Or entrepreneurial journalists, or new media innovators, or savvy technology empresarios, to use the lingo now in fashion...

I recently visited my friend Matt Walsh, editor and publisher of a chain of weeklies in Sarasota, Florida, published by a company he and his family own, The Observed Media Group (OMG).

He is the head of a number of  proud families that still exist in America — in a tradition more common in the 19th and 20th century United States  — when the editor and publisher was also Dad, and the rest of the family members pulled together, from editorial, to administration, to sales, to keep the independent and family-owned enterprise afloat, through multiple sacrifices and also through multiple generations.

The “Editor & Publisher” was also the original journalist and main writer, sometimes the founder that got the quixotic enterprise off the ground or, some other times, bought it, using the family members’ savings,  from an existing owner.

By personal experience, I know this is not fun, and not for the faint of heart.

The multitasking, and the long hours burning the candle at both ends, can certainly make you but can also break you.

However, those pioneers, made of a special teflon, unhappy with the job alternatives, or with no jobs at all (the case of yours truly), these native entrepreneurial journalists were naively inclined to jump in and fight, head-first, burning as they were with the desire to write and publish.

...Local communities enjoyed the rare privilege of having a source of truly independent news... the sense of responsibility of a family team... indispensable for this unique business — the only one in America protected by a Constitutional Amendment...

When they survived the initial onslaught in the market place, local communities enjoyed the rare privilege of having a source of truly independent news, with the professional quality provided by real and committed journalists, the sense of responsibility of a family team, and the family name on the line wrapping it in an unique form of balance, fairness and legitimacy, indispensable for this unique business — the only one in America protected by a Constitutional Amendment.

This becomes either a journey for the journalist entrepreneur who personally bets his life in it, or a family affair that constantly defies market forces as it is driven more by personal conviction and valiant purposes, not just profit-driven mathematics managed by a corporate bean counter installed in the office of the publisher by the hedge-fund-owned media corporation.

My friend Matt and I have that in common: We were diehard journalists, first and foremost. At one point of our careers, we dared to make a wild turn and move to the edge of the cliff, and jump— or, frankly, we were rather pushed unexpectedly from behind, perhaps while we hesitated, into the deeper end of the pool, where we gasped for air for a while.

Lucky to have survived, we now enjoy the rare privilege of writing about it, not from the reporter’s desk, but from the publisher’s corner office.

Matt does it every single week on his laptop computer for his flagship publication, the “Business Observer,” one of his papers in Sarasota read by the professional and business elite of his community from the Tampa Bay to Naples in the Gulf Coast of Florida.

He does it with an intimate satisfaction and a sense of pride, knowing well what it was like years ago to do it for Forbes Magazine and The Miami Herald, the media corporations that employed him when he graduated from the Missouri University School of Journalism along with his charming wife Lisa, also a graduate from that prestigious school in the Midwest. Daughter Emily Walsh is now stepping in as Chief Digital Officer of OMG.

OMG, which stands, not for the “Oh, My God!” challenges of the early days, but for “Observer Media Group,” another stable, proud family and journalist-owned and operated news media company practicing independent journalism, and making in the process the First Amendment come alive in the State of Florida.

So the question here is,

—Can journalists dare to become media owners?

The answer:

—Only if you want it badly.

—Can they learn the business— without losing their soul in the process?

—Only it they are these “Renaissance men and women”, willing to create and disrupt — like hundreds and thousands of new media entrepreneurs are doing now — building in the cracks of the sinking Titanics legacy news media companies often are.

With the spark of the pioneer, sense of purpose of the entrepreneur, and, also, abundant sense of humor to cushion the blows, they are now, as we speak, burning the candle on both ends of their young years, working as hard as we did, throwing their hearts and their souls into it, and becoming in the process the ambidextrous leaders with the exceptional capacity needed to be, all at the same time, artists, engineers and business managers.

They will be the new Leonardo Da Vincis, self-made exceptional performers who, unafraid, will paint and also dissect with either hand, steadily creating in each stroke the new media that will stand tall, decades from today, to restore hope among the reading public, make the dream of the First Amendment still believable and our Democratic Experiment still possible.

As far as my friend Matt and I, we are just the older breed of entrepreneurial journalists, acting still as start-up companies, creating and innovating, but with the sobriety and wisdom only decades of business experience under your belt can give you.

As far as my friend Matt and I, we are just the older breed of entrepreneurial journalists, acting still as start-up companies, creating and innovating, but with the sobriety and wisdom only decades of business experience under your belt can give you.

We secretly long to mentor those graduates from the  Entrepreneurial Journalism Centers —the emerging discipline in the radically transformed and renamed old Schools of Journalism in Universities all across the United States.

Matt from Missouri, me from Iowa, we long to go back to the classroom we left decades ago, and teach, coach, inspire.

I personally haven’t resisted the temptation to create one in my own office on Market Street in Philadelphia, a new and very practical classroom, much closer to the realities of today’s market place.

Here everybody is challenged to learn by doing, with a keen sense of independence and individual responsibility, perhaps in no different fashion we did it when we decided over 2 decades ago to roll our academic diplomas from Iowa and Missouri, roll our sleeves, and enroll instead — with no regrets so far — in the school of hard knocks, in the early hours of the current news media transformation in America.