Comments on: Overhauling J-School Completely

By: swee

swee — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 00:22:25 +0000

I most certainly agree. Too much emphasis on technology can be a bane especially when there are better low-tech approaches to deal with hi-tech problems. For instance, you don’t need an expensive video cam to do short web videos that can be taken using mobile phones or palm-held video cams.

By: Vadim Isakov

Vadim Isakov — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 06:01:32 +0000

I really liked the point about the importance of “thinking on their feet and educating themselves.” It looks to me that American universities and colleges place too much emphasis on technology that will be outdated in one year and forget the importance of teaching flexibility and critical thinking in online media.

I am all for ditching Dreamweaver and substituting it for someting more practical (Wordpress if my favorite). Dreamweaver should be offered in a special in-depth sections/workshops of j-schools along with extensive CSS and XHTML.

By: Notes from a Teacher - Tuesday squibs (j-school edition)

Notes from a Teacher - Tuesday squibs (j-school edition) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 02:55:16 +0000

[...] other college faculties, such as computer science. This follows an earlier, deep post she wrote, Overhauling J-School Completely. (And, no, I’m not pointing to this because my tweets are quoted in her Poynter [...]

By: swee

swee — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 12:52:16 +0000

Amy, I think Wordpress is just as good for any journalist who wants to have a one-man/woman-run online news. Otherwise, if scalability is an issue, then Joomla can be considered. Depending on what you are looking for actually. Personally I have customised Wordpress to be quite a good Online news portal. The categories section and tagging can all be customised quite easily in a lesson shorter than it would take to read all the comments here. If anyone is interested, just Google “Wordpress as News Content Management” and you will have quite a handful to enlighten.

By: Martin Hirst

Martin Hirst — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 09:51:29 +0000

I’m in the process of shifting from using html (a la dreamweaver) to a cms (wordpress) for my student publication next semester.
I think this is the way to go, but I still think it’s hard to keep up. I’m spending my research funds on upskilling myself in blogs and cms and all sorts of stuff.

My big question is how do we convince reluctant colleagues, both within j-ed and in other areas of communication studies (whom we deal with daily) that we should be allowed to totally overhaul the curriculum.

And how do we convince print-centric industry bodies that they have to get with the programme, not get in the way.
Advice appreciated.
Marty
PS, I’ll be in the US, in early september, if you’re in LA, San Fran or any where near the Missouri School of Journalism around 10 Sept, I’d love to catch up. There’s a great $2 martini bar in Columbia Missouri, and I’ll be there for at least one drink.

By: darleene

darleene — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 00:37:08 +0000

@Sean: I’m not so sure that requiring two internships is the equivalent of gentrification. I only did one (which was technically a fellowship at the Arizona Republic, and paid), but did a bunch of other small jobs (paid) that were the equivalent to internships: working with a dot com in 1999, working as a webmaster, overnight/holiday shifts at a wire service, picking up tiny community stories for a local rag. I was no trust fund kid, neither was my husband, yet here we are, working in journalism.

By: Swee

Swee — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 00:33:50 +0000

While I agree with Andy about Wordpress not being a CMS for the industry, I think if you are in online news publishing, you should choose CMS to fit your needs. A community paper may derive great benefits from Wordpress while a county gazette may exploit the strengths of bigger CMS such as Joomla and Drupal. I have dealt with a number, including the little heard-of Zope. Be that as it may, Wordpress certainly allows for easy customisation and installation. Hacks are a plenty and the tags, pages, pre-publishing feature and a host of others in Wordpress still make it my preferred choice of a good start-up CMS. And I think Amy is right in saying it is superior – It is, and in a lot of ways. For one, Wordpress files are generated to be SEO friendly with keyword tags (unlike proprietary systems such as Asp, etc. which you need to customise). Another is it is free and lots help are available. And for a one-person online publishing unit, Wordpress is hosted everywhere and takes less than two hours to sign-up, host, install and start posting. Templates too are widely available.

By: paul canning

paul canning — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:50:23 +0000

hey amy, thanks for the link to my vague waffling ;] got to love arianna… truly been a FAN for, ow jeez, is it that long? you pioneer, you …

nb: James Ball at some London school or other sez they’re all on the ball there – wouldya believe it. brits on the ball …

By: Amy Gahran

Amy Gahran — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:49:46 +0000

Sean Blanda wrote:

>“Require at least two internships” Until they pay, this policy is the equivalent of gentrification<

Honestly, Sean, that’s a very shortsighted view. I went to Temple U for j-school, and I all students there were required to take at least two internships. I did at least 4, maybe 5 (Hey, it’s been a long time) — but I know only two of these were paid.

That said, my internships were by far the most valuable part of my journalism education. Which is why I voluntarily did more than was required. I learned far more through experience than in the classroom. I felt that a big part of what my tuition went for was for access to those internships. Not getting paid for them was not a concern for me.

YMMV, of course.

- Amy Gahran

By: Amy Gahran

Amy Gahran — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:46:05 +0000

Peter — I honestly don’t know the % of journalists who get into that field via j-school. I know several working journalists who did not go to j-school. It’s definitely not an absolute requirement.

That said, with newsroom staffs shrinking constantly and quickly, this is now an extremely competitive job market. It’s an especially bad time to try to get a journalism job without any training. That’s an expensive proposition from the employer’s perspective.

So if you don’t have a journo degree or very relevant experience, you’d better have some other great skills to demonstrably offer unique value to the news org or other employer. Community management, ability to create interactive maps, and database mashups are good examples.

- Amy Gahran