If I had a do-over
Everyone knows hindsight is 20-20, and I will try my hand at it for my life.
Ideally I would have learned about multimedia sooner, but I don’t think any of the papers online were even doing it in 1995, when I started college. I am certain that nobody at the college level was even thinking of multimedia as a force to tell stories.
But knowing what I know today, I would have taken the following classes:
- Television broadcasting
- Radio broadcasting
- Web development
I would have done what I could to learn about Flash development. The program was created in 1996, a year after I started at Colorado State University.
But technology has changed a lot since I was in college. Here is what students of today need to learn to be reputable — and hireable — journalists.
Mindy McAdams yet again comes forth with a great post right as I was writing this.
Journalists who expect to get a job will “walk in the door with”:
- A proficiency in Photoshop, HTML and blogging software.
- An understanding of Web publishing systems (content management systems).
- Experience in the production of multimedia — including the use of audio and video editing tools.
Of course, you cannot ignore the basic journalism classes. Everyone has to learn the inverted pyramid. You cannot tell a story without some structure. Everyone has to understand the SPJ code of ethics.
Unfortunately, many journalism schools do not have these classes as part of a journalism curriculum. I would even bet that you cannot take these classes without the appropriate major, such as broadcast media for the video classes, or computer science for Web development. McAdams points this out in her post, the slow crawl of journalism education. I can confirm this from personal experience. There is pitifully little out there in the way of formal classes, even at the graduate level.
Conclusion: You have to learn this stuff on your own for the most part. You cannot wait for someone to hand it to you, and if you have a passion to tell stories you’ll gravitate to learning the Web stuff anyway. Buy the programs. Take the tutorials. Develop your own Web site. Write a blog. Take online classes at places like NewsU. Also, don’t ignore the value of networking and meeting people in person. Find an SPJ chapter near you and start going to meetings.