Ten Basic New Media Skills Journalists Need To Know
By Tom Foremski - March 31, 2008
Software engineers have to update their bag of skills constantly. They learn new programming languages, new web standards, new development systems, and new lexicons constantly.
Most traditional journalists can barely type, they certainly can't spell. And they are unusually useless in terms of PC and other tech skills. But they know how to create compelling media and are able to do it consistently.
With all the new changes brought about by the Internet becoming the publishing platform for all media, journalists now need a few new skills. They don't need to know them well, as in typing and spelling, but they do need to know a bit about them, so that they can flourish as the media sector transforms itself.
Ten basic new media skills that today's journalist should know:
1) How to upload an image to a blog. (I know journalists that don't know how.)
2) How to add a link to text in an online story.
3) How to take and edit a photo and resize it for a web page.
4) How to embed the code for a video in a web page and resize it.
5) How to find relevant links to a story and add them to it.
6) How to take a digital video, edit it, and publish it in several formats.
7) How to make online stories discoverable.
8) How to read HTML and be able to fix common problems.
9) How to read CSS and be able to make modifications in stylesheets.
10) How to survive in an always-on work day, and produce two or three times as much content as before.
By Tom Foremski - March 31, 2008 | Permalink | Comment
| Category: Media Watch
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Comments (5)
The immediacy of new media is enthralling. Being able to go from story possibility to investigation to typing to web presence in under an hour compared to the sometimes day+ of trad online media and worse, much worse, for paper media is tremendous. The downside is that you are 'on-duty' much more than before and working at a higher pitch for longer. It's worth it though.
Chris.
Posted: March 31, 2008 3:58 AM
RE: Ten Basic New Media Skills Journalists Need To Know
Bad news for legacy journalists.
-Dash
The New Economics of Advertising
(http://adECON101.blogspot.com)
Posted: March 31, 2008 1:55 PM
11. How to insure for life.
Posted: April 1, 2008 7:43 AM
Tom--Good points. The world has changed dramatically for journalists. Back when I was writing for national pubs many years ago, you had the luxury of being able to do extensive research, writing long winded "think pieces." Now, as you say, you have to be able to think fast, write fast and do it 2 or 3 times a day. They're also going to have to learn to package and market their specialized knowledge in a new way, something most have never done. I do think they'll make the adjustment, as I wrote about recently. http://markivey.typepad.com/onthemark/2007/11/five-reasons-jo.html
But it could be a long painful process for many.
Posted: April 1, 2008 8:48 AM
Dominik: Actually, number 11 was going to be"To know how to FTP files to the right directory on a remote web server." :-)
Mark: It's all about "Faster, Better, Longer!"
Chris: Yes, the pace is enthralling.
Posted: April 1, 2008 11:45 AM