![]() |
Berbercarpet, via Flickr (CC license) |
Journalism sudents need the right tools — and skills — for the kinds of careers and opportunities they’re really going to be making for themselves. |
Picking up on my post yesterday, Univ. of Florida journalism professor Mindy McAdams challenged me (and her other readers) to translate my quick list of what j-schools should be teaching into a something more testable and measurable that could be translated into a curriculum.
Here’s my first shot at that:
- Content management systems (including blogging tools): First, I’d have the students run a group blog on a topic of their choosing for a year to get comfortable with the content and commenting apects of blogging. (A group blog is likely to get more activity and discussion than individual blogs.) This blog should be based on an expandable, customizable tool like WordPress. Then the students should be taught the basics of information architecture, and from that figure out how to expand or customize their blogs to deliver or integrate new kinds of content or services. This could be as simple as finding and installing WordPress plugins to add features, or integrating content from other places (such as Flickr or del.icio.us). The goal would be to get them to not just understand, but demonstrate that on their own they can envision, research, evaluate, and act upon options to do more with their content online. There’s a lot you can do without getting too geeky. They need to gain the confidence that many options are within their personal grasp — they don’t always need to get permission or beg someone else to do things for them.
There’s a lot more on my list, of course…
- Mobile tools and mobile media strategies. These students all have cell phones anyway. Require them to subscribe to mobile news and information services, and critique the quality of the service and user experience. Also, require them to create whatever kind of content their phones support (photos, video, audio, GPS data, even just SMS to Twitter, etc.) and post or stream it from their cell phones. Include participatory exercises based on SMS or MMS to include students who don’t have data plans on their phones. Free services like NowPublic, Flickr, Qik and CNN’s iReport could be especially helpful and even fun for your exercises.
- Social media. The point here is to help students learn a key tool for engaging communities, while also gaining experience with how influence works and information travels through social media. I suggest starting with whatever social media services most of the students are already using (like Facebook, MySpace, Ning, LinkedIn, YouTube, or Twitter) and explore both the one-to-one and group interaction options through exercises. For groups, it’s probably better to get them involved with existing, active groups on these services — rather than try to start a new group from scratch. Where possible, use both web-based and mobile options for these services. They should learn to use these tools for community outreach, story/issue research, and promotion of their work.
- Economics and business theory/models. Journalism students should be taking courses in the media business that offer the fundamentals of historical, current, and emerging media business models. They should learn what budgets and balance sheets look like, how grant funding and investment works, and how to evaluate the economic environment they’re operating in — including how it’s changing. Get them used to seeing the big picture and looking ahead. Practical skills could include analyzing the economic environment of the local community, spotting emerging trends that could offer journalistic or other media opportunities, and writing a basic business plan to capitalize on those opportunities.
- Business skills. This could involve evaluating and estimating revenue options from grants to investors to advertising to subscriptions to partnerships and more, as well as knowing what steps to take to pursue that funding. Example exercise: Develop a strategy and action plan for increasing online revenues for the campus or local daily paper — including calculation of expenses and revenues, and a timeline for implementation. In addition, they should be aware of what it takes to start and run a business — requirements for taxes, healthcare, getting SMS shortcodes, working with advertisers, etc. No part of the business that supports their journalism should be alien to them.
- Management skills. I’m envisioning this both from an entrepreneurial and organizational perspective. In all exercises, put the students in a decisionmaking role and guide them through learning how to manage time, resources, and people — whether employees, collaborators, or community members. For instance, if a class project is increasing online revenues for the campus paper, divide that mission into sub-tasks, assign someone to manage each part of that project, and require them to make decisions and delegate. Teach them how to use tools like Basecamp to coordinate team efforts. In fact, it might be a good idea to coordinate projects with other j-schools around the country or world, since increasingly in the media business project teams are widely distributed. The point is to encourage them to take charge of the process, not just to pigeonhole themselves as content creators.
