Side Project Ideas for Journalists
Innovative ideas to boost your career in journalism
Why Journalists Should Consider Side Projects in 2025
The media landscape is rapidly evolving, making it crucial for journalists to adapt and innovate. In 2025, journalists can no longer rely solely on traditional media outlets for income and influence. Side projects offer a way to stand out, build a personal brand, and secure additional revenue streams.
Journalists possess skills in writing, investigation, and storytelling that can easily translate into various side projects. By leveraging these abilities, journalists can find new ways to engage with audiences and explore untapped niches.
Types of Side Projects
Journalists can pursue numerous side project ideas, including blogging, podcasting, consultancy, or launching a YouTube channel. Blogging allows journalists to explore topics they are passionate about while creating a personal brand. Podcasts offer an engaging medium to dive deep into subjects of interest. Consultancy provides an opportunity to share expertise with businesses or individuals looking to improve their communication strategies.
**The Role of AI in Side Projects**
Artificial intelligence offers numerous tools that can elevate a journalist's side project. From automating routine tasks to providing insights for articles, AI can enhance productivity. For those interested in building AI-driven applications, platforms like Appaca can help create innovative products without extensive coding knowledge. This opens up opportunities for creating personalized content delivery systems or analytical tools to cater to specific audience needs.
Why Licode is the ideal tool to start with
Licode helps you create market-ready AI products super easily.
Diversified Income Stream
Journalists can create additional income by exploring new revenue streams outside of their primary job.
Building a Personal Brand
Side projects help journalists establish their niche and gain recognition in their field.
Skill Enhancement
Engaging in side projects enables journalists to hone their skills and learn new technologies.
Steps to Launching a Successful Side Project
- Identify Your Unique Value Proposition: Determine what sets you apart and how your skills can solve problems or fulfill gaps in the market.
- Explore AI Integration: Consider how artificial intelligence can enhance your side project, whether through content personalization or task automation.
- Create an Account on Appaca: Sign up on Appaca or similar platforms to start creating AI-powered applications tailored to your idea.
- Gather Knowledge Resources: Accumulate necessary knowledge resources such as articles, research papers, or online courses that you can use as inputs and learning resources.
- Design the User Interface: Create an intuitive and appealing interface that aligns with your audience's needs and preferences.
- Customize Your AI Model: Adjust the AI model to suit your specific project requirements, ensuring it delivers accurate and relevant output.
- Add Extra Features: Enhance your project with features like user analytics, social sharing options, or integration with other platforms.
- Market Your Project: Develop a marketing strategy to reach your target audience through social media, influencers, and traditional PR channels.
Trusted by incredible people at
Enable AI in your app
Licode comes with built-in AI infrastructure that allows you to easily craft a prompt, and use any Large Lanaguage Model (LLM) like Google Gemini, OpenAI GPTs, and Anthropic Claude.
Supply knowledge to your model
Licode's built-in RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) system helps your models understand a vast amount of knowledge with minimal resource usage.
Build your AI app's interface
Licode offers a library of pre-built UI components from text & images to form inputs, charts, tables, and AI interactions. Ship your AI-powered app with a great UI fast.
Authenticate and manage users
Launch your AI-powered app with sign-up and log in pages out of the box. Set private pages for authenticated users only.
Monetize your app
Licode provides a built-in Subscriptions and AI Credits billing system. Create different subscription plans and set the amount of credits you want to charge for AI Usage.
Accept payments with Stripe
Licode makes it easy for you to integrate Stripe in your app. Start earning and grow revenue for your business.
Create custom actions
Give your app logic with Licode Actions. Perform database operations, AI interactions, and third-party integrations.
Store data in the database
Simply create data tables in a secure Licode database. Empower your AI app with data. Save data easily without any hassle.
Publish and launch
Just one click and your AI app will be online for all devices. Share it with your team, clients or customers. Update and iterate easily.
Browse our templates
StrawberryGPT
StrawberryGPT is an AI-powered letter counter that can tell you the correct number of "r" occurrences in "Strawberry".
AI Tweet Generator
An AI tool to help your audience generate a compelling Twitter / X post. Try it out!
YouTube Summarizer
An AI-powered app that summarizes YouTube videos and produces content such as a blog, summary, or FAQ.
Don't take our word for it
I've built with various AI tools and have found Licode to be the most efficient and user-friendly solution. In a world where only 51% of women currently integrate AI into their professional lives, Licode has empowered me to create innovative tools in record time that are transforming the workplace experience for women across Australia.
- Cheyanne Carter
Founder @ Divergent Education
Licode has made building micro tools like my YouTube Summarizer incredibly easy. I've seen a huge boost in user engagement and conversions since launching it. I don't have to worry about my dev resource and any backend hassle.
- Andre Dean Smith
Founder @ ScreenApp.io