Comments on: Columbia J-School walks backward onto the Web

By: Pogo: We have seen the enemy, and he is us… « JournalCetera

Pogo: We have seen the enemy, and he is us… « JournalCetera — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:25:04 +0000

[...] http://www.wordyard.com/2009/03/12/columbia-j-school-walks-backward-onto-the-web/ [...]

By: John L.

John L. — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 23:46:47 +0000

Perhaps Columbia could consider hiring part-time some of the New York Times web folks that New York Magazine wrote about in January. http://nymag.com/news/features/all-new/53344/

By: peter m herford

peter m herford — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 00:08:42 +0000

The strength of any university is the extent to which it is home to ideas and research. The arts and sciences of looking forward and backward in an atmosphere that lends insight into history and advancement for society. There is a legitimate debate in J schools about where and how “new media” should be taught. But what seems to be missing in the minutiae is the notion the J schools have been weakest where they should be strongest: ideas that challenge and change their own craft. Why is it that an MIT (and others) had “media labs” decades ago? Shouldn’t the media labs have started in the J schools where the best minds and the best research might have led rather than followed todays trends. One of the dirty secrets of journalism that practitioners have all experienced is the conservatism reflected in some of the comments. Newsrooms that are resistant to change. Editors and publishers who are risk averse toward innovation. This same conservatism is pervasive in parts of most J school faculties, the parts that too often control the direction of the schools. The changes in journalism should have been coming from the J schools, not the J schools chasing the problem of what to teach and how to teach. A few J schools try to shift the balance to the innovators, the leaders rather than the followers. Columbia and most J schools have faculty members who have vision and want to innovate. The schools where leadership encourages their visionaries have the best chance to stand out and offer their students the most challenging education.

By: Heather

Heather — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 20:42:06 +0000

I can’t believe there are people on here actually buying into the idea that Flash, et al, are actually supposed to be separate and beneath the mighty calling of journalism. Flash and Web design are to online content what layout and page design are to print. I’m graduating from a school (undergraduate) where I’ve literally had to teach myself everything I know about the Web and Flash, and I can tell you that until you dive into it and dissect it, you have no way of understanding how important it is to learn it in a journalistic setting. Without knowing basic ActionScript, at least, it’s impossible to determine how information should be presented in an interactive Flash item because you have no knowledge of what can be done.

I’m currently trying to decide between Arizona State’s Walter Cronkite J-School and Northwestern. Northwestern really seems like it has its act together. And after reading about Berkeley on here, I’m rather relieved I didn’t get accepted into their program. I don’t need to be someplace where I’m teaching my teachers — I’ve had enough of that at my undergrad alma mater.

By: Jane Stevens

Jane Stevens — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 20:26:28 +0000

At the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism, a group of students and profs are developing HealthCommons, a local social/information/news network. We’re taking an entrepreneurial approach — figuring out how it can be ad-supported. And we’re taking a collaborative approach — spending a lot of time asking the community what it needs and wants, and we’re making the community the visual and functional engine. (You can follow our progress on RJICollaboratory.org.)

Although the basics of journalism are still there, there’s so much more that modern jurnos need to do: map their communities, integrate businesses as part of the community, learn how to do collaborative serial beatblog reporting, address transparency issues, manage the community’s conversation, use databases effectively, follow through to the resolution of community issues and goals. All this has to be taught, too, and I don’t know of any J-schools that have integrated this approach into their curriculum. Webcentric journalism is so much more than tools, but most J-school faculty don’t understand that.

Columbia, like Berkeley, kept Webcentric reporting classes at arm’s length. Webcentric journalism (including Flash) have been taught at Berkeley since 2000 (with Paul Grabowicz, I developed the first multimedia reporting class in 2000), but as an elective until a couple of years ago, and by visiting lecturers, like myself.

By: Scott Rosenberg’s Wordyard » Blog Archive » J-schools: from phone and typewriter to Web

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 19:51:03 +0000

[...] There’s a great back-and-forth in the comments on my post below about new media skills and journalism schools. [...]

By: Erigami

Erigami — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:26:25 +0000

I think the too-long-didn't-read comment above has it right - technical learning is just that. Flash will be dead and gone in ten years. Students shouldn't have to learn it. They should have to learn how to be a journalist in our brave new world: how to handle multimedia (newpapers should have podcasts and vlogs), how to groom commenters into sources, how to juggle investigative journalism with the day-to-day crap that passes as news a most outlets, among others.

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:08:56 +0000

Boston University has got it right. They strongly encourage all of their students (I am working towards my Master’s in print journalism there) to be web-savvy when they get their degrees. From the use of various blog platforms, basic Google sites knowledge and more sophisticated website creators, to Flickr, Audacity, Final Cut and Photoshop. The faculty at BU understands that to stay ahead, their students will need to be multi-platform journalists. It is not just a matter of learning the correct forms and refining writing, it is a mission to make their students valued (and employable) when they get their degrees. A professor told me once “if you are a print journalist who knows how to shoot and edit video, in this day and age, you are golden.”

It seems to me that the other large J-schools should find this principle as a no-brainer and I am surprised at the foot dragging I hear from Columbia and Berkeley. At BU we are taught that, when the time comes, we will be the ones replacing the old guard of journalists who are slow or resistant to learning the new platforms. It will take a new wave of young, dynamic and multi-talented journalists to revamp the current sectors that are faltering (redesigning newspaper websites) and create new ones.

Kudos to Boston University. It looks like I made the right choice.

By: Paula Span

Paula Span — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:29:09 +0000

I’m one of those veterans who teaches at Columbia J-School where, believe me, figuring out how to educate journalists adept at using a whole range of storytelling tools is virtually priority number one. We’re revamping the basic reporting and writing course in a way that will very much reflect what Damien Cave says above. We’re constantly aware of the roiling media world our graduates will be entering. I haven’t encountered anybody on the faculty, least of all Nick Lemann, who sees multimedia skills as distinct from, or less vital than, the other journalistic skills and values we try to impart. We are a couple of years late, like most schools, and will probably see more change in the coming year than in the previous decade. But we are ON IT.

By: Chris Krewson

Chris Krewson — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 14:32:13 +0000

This is scary but not surprising. After all, we’re educating people to get hired into jobs that largely don’t exist at institutions that are increasingly filing for bankruptcy.

And social media – kind of hard, in the traditional collegiate workflow, to get them to teach what’s worked out to be a burgeoning industry over only the last 3 years.