What a young journalist should know
Our Journalism Department Advisory Council members came to campus for their once-a-semester visit this week. After a carb-loaded Southern breakfast, they (the council members, most of whom are editors at large newspapers and magazines) and we (the faculty) discussed what they want to see most when they look at our students’ résumés and application materials.
- Half a dozen or so good clips (of course).
- Evidence of two or three internships (no surprise there).
- Evidence of multimedia ability.
Wow!! I could hardly believe my ears. Let me note before I write more that these were NOT the online editors of the newspapers and magazines (with one exception). They are metro editors, managing editors and photo editors from organizations including The Miami Herald, The Memphis Commercial Appeal and The Orlando Sentinel.
So it turns out that seemingly everyone everywhere has (finally) gotten religion. I spent five years in my current job (1999-2004) listening to people exactly like those in this group tell me and other educators, “Just teach them to be good reporters. They need to learn the basics. We can teach them HTML and the software.”
This is a new tune, and I’m singing with the choir.
Our advisory council members told us they now would like “at least some HTML,” as well as demonstrated ability to work with photography, audio, video and Flash. The strong message was that in any stack of résumés for a journalism job today, at least SOME of those résumés WILL have those “extras.”
All the applicants who lack them are at a disadvantage.
Technorati tags: journalism | education | multimedia | jobs | student
wow, you mean i may actually get a job next year!? You know multimedia journalism is, I believe, treated with a certain amount of disrespect at U of Texas. When I transferred into multimedia I had a magazine professor who told me how I was wasting my time and how there was no money for these skills and it wasn’t real journalism. Turns out what he treated as a handicap is going to be an advantage
March 24, 2006 at 1:30 amIt does appear that most of the media world has caught on — at last! The magazines I work with have begun to fire those “legacy editors” that can’t or won’t pick up new media skills. Today, very few of the journalists I know think they can continue to work in this field without developing the ability to work online. As recently as a year ago, I had dozens of friends who insisted that they would always be print-only journalists.
March 24, 2006 at 2:46 pmBut I do still meet students who seem tied to an ink and paper past. And as near as I can tell, it’s because they spend too much time listening to out-of-touch teachers.
So bigredbarbie, know that you made the right move. Send me a resume as you near graduation.
It’s been my impression that we online evangelists “don’t get no respect” from anyone except our own kind. That meeting with our advisory council was the first time in any faculty meeting that I felt as if a number of people around me were speaking the same language as me. It felt great!
March 25, 2006 at 2:37 am