Danish journalism students need digital knowledge
The Danish School of Media and Journalism has taken some heat the last couple of years for not being updated enough when it comes to the internet and new media. When I was studying at the school (2003-2007), online journalism was not required and neither was basic computer knowledge.
But that is apparently about to change. Kristian Strøbech, who is a lecturer at the school and head of the school's recent venture into the world of new media (and has teached med in new media at the school), has spearheaded a so called "IT Curriculum" (in Danish).
The curriculum, categorized under "Research", "Presentation" and "Files", lists a series of digital requirements that the students at the school must meet. They include, among other things, RSS, spreadsheets, video and working with photos and audio files.
People interested in the project can even participate and them move even further.
Writing articles is no longer enough
This is no doubt a really great idea in a world where a journalist fresh out of school is less and less likely to be employed at a offline newspaper. And the ongoing financial crisis means that journalists need to learn more than how to write great articles.
While some take it a step further and say that journalists need to learn how to work with programming code I'm quite satisfied with the requirements from The Danish School of Media and Journalism.
Of course it's great if journalists can understand and write computer programming code (I myself now a bit of PHP and a smaller bit of JavaScript), but let's start by learning them the basics — it's about time :-)
Related postsThis is not an offer to the students. IT understanding is a basic journalistic competence and in 2009 it's quite unthinkable that a newly qualified journalist can't work on the internet.
Kristian Strøbech, lecturer at The Danish School of Media and Journalism, to Berlinske's online business section, Business.dk (#)
This is good news - absolutely.
I work quite a lot with schools, teachers colleges and journalists in general. The basic web-skills are often lacking - it has to change.
As for programming - I disagree. Older teachers will remember the time when it was decided that all teachers should be able to programme in Algol - no way, but basic web competences like attaching files to emails, aubscribing to an RSS-feed or a podcast, even recording audio or video and uploading it to a website should be oblogatory - at any school.
Hi Karin,
Thanks for your comment.
I think we agree on the programming issue, but if I was an editor at an online media I would start looking for journalists with programming experience and knowledge.
It takes the load of the IT department and makes it possible for the journalists and the media in general to move faster implementing new online features.
At least in my point of view :-)
This is an unrealistic requirement. Although I'm almost positive that by code they mean HTML, it's still unrealistic.
It is normal for a Project Manager to know some coding, it is not for other professions, such as Journalism, Law, etc…
@PM Hut
The IT Curriculum doesn't say that journalists need to learn how to program, they only require competences like video editing, spreadsheets, RSS and so on.
You can read an automatic Google translation of the curriculum.
This might interest you:
The syllabus for the Digital Journalism class at Stanford:
http://socialmediaclassroom.com/digitaljournalism09
the "labs" that teach digital skills
http://socialmediaclassroom.com/digitaljournalism09/wiki/digital-media-labs
This is unfortunately not only a problem in Denmark world. I'm fortunate enough to have had the option to move Denmark to UK to study for my online journalism degree. Currently in my third year, I'm involved in teaching the second years OJ students. HTML is, but shouldn't be unrealistic. That said, I think teaching RSS, twitter, social media etc. is far more important.
If you're interested, my lecturer puts all the lessons on his blog. Here is the latest one on UGC and citizen journalism:
http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2009/03/04/user-generated-content-and-citizen-journalism-online-journalism-lesson-4/