DISQUS

Adrian Monck · 2 years ago

Well you do stats as part of the basic combined honours journalism BA (Hons) programme at City...and we're about to start licensing some software apps to do the kinds of stats work Holovaty is talking about, but also to do some more sophisticated investigative work. But when you kit people out with these skills - will they still want to be journalists! I think they'll be attractive to a whole range of employers...

KristineLowe · 2 years ago

God, no. I was at City 2000 - 2001, back then they were teaching 'electronic journalism', taught very well, but a world apart from the demands of online journalism, or the what is required to adapt to the online world, today. Luckily I had friends who started one of the first blogging companies, fed me with books, and at some point just set up a blog for me to get me out of my one-track-old-journalism-mindset. I had a friend who attended Missouri School of Journalism, US, much further ahead technologically than City, partly due such simple things as having better funding. I think things are changing faster for the better in the US, at least at some uni's, but Scandinavia is much behind even the UK in this respect. Scary...

KristineLowe · 2 years ago

By the way, this is another good reason why I think journos should have first degrees, it's really key to equipping you for critical thinking. You would probably have received stats training from doing sociology, me from doing pol sci, prior to journalism

Martin · 2 years ago

But when you kit people out with these skills - will they still want to be journalists! I think they’ll be attractive to a whole range of employers…

Indeed. I expect media companies' salary offers for relatively junior people with these skills will have to become far more "competitive" — with the sort of professional services firms that would no doubt poach people with these skills.

I'm really glad City is looking at this stuff. I was there as a postgrad in 2004-5, and we learned precisely nothing in this area. Not even Flash. OK, there was some basic HTML in the form of learning Dreamweaver, but not to a high enough standard to take someone from novice to employable as an online producer.

Beyond not being able to do CAR investigations and online databases, what worries me is that all the professions journalists deal with — particularly in big business and government — are becoming far more sophisticated in gathering, manipulating and presenting data.

We are being intellectually outgunned by the people we are supposed to hold to account.

mikewhills · 2 years ago

It's an interesting turn around for the Tribune. I did some work out there at the end of 2005 and they were just about to disband the multimedia team. At the time they were doing some really interesting projects and a few writers had a 'flash journalist' assigned to them to present their stories visually. Unfortunately they said because the paper sales were declining faster than ever they could no longer afford to keep the department going. Hopefully this a sign they realise a better multimedia team might help to reverse the company's fortunes.

As for courses, I know the Journalism BA at Kingston requires students to keep a blog for at least one module and another one gets the students working with Dreamweaver. Not great, but a start.