just what are they teaching them about the biz?

[txsportsscribe]

with the newspaper industry in its current shape - economically, technologically, etc. - just what are colleges teaching the next generation? or, when all the dust settles, will there be a next generation? seriously, how do colleges train the journalists of the future if nobody freakin has a clue what the future will look like?

 

[txsportsscribe]

oops, i didn't realize i was in anything goes. can a mod move this to journalism topics? damn me.

 

[RickStain]

They tell them that if they learn how to do podcasts and photo galleries, it will all be okay.

And they tell them to pay their tuition in advance.

 

[buckweaver]

Rick's right. I'm speaking at a convention for college journalists this weekend, and I can tell you that about 75 percent of the speakers are saying the same thing. Here's some of the breakout sessions:

- Freelance Freedom
- Managing a Multimedia Web Site
- Best Practices in Multimedia Journalism
- Teaching New Media Old Tricks
- Multimedia for Journalists
- Writing for the Web and Broadcast
- Multiplatform Reporting
- Video Journalism 2.0
- Online Journalism: From Print to Pixels

 

[Johnny Dangerously]

A soon-to-graduate journalism student at LSU told me today there is not a multimedia class in the journalism curriculum there. I think I tried for about a minute to speak but was unable.

 

[txsportsscribe]

but with newspapers yet to figure out how to make web-based journalism economically viable and no guarantee it will ever happen, you can't just ignore teaching about the traditional print product. and at what point could colleges decide journalism career options don't match the need for full degree programs - print or web-based?

 

[Johnny Dangerously]

but with newspapers yet to figure out how to make web-based journalism economically viable and no guarantee it will ever happen, you can't just ignore teaching about the traditional print product. and at what point could colleges decide journalism career options don't match the need for full degree programs - print or web-based?

I hear what you're saying, but I wasn't even talking about a full degree program. They don't offer a single multimedia course. Not one. That's a disservice to the students. Someone is asleep at the wheel.

 

[ArnoldBabar]

but with newspapers yet to figure out how to make web-based journalism economically viable and no guarantee it will ever happen, you can't just ignore teaching about the traditional print product.

Moreover, you can't ignore teaching them how to be reporters. Basic, competent, ethical reporters. Because if you produce a bunch of multimedia, video shooting, twittering bloggers who don't know how to do the reporting, you've just taught them to be another empty voice in the digital wilderness with nothing to contribute. And there are already way too many of those.

I still believe there will be a temporal shift in which there will be a realization that there have to be boots on the ground. The ones who are in the postgame clubhouse every night. The ones who make FOIA requests and dig up stuff that would otherwise be hidden. And some system is going to have to emerge in which there can be people like this who are paid to do it. Paid by whom? That's what has to be worked out, or there's no news.