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 (#)