An excellent article by Nikki Usher in the (American) Online Journalism Review which makes an important point for anyone engaged in journalism teaching. It’s not enough to have the multiple skills for the digital environment, you must also have the multiple attitudes

Beckett, Charlie

LSE Research Online

2009-2-19Skills training is not enough for the digital journalistblogs.lse.ac.uk /polis/2009/02/19/skills-training-is-not-enough-for-the-digital-journalist/An excellent article by Nikki Usher in the (American) Online Journalism Review which makes an importantpoint for anyone engaged in journalism teaching. It’s not enough to have the multiple skills for the digitalenvironment, you must also have the multiple attitudes:“The truth is that most skills boot camps don’t turn the majority of the journalists who attend them intoprofessional quality video editors or graphic designers; in fact, many of the projects they turn out intraining sessions would not be fit for the Web. But the value of these training sessions is that they dohelp journalists learn to see the potential of what these new tools can bring to the work they do – soinstead of making multimedia experts, journalists can learn how to think like them. But we ought toreconsider the goals of these training sessions and align them to change thinking to change practice,rather than use them to change practice and hope it will change thinking.”Usher admits she is an ‘ivory tower’ academic, but she is obviously deeply intelligent and well-read, as she quotesmy book. But she goes further than I do in coming up with useful guidance on how networked or digital journalismworks in practice:What is this multimedia thinking that should be happening in training sessions? Here are a fewsuggestions for journalists and their news organizations.1. Journalists need to understand how the Web and multimedia goals will work within their ownorganizations. News organizations need to clearly communicate how these Web goals willinfluence the work production cycle.2. Journalists at all levels of the news organization should believe that they can contribute to themultimedia vision of their organization. The future of the newsroom is also in your hands, andthinking like this forces journalists to think multi-dimensionally.3. Journalists are not alone in the newsroom. Even if journalists themselves cannot think abouthow to make their work relevant to multiplatform content, someone else in the newsorganization can. Most of your organizations have people on staff that can help youbrainstorm, even if you can’t. Multimedia training is also about making new connections acrossyour organization.4. Silos, departmental rivalries, and departments that don’t communicate with each other cannotexist if multimedia initiatives are to succeed.5. Journalists no longer control the distribution of the content they produce. This is a very scarythought for many journalists, but the reality is that once something is published (usually onWeb sites), it belongs to the audience of readers and becomes part of a conversation aboutthe news.6. Journalists need to rethink and reposition themselves the leader of this new conversation,which includes everyone from the traditional water cooler chat to bloggers.Of course, this isn’t entirely news to those people who are trying to produce the next generation of journalists. My1/2colleagues at the Journalism department at the London College of Communication have always been aware thatjournalism is about more than shorthand. But the rapidly changing nature of digital journalism and the diversity ofplatforms and procedures means that the next wave of hacks – if they can find jobs – have a more complex andcreative future ahead of them. Copyright © 2014 London School of Economics and Political Science2/2

Skills training is not enough for the digital journalist

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

LSE Research Online