I recorded this at the Society of Editors conference in November, so forgive my tardiness. This is Donald Martin, a representative of UK training organisation NCTJ talking about the results of a survey they and partners PTC, BJTC and Skillset conducted into employer and university perceptions of skills needed by journalists:
The UK’s three leading journalism training bodies have finally announced that they are to work together as part of a new ‘Joint journalism training council’.
It’s early days yet, but the statement doesn’t make encouraging reading for anyone with an interest in the potential of online journalism as a separate medium: the three “new skills and awareness that are and will be required of journalists aiming to work in multi platform news organisations” include:
“b. Developing ideas for repurposing and adding to print or broadcast news material for use on websites including the use of links, background material, writing for the website, the basics of search engine optimisation and use of basic content management systems. [my emphasis]
“c. Using video and audio equipment to produce content for websites and other platforms and publishing it.”
In other words, treating the website as a place to shovel – and possibly add to – content produced for another medium.
The statement does go on to say “It is recognised that this is not an exhaustive list”, but it’s not a promising start.
A couple months ago I was leafing through the Broadcast Journalism Training Council guidelines. Drawn up a few years ago (well, 2005), they look worryingly similar to those ‘web journalism’ courses that simply consist of teaching journalists to design webpages. In their guidelines [PDF - page 21] they say students should produce: [Read more]
What news employers want and what they get – research on the journalism skills gap