- Marketing, advertising, and SEO. In addition to taking a marketing basics class oriented toward media products and services, j-students should learn the basics of search engine optimization — since findability generally translates into traffic, engagement, and revenue for most media ventures. Exercises can include learning to use Wordtracker to optimize headlines, stories, and metadata to increase both traffic and relevance; using Google Analytics to analyze traffic patterns to a news/info site (such as for the campus paper) and suggest strategies to boost traffic and engagement; developing and running Adwords campaigns (with a modest budget) to promote a class project; researching niche ad networks that might help support various types of coverage or beats, etc.
- Community engagement and management. This is perhaps one of the most marketable skills any journalist can have for the next several years or decades. The point is to get them used to creating news as part of a conversation, rather than simply as a one-way product for publication. It’s about promoting constructive public discourse through active engagement. Exercises could include participating in an active community forum; working as a volunteer moderator for an active forum where contentious topics arise; taking and active role in editing and discussing a Wikipedia page of interest; helping to coordinate (not just cover) local events like town hall meetings, conferences, or festivals; participating in or running local meetup groups, etc. These experiences tech how to handle conflict, foster consensus and diversity, produce events, and demonstrate respect and understanding for communities in order to build credibility. In this respect, working through local government, advocacy groups, social service agencies, neighborhood associations, and ethnic or religious groups could be as valuable (maybe more valuable) than working through journalistic or media organizations.
…I realize that my list sounds like a hell of a lot of stuff, but I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface in terms of what today’s journalists really need in order to take advantage of current opportunities, spot emerging opportunities, and take charge of their own destinies (rather than relying on a paternalistic news org to shelter them while they write, write, write).
I realize also that there may be resistance in journalism schools to much of what I propose, for reasons ranging from “we’re not a vocational school,” to IT staff resisting implementing the kinds of tools I’ve mentioned, to the need to integrate curricula more closely with business schools, to the tenured faculty who must teach at least some of these topics not knowing or caring much about them.
I’m not saying this would be easy. But I do think what I’ve outlined, in addition to teaching core journalism skills and values, is what today’s j-students really need to prepare for the kinds of careers they are most likely to have — and the kinds of media they can play a key role in inventing or developing.
Thoughts?
(And thanks, Mindy, for making me think this through more.)
Pingback: Word counts are so dead tree by andydickinson.net
You’re right, Amy, it’s a lot of stuff. It’s also hard for me to imagine shaping some of this to fit into a 15-week semester. The CMS exercise is adaptable (you can’t do it for a year, but you can do it for 15 weeks), but some of the others would be quite a challenge.
The mobile part is particularly good, I think.
Pingback: The (e)Grommet » Blog Archive » contentious.com - New J-Skills: What to Measure?
Yep, I know it’s a lot to work into a 15-week semester. I’m definitely not discussing a single course within an existing traditional j-school structure, but an overhaul of the entire journalism program — including closer partnerships with business schools.
Not being in academia, I guess I have more freedom to think that way 🙂
That said, I think any steps made in the directions I mentioned would help. So take from this list what you will.
– Amy Gahran
A huge list, it’s almost three years of work, perhaps it could fit into a business degree somehow – the business of new media and social marketing.
I agree with Mindy to some degree, to fit this into a semester (we only have 12 weeks!) it would require a radical shift in the syllabus, perhaps we could provide a new major within the degree to allow some specialisation in this area, rather than a whole structure for all students.
I suggest this because I don’t think we really know when newspapers and broadcast news is going to die (if ever) and so we still have to provide graduates with a range of skills for both old, new and emerging media platforms.
I don’t think we can abandon print just yet.
M
Pingback: The new journalism syllabus? « Ethical Martini
Pingback: O que devem ensinar as escolas de jornalismo? : Ponto Media
Pingback: ensino de jornalismo: reflexões « Monitorando
Martin — I didn’t say we should abandon print, or core journalism skills. I envision these points in addition to core journalism skills and training for traditional media.
That said, traditional news org jobs for journalists are already disappearing at an amazing rate, so it’s patently unfair to equip new journalists only with skills, experience, and perspective that relies on getting a traditional news org job. That’s setting them up to fail, IMHO.
I’d rather give them the skills they really need to make their own opportunities in this fast-changing media landscape. And, as far as I’ve seen, the vast majority of j-schools fall woefully short in this regard so far.
