As a professor of multiplatform journalism, I spent a lot of time thinking about the skills our students will need when they graduate in 2008.
Ryan Sholin from the Santa Cruz Sentinel has some great advice for budding reporters.
This is what he is looking for:
- I would want someone who knows enough HTML to write their own web update into a content management system without needing training.
- I would want someone who has no fear of a digital camera, a video camera, or an audio recorder.
- I would want someone interested in using databases, maps, and public records as source material.
- I would want someone who knows how to tell a story.
It largely reflects what we are trying to do at the School of Journalism at the University of British Columbia. Training multimedia reporters who not about teaching journalists to be web developers. Technical knowledge helps but it is not enough. It is about learning how to use these technologies to tell better stories.
I tell the students that the skillset is important, but more so is the mindset. Journalists need to be able to conceive of stories across multiple media and be comfortable with working in print, broadcast or online.
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…I think he’s looking for your basic College graduate. My journalism course, way back in 1994, offered exactly those items (substitute the Digital Camera with an SLR and a b/w darkroom course). My first reporting job out of college required me to FTP stuff so the ME could edit and send it along to the Layout guy without leaving his fortress of a cubicle. I also had to update the website daily… so roughly 90 minutes of my day was dealing with HTML. If I remember correctly our J-course HTML component was an hour or two a week (our J-course also had a series of courses on television and radio broadcasting… )
I think I’m agreeing with you, tech-training in a J-School shouldn’t be something which is producing ‘coders’, it should be something that is taught so kids aren’t afraid of the technology when they graduate, because if I’m looking to hire a recent J-graduate I’m looking at number four on the above list as the number one on mine.
But in terms of using the Internet to augment sources, to find new sources, to find background and to find secondary and contrary sources, this shouldn’t be new. As it was, as it is, as it shall always be, the trick is still in knowing which sites are relevent and which parts of sites you’ll find the information on… although creative search engine terminology usage alone should probably be a full time, stand alone, course.