G’day and Kia Ora from Down-Under. (See… picked up the lingo and everyfink.)
*ahem*
Right, we’re verrrry close to launching the news website that I have built. It’s called NewsWire, and come launch day, you’ll find it right here: www.newswire.co.nz . Until then you’ll have to do with a little coming soon note. Unless you know your way around Wordpress, in which case you’ll be able to load the homepage with a bit of URL jiggery-pokery.
But you wouldn’t do that, would you? It would be like opening window 24 on the 1st of December. It’s just not the done thing.
Anyway. To the point:
I hit a dilemma today. How involved in the web process should my students be?
In a perfect world, they’d do it all. Gather news, write copy, take pictures, record audio, take video, produce multimedia packages and so on. And then plonk it all into a CMS ready to hit the web at the click of a button.
However, we don’t live in a perfect world. Some people won’t get it. It’s not their fault. I can safely say that I could be taught by the artist in the world — but I’ll never be able to draw. Slightly different, yes, but the principles are still there. We have to get used to the fact that not everyone will be able to be an online journalist to the full degree.
But that’s not to say they can’t do some of it.
It’s like when I do radio. I can edit audio, cue clips up, do all (most?) of the technical things. Not to mention all the newsgathering beforehand. Yet, I couldn’t present a sandwich, let alone a radio show. So I leave that to someone else.
For web, what skills should we be insisting students learn at least?
Well, me and my crack team (so that’s myself and two tech-minded students, then), have decided that every student should probably be expected tonewsgather (audio, pictures and video included), and then accompany that raw material with a written article.
Said article should then be loaded onto the CMS (as I said, we’re using Wordpress. A doddle?).
That, the team decided, should probably be it. Students will then email their multimedia to a special Gmail account (for the storage, you understand) for it to be prepared and then uploaded before eventually going live.
The people doing the uploading will be a squad of four. Jim (the program leader), myself (tutor) plus Luke and Aaron — the two tech-minded students.
The process that the normal students won’t get involved in — unless they show a desire to — is cropping and resizing images; cutting, compressing and uploading audio/video; and producingslideshows with Soundslides. And, they will also be spared the hassle of using all the custom field bits of Wordpress that are necessary to make sure our template works correctly.
This is good from our point of view. It’ll mean we get sorted quicker, and content will be clean, consistent and well-produced from the offset.
But am I doing the other students a disservice by not insisting they get involved with the WHOLE procedure?
I’m tempted to run a series of 2-hour workshops on Audacity, Soundslides and Windows Movie Maker (no comments on the software, please. That’s all that’s on offer. And anyway, it’s a good bunch). But in doing so I risk making the whole experience seem too complex and, as a result, very offputting.
For me, online journalism isn’t about what goes on inside the computer. It’s more about attacking stories with a certain state of mind. It’s about knowing that certain stories work better with video. It’s about knowing that audio just HAS to be downloadable if we are to know how that greasy politician really sounded. It’s about seeing news in a way that isn’t just printed or spoken word.
That seems the greater goal: Giving the students that bite for online reporting. Once that’s laid down, the technical expertise can come afterwards — if at all.
Am I right?
I think you’re doing them a disservice if you don’t give them the option to get more involved. I can just picture one of them sitting in a job interview and being asked why they didn’t pick up more skills. You don’t have to push them through the door, but you can leave it open at least.
I’m inclined to agree with Anne. Just think how local newspapers in the UK (and I daresay elsewhere) now expect their journalists to do a bit of everything: get the story, take the photos, capture a bit of video, do a podcast, supply some text for the web … and not forgetting, of course, the longer, considered newspaper column for readers to enjoy over a bowl of cornflakes the following day.
In a job market that’s getting tougher by the year, isn’t one of the responsibilities of an educator to help their students have an edge over the competition?
I suspect that the successful job candidates of the future will be those who possess not only a good nose for a story, but also a big skills set … the self-starter who can get straight down to business without needing a whole bunch of on-the-job training.
I say this not without a note of regret, and a fondness for those happy days when a radio specialist was just that. But isn’t it just a fact of life?
And, anyway, if I managed to crop and resize the odd photo, I’m sure your students can. If they can’t do everything, is your technology, perhaps, too complicated?
Having said that, there’s always room for an editor and some kind of quality control, of course.
Greetings from Lincoln!
Hi Dave.
>> Am I right?
Mostly I fink.
And congratulations on the website. Its great. The current lead is fascinating story. The intersection between media/EFA/free speech/web media is getting real ugly.
I agree with the previous posters that learning not only to crop, edit audio, encode video and write basic HTML are all skills that online journalists need. But I am not entirely certain that they necessarily be taught/assessable/mandatory in courses like yours though they should certainly be available.
As an employer competence in these things is certainly very attractive. However so is a genuine understanding of journalism. There is a balance to be found. And the same thing applies to shorthand I expect – its nice but its not vital and it is not determinative of usefullness. People have differing learning speeds and differing strengths and weaknesses on the technology side and in terms of dexterity with microprocessor controlled systems. Skills develop over time and are always learned on the job as well as in training. Some people never learn shorthand and some very good journalists are probably never going to find encoding a video and posting it to wordpress easy.
That said for web journalism courses like yours production side skills are very important.
One aspect of the web journalism environment is a lack of resources + opportunities for people with skills to use them. We try to encourage both collection and production of news by staff but it is a reality that a lot of online web media jobs are really more sub-editing than reporting partly because their is a new layer of media employees forming that transforms old media content into new media content.
Importantly your students possibly don’t want to get stuck in purely sub-editing roles and skills help them get out and about more.
Anyway some thoughts and greetings from Brandon Street. A bit stream of consiciousness but something that is fairly top of mind.
regards
Alastair Thompson
Scoop.co.nz
functions that in the old media world tend to be
Our experience at Scoop is that people have h
I think you should learn how to write before you start saying what skills anyone else should have.
Remedial training — make sure a young journo near you gets some. We don’t need awful raw copy; we need real journalism.