Tuesday, January 16th, 2007
Journalism students need new heroes
Shortly after I joined the Guardian, Neil McIntosh, our head of editorial development, came back from talking to a journalism class. He was shaking his head. The students, who will be the future on journalism, were living in the past. They aspired to be columnists and commentators for newspapers. They were uninterested in multimedia journalism and uninformed about trends that are rocking the industry. We both agreed. They need new heroes.
What brought this all to mind was a post by Mindy McAdams, who belongs in every journalist’s RSS feeds. She has some sage advice for students and her fellow journalism educators in a great post on how to land and keep a job in journalism. She rifles though recent announcements about layoffs at major newspapers and what newspaper managers are looking for in new hires.
Martin Stabe has a great post looking at the great blog dialogue that Mindy’s comments set off. He said: “Journalism students … seem to aspire to work in some newsroom circa 1973″. Martin’s posts links off to posts and articles by Howard Owens, Steve Outing and Paul Conley. Students and journalists who want to get up to speed with what is happening in the industry would be wise to go through these posts, subscribe to these journalist bloggers. They are at the sharp end of these changes, and they know a lot about what works and what doesn’t.
There was some talk about exactly what skills students and journalists need in to compete. Do they need to learn how to code? Do they need to focus on A/V skills? Do they need to learn Flash? I’ve always been very wary about suggesting too much investment in any specific piece of software. The industry moves too fast. Instead, I’d echo what Rob Curley says:
Skillset is important. But mindset is most important.
Damn, I wish I would have said that. I’ve picked up the skillset because of my mindset. I can only think of one instance when I said: “That’s not my job.” New tasks are always an opportunity to learn new skills.
Whenever I speak to students, instead of saying that they need to learn Flash, or Final Cut or Rails, I say you need to learn reporting, audio-visual storytelling and research. You don’t need to know how to do everything on your own, but you need to know what is possible and doable in this digital age. The software will change. The technology will change so most importantly, you need to be nimble and curious. Your degree is not the destination. It’s only the first step in your education. Never stop learning. Never stop stretching. Evolution and the occasional revolution is the only way to survive change.
Technorati Tags: education, journalism, technology
Loading ...
January 16th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Out of curiosity, what was the one thing that you refused to do because it wasn’t your job?
January 16th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
Suw, it was a brief time in my career when I decided to more narrowly define my job because I decided my energy was better spent looking for a new job, which took a couple of weeks. Sometimes, you have to realise when your future lies elsewhere.
January 16th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
Kevin,
How spooky. I have a followup post with the same exact title as this one sitting in my drafts. I guess I better publish it now.
January 16th, 2007 at 7:22 pm
I think once you stop having to explain what RSS feeds are, and how they can help journalists, do you then move on to anything like basic HTML coding.
I still find myself having to explain the basics of blogs, feeds and the collaborative web to freelancers and reporters who are still in their 20s and 30s.
January 16th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Thanks for the link, Kevin. I still find it surprising that so many journalism students do not read ANY blogs. Yet they will read The Onion quite avidly.
January 16th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
Kevin - if they need examples, how about one of their peers, Dave Cohn? A
January 17th, 2007 at 8:47 am
Mindy, Thanks for kicking off/continuing this thread. Fortunately, in the industry, I think we’re getting past the defensiveness. Now, whether it’s by necessity or vision, the industry is moving. In fact, we can’t move fast enough.
Craig, I’m working on some training sessions for Guardian journalists about RSS. Journalists I’ve shown RSS are amazed at how useful it is, but unless technology is their beat, they’ve never heard about it.
Adrian and everyone, keep those suggestions for heroes coming. My alma mater, University of Illiois at Champaign-Urbana, recently asked me who they should be bringing in to talk about the future. Adrian Holovaty and Rob Curley, Steve Yelvington, Steve Outing, Ken Sands, Ryan Sholin, to name a few. But, hey, as Mindy says, they all blog.
January 17th, 2007 at 8:53 am
Strangely, Kev appears unable to leave a comment on our own blog! Very peculiar. Going to have to look into it.
January 17th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
Hi Kevin
Sounds very helpful and I wonder if the Guardian would open the course up to the public and enable people to go through it online?
Noticed mention that the BBC journalism college website may soon open its doors:
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/article/150107/public_access_to_bbc_journalism_training_site
All the best
Craig
January 17th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Craig,
That’s an interesting idea. I’ve been meaning to have some blogger outreach. Maybe we can expand Ian Forrester’s geek dinners to have bloggers and journalists come together swap ideas.
Guardian blogging nights? Some type of joint thing with Journalism.co.uk? Just thinking out loud on how this might work.
January 18th, 2007 at 6:20 am
Thanks for mentioning me in the same sentence as those other gentlemen, Kevin.
I still have a humbling pile of things to learn ahead of me, but then again, we all do. It’s going to be an exciting ride.
January 18th, 2007 at 8:30 am
We get the same issues with new recruits in the education sector. Believing that the younger they are the more they will understand these media will always lead to disappointment - I’ve found some of the best users of this kind of technology are over the age of 45 or are up all night with wailing babies (i.e. they have the time to experiment and find things out).
Like yourself, I find it hard to swallow that people in the knowledge industry don’t know how to use RSS. How can they purport to say that they have their fingers on the pulse?
January 18th, 2007 at 10:15 am
Re: blogger/journalist nights. I was thinking the other day about what a Commentisfree night might be like… I wonder how many of the more vicious regular commenters would turn up in person?
If the Cif comment box is anything to go by the glasses would be flying within seconds. Somehow, I think ‘Cif in person’ would be a far more gentile affair than the original online edition
January 19th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
How timely. I’ve just started teaching a journalism class at undergraduate level.
On technology — Back in the late 90s and early 00s, j-schools seemed to have the notion that the online journalism must learn Dreamweaver. I’ll be spending some brief time on HTML basics for conceptual underpinning - and then skipping such tools altogether. Better to learn how to tell link-laden stories through proper content management systems, surely?