– Amy Gahran
Hi Amy,
As a recent master’s graduate, I agree that today’s j-school students are somewhat under-prepared for what lies ahead. Schools are scrambling to teach the new skills their students will need in the workforce, but often have trouble finding qualified individuals to teach new-media classes.
I’ve been out of school for a year now and have worked as an editor, writer and Web content developer. I know that there are other markets for my skills, but I don’t know where they are. I’m not much better off than I was before grad school.
I went back to school to get an inside look at the present and future of journalism. Unfortunately, I don’t think j-schools have that perspective right now. The changes we’re seeing aren’t just about print versus Web. The business of information is changing, too. And that’s where I feel most ignorant.
-Felicia Russell
Pingback: contentious.com - Newsrooms hemorrhage more jobs than ever
Hi, Felicia
I’m sorry to hear that you feel shortchanged in some important ways by your graduate journalism education — but I’m not surprised.
I’m thinking there’s an opportunity here for a journalism organization that offers e-learning (maybe Poynter? I’ll nudge folks there) to partner with a business school that offers e-learning to create online courses and exercises. Not a formal graduate degree per se, but a partnership that would at least provide journalists in need with valid skills.
Given the fairly fossilized structure of most j-schools, maybe it doesn’t make sense to work within their degree programs for this. Maybe we need more freedom to hire the right people and form the right partnerships to offer this education.
Only holding a bachelor’s degree myself, I tend to think advanced degree programs in many fields (including journalism) are often vastly overrated. There are many other options for getting the education you need, IMHO.
– Amy Gahran
Fascinating post. I’m a journalism student in the UK just finishing a post-graduate course. I also very recently had an article published (reposted on my blog) on this very topic.
All of the ideas you propose are interesting, but the consensus with other commenters seems to be that such a programme would require a 2-3 year degree.
A lot of journalism students (over here, at least) take a first degree in another area – economics in my case – then a 1 year postgrad journalism qualification.
Our course has very little new media content, but term is already packed. Can we really expect students to take 2-3 years extra education when the starting pay into journalism is so low?
We need journalists with knowledge outside journalism – science, business and technology reporters should all know their fields. Journalism education needs to cut to just core skills – and I think in this case, that means leaving the business side to learn on-the-job.
After all, learning writing, reporting, copy editing, shorthand, CMS, mobile tech, design, and media law is enough for anyone to be getting on with…isn’t it?
Pingback: O que os futuros jornalistas deveriam aprender na faculdade? « Webmanário
Pingback: Hvad skal fremtidens journalister kunne? « Ernst Poulsen’s Weblog
Amy, you are a genius. I keep pitching these areas to be included in syllabi, and keep getting shot down. Someday…..
Hi Amy, I didn’t mean to imply you suggested we should drop print, I was saying I don’t think we can afford to, yet, if at all? So, it seems to me we’ve still got what a friend of mine calls the “pint pot problem”, more beer than space in the glass.
We’re all under pressure to teach larger classes; our existing staff need re-training till we get some new hires; unless you have a generous dean, or a benefactor program it’s unlikely you’ll have all the gear you need.
Sorry, I don’t want to sound too gloomy about it. The technology is becoming cheaper and open-source software is good. I also think there are some great innovations, experiments and pace-setting progams around, particularly in the US – beat blogging, twitter, etc-the rest of the world is catching up. Some faster than others.
That’s why the j-ed blogs collectively and individually make such an important contribution. Those of us in your and Mindy’s slipstreams are lucky and committed fellow travellers.
My thinking has lept ahead over the past 12 months. I’ve had an opportunity to travel and visited a couple of US j-schools and spoken to American and Canadian hackademics. I was at the WEJC gathering in Singapore last year, Exciting, but also somewhat disappointing (for later, over a beer). I’m now in the UK on a three month sabbatical at City University.
On 17/18 October there’s a conference The End of Journalism? at U Bedfordshire in Luton, then in mid December a one day conference on convergence, media studies, journalism and the curriculum in Bristol.
There is movement, progress and plenty to do. I love these comments and posts, I’m learning every day.
Marty
Pingback: Readings in Journalism Blog » Improving journalism schools