this one can't afford a marketing agency.) You do yourself a disservice, we both think, if you put one thing first but then reel off a string of what can sound like lesser roles. You don't want those things to seem like wimpy add-ons. I usually go with 'journalist' and then expand on that, but it depends who I'm speaking to. It makes sense to describe yourself differently for different audiences. Or does it? Like Manoush, I'd love to hear from anyone else who's come up with an elevator pitch that somehow encompasses their many roles and helps them shine. How did you do it?

Podcasting - why is it a guy thing?

September 16, 2012

Next weekend I'm going to be giving a talk at a radio festival at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY. The topic is women in radio and podcasting (as subjects and hosts). In researching my talk, I've become even more aware of how relatively few podcasts are hosted by women. I already knew that the majority of podcast listeners are men (this from an unlinkable eMarketer report I accessed at Baruch College's library back in the spring, while doing my market research at CUNY) and that this is sometimes blamed on the 'geek factor'. But I honestly hadn't thought until recently about who was hosting the podcast. If you look at iTunes' list of its top 200 podcasts, you'll see only a handful have female hosts. The number depends on the day, but when I've checked it's been anywhere from five out of 200 to 15. Why? I know there are tens of thousands of English language podcasts out there, and I know there are women doing podcasts, because I stumble across new ones all the time. But they appear to be far outnumbered by men. Go to any article or comment section on podcasts and virtually every podcast under discussion is a man's.

Does this come down to a common woman problem - that we females are simply less likely to put ourselves out there, to take a risk and start a new project? Are we not 'geeky' enough to handle the (relatively simple) technology involved? When I look at the podcasts that do make it into the top 200, and sometimes the top 10, the female-hosted ones are usually public radio programs such as Fresh Air or On Being. Rachel Maddow makes it in there too from time to time. Since the most popular podcasts are often public radio shows, I began thinking about who hosts such shows. Usually men. Take my own local station, WNYC. Of all the shows they produce in-house, only one is hosted by a woman. That's the local All Things Considered with Amy Eddings. Actually, no, they have just started airing a new show called New Tech City with my friend Manoush Zomorodi as host. So that's two shows. But everything else the station produces (Radiolab, Brian Lehrer, Leonard Lopate, Sound Check and Money Talking to name a few) are hosted by guys, or a man and a woman, as in the case of On the Media. Fair Game, hosted by Faith Salie, was canceled in 2008 because the show couldn't land a big enough underwriter (which raises yet more questions).

Anyone have any theories about all this? 

The Broad Experience 8: The Good Girls Revolt

September 10, 2012

In the latest episode of The Broad Experience I talk to author and journalist Lynn Povich about what galvanized 46 nicely brought-up young women, including her, to sue their employer, Newsweek, for sex discrimination. This was back in 1970, when the magazine's view was that writing was a man's job; fact-checking was a woman's. Povich and her colleagues decided it was time to shed their good girl backgrounds and challenge the status quo. They ended up changing things for women in the media and the workplace in general. 

Does small business still drive the economy?

September 1, 2012

Read here. Appears in Phoenix Focus magazine.

This piece looks at the extent to which small business can still be considered 'America's backbone'. Given the government considers any business employing less than 500 people 'small', the quick answer to this question is yes. But ask a business professor like Dennis Ceru of Babson College and he'll tell you many small businesses can hardly be considered economic drivers as they employ no one other than the business owner him or herself (more than 20 million businesses are sole proprietorships). Maine-based distiller Ned Wight recently went from being a sole proprietor to hiring his first employee. Despite the rocky economy, he couldn't be happier to have finally made the switch from wage slave to entrepreneur.