10 Comments Add your own

• 1. Cory Bergman  |  November 5th, 2006 at 6:25 pm

  Yes, true, but old media thinking is deadly.

  So traditional media folks who see this as a mandate to take over new media thinking are terribly mistaken.

• 2. Bryan Murley  |  November 5th, 2006 at 6:27 pm

  But aren’t those skills (hopefully) important regardless of where you are working as a journalist?

  Pardon me if I’m underwhelmed by the lead here, but that’s like saying that managers in the fast food industry believe skills like “fast service, attention to detail, and a sunny disposition” are key skills needed in their industry. So what? That seems like baseline stuff.

  The things that everyone is burying in this story are the things that *are* different - skills like HTML and Photoshop, content management systems, and intangibles such as the ability to work in a team environment.

• 3. Cory  |  November 5th, 2006 at 6:36 pm

  Here’s one that’s missing, although you could argue it’s not a skill, but a mindset:

  The ability to encourage and focus user conversation and contributions.

  And I’d argue it’s just as important as the tenets of journalism.

• 4. Safran  |  November 5th, 2006 at 7:57 pm

  Here’s why it’s also relevant: because I get asked all the time by aspiring web journalists if they can still work in our field, even though they aren’t fluent in HTML, Photoshop, Java and C++. Writing still rules.

• 5. jeff gralnick  |  November 5th, 2006 at 8:38 pm

  And here is another one that is missing. Story telling.

  Old media or new, you have to be able to tell a story and if you cannot and you cannot, as brother Safran says, write it, then you are in the wrong business.

  all New Media provides are a variety of ways to tell a story in different ways for different platforms.

  It begins, though, with the ability to recognize a story and tell it.

• 6. tish grier  |  November 6th, 2006 at 8:35 am

  this one’s a real no-brainer–I’m surprised someone needed to write about it…

  I can honestly say that it’s not easy being “new media” –I’m often asked for my old media credentials. Doesn’t matter to old media types how much I know about how new media functions on a socio-cultural level (or what I’ve been doing in new media). That’s not as important as whether or not I took Journalism 101 or am just this side of a web designer.

  Right now we are in a transitional period–and when transitions are going on, credibility is bestowed on those who know the old ways vs. those skilled and knowledgable in the new ways. Most believe the new cannot exist without the old providing necessary structure–then again, that’s what seems to be the thing that’s holding back so many of the old from moving forward. Talk about a catch 22…

• 7. Mindy McAdams  |  November 6th, 2006 at 11:00 am

  C’mon, if you squint both eyes and turn your head sideways, you can read that report as “All I need to know how to do is write.” But if you go on a real job interview, they WILL ask you what else you can do BESIDES write.

  We had editors from print news telling us for many years: “Don’t teach the students HTML.” Then last year they came to us, frantic, and asked, “Why don’t your kids know HTML?!”

  I don’t mean to say EVERY news job requires HTML. But every news job hiring TODAY does require more than one skill.

• 8. C. Max Magee  |  November 6th, 2006 at 1:52 pm

  Thanks for linking to the study.

  A couple of points. I think you can interpret the findings a few ways. One is that, from purely a “what do employers want” and “what are online journos being asked to do” standpoint, this is what the landscape looked like about a year ago.

  Undoubtedly it has shifted somewhat since, but from the standpoint of someone looking for a job or of educators looking only to prepare students for today’s job market, this is what online newsrooms are looking for, whether we as forward-looking online journalists like it or not.

  As Mindy suggests, however, it is the responsibility of schools to prepare journalists for the future, not the present: a world that requires journalists to be increasingly tech-savvy and online journalists to be jacks of all trades.

  Secondly, separately from the question of the importance of tech skills, I thought it was interesting to look at what online newsrooms are really like right now. As much as we would love news sites to be innovative and online news jobs to be attractive to the technologically gifted, in many newsrooms, as recently as last year, the most important skills (aside from the somewhat generic “intangibles”) are copy-editing skills.

  Taking nothing whatsoever away from the importance of copy-editing, I think this study could perhaps be viewed as a wake up call for news institutions that are looking for “answers” from online, but have created a workplace that is not conducive to the sort of innovation that you see at Web sites that are not directly tied to “old media” institutions.

  In the other direction, of course, the study can be viewed as a triumph for “old media thinking,” but I think we’re a long way from having to worry that online newsrooms are TOO tech-focused.

• 9. Steve Safran  |  November 6th, 2006 at 3:38 pm

  I think I may have oversimplified my point (on a blog?) somewhat. The point I was trying to make was that the skills of writing, editing, storytelling (as Gralnick rightly added) — these are as important as ever. There are some who tend to write off these talents and our vocation. There’s no way this study is a victory for old thinking. It’s a victory for those of us who still believe that journalism is a profession and not an avocation. It’s easier to teach a good writer HTML than it is to teach the world’s greatest coder how to report.

• 10. Sam  |  January 18th, 2008 at 7:34 am

  Wow, thanks for the excellent information!

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