You need this to get a job in journalism

Journalists who can flourish in both the Web newsroom and the print newsroom today:

Can package the news online.
Can create original multimedia.
Have solid journalism credentials.
Have strong technical skills.

Journalists who expect to get a job will “walk in the door with”:

A proficiency in Photoshop, HTML and blogging software.
An understanding of Web publishing systems (content management systems).
Experience in the production of multimedia — including the use of audio and video editing tools.

For our more specialized multimedia positions, we expect to see an extensive knowledge of Flash and an understanding of how to integrate databases into multimedia presentations.

Source: Fiona Spruill, editor of the nytimes.com Web newsroom, in a Q&A at the Times site.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 30, 2007, at 8:16 am and is filed under journalism, journalists, multimedia, online, teaching, training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

16 responses to “You need this to get a job in journalism”

Notes from a Teacher: Mark on Media » Friday squibs writes:

[...] You need this to get a job in journalism. Lots of folks have pointed to Fiona Spruill, editor of the nytimes.com Web newsroom, and her Q&A at the Times site. Mindy McAdams pulled out the important bits as far as students are concerned: the skills needed to get a job in the online world. [...]
November 30, 2007 at 8:55 pm
NYTimes.com editor says journalists who expect jobs must walk in knowing how to blogging | Writes Like She Talks writes:

[...] Spruill, (no one asked if that’s physically different from the newsroom) but then saw an excerpt on Mindy McAdam’s very good blog, Teaching Online Journalism. Here’s the part from which she excerpted which I found very [...]
December 1, 2007 at 8:19 pm
JohnofScribblesheet writes:

Can create original multimedia

- I assume this means use of video and photo journalism. I think this is something that is underplayed. Its obvious that people should learn html but how many people actually know how to take a proper photograph?
December 2, 2007 at 9:24 am
Mindy writes:

I agree, there are too many journalists who have never studied photojournalism for even one hour, and this is detrimental in today’s visual environment. I resisted teaching photojournalism because I’ve never had any formal training in the practice. This year, however, I buckled down and taught it to my online journalism students because (a) it’s clearly necessary, and (b) no one else was going to do it. I used a great textbook and showed lots of examples of award-winning photojournalism work online.
December 2, 2007 at 10:05 am
Mindy writes:

“Create original multimedia” might be considered separately from “contribute to” or “gather” multimedia. That is, can you put a Soundslides together properly and well? Can you construct a package using templates provided by a designer?
December 2, 2007 at 10:09 am
Phil writes:

I don’t understand why Photoshop would be on this list, especially not as a “proficiency.” I’ve worked as a flash/interactive producer for the last two years and have never had to open Photoshop (nor have I ever had to blog anything, and hardly written anything in HTML). I think this list gives a false sense that people need to be able and armed to do everything, when this is untrue — ESPECIALLY at larger organizations like nytimes, where specialization is often more valuable.
December 2, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Pat Thornton writes:

Phil, I’m not sure how you haven’t opened Photoshop in the last two years. Do you use photos in your Flash presentations? Do you make Flash features?

I mock up all my features in Photoshop before I ever try to build anything.

I guess if you have a really big organization, you’d never have to open up Photoshop, but most of the people I know at the big paper’s do have a myriad of skills.

But I’d still never start designing something without mocking it up, especially a stand-alone site.

And I’ve never met someone who was really good with Flash who also didn’t know Photoshop well.
December 2, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Phil writes:

Pat,
Good point about mockups. However, it sounds like you are talking about doing both Flash and design work, which I do not. I am a programmer and the most the designer needs from me is a wireframe, which I would not use Photoshop for. This goes back to my point about specialization (designer vs developer).
As to your point about not knowing any good Flash developers who also didn’t know Photoshop well, I think it depends on what kind of Flash developer you are talking about. Flash, in its earlier days, was used most notably for animation (hence the timeline). Now, especially with the release of AS3, Flash (Actionscript) has become a serious programming language and is attracting more and more computer programmers. If you think about this, then it’s not so crazy to think that these people wouldn’t have much/any experience with Photoshop.
December 3, 2007 at 1:47 am
Mindy writes:

Phil, I don’t know of too many news organizations that employ any real ActionScript programmers. They should, of course. But they don’t. Thus the Flash is still mostly authored on the Timeline, and the Flash developer is more a designer than a programmer. S/he probably needs to know Photoshop well, and does. S/he probably also knows Illustrator VERY well.
December 3, 2007 at 9:03 am
Mindy writes:

A question for Phil: Are you a journalist? Because Fiona was talking about what the journalist “walking in the door” needs to know …

It’s cool if you are not; just trying to clarify.
December 3, 2007 at 9:07 am
Phil writes:

Yes, I am a journalist. And as to not knowing too many news orgs that hire real Actionscript programmers, who do you think is building all of Flash modules for nytimes.com? Knowledge of object-oriented programming (OOP) is becoming a requirement for many of the larger news organizations (for Flash developers).
However, I do recognize that for the majority of organizations, this is not the case. But I imagine that more and more of them will begin looking for serious programmers as online journalism evolves. Authoring on the timeline exclusively really limits the capabilities of Flash, but might be enough if you are only interested in making slideshows.
December 3, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Mindy writes:

Yes, there are real programmers at The New York Times and also at The Washington Post. I still stand by my observation that “not many” news organizations employ real ActionScript programmers. MSNBC.com has some too.

But if I counted all of the news organizations that do on my fingers and toes, I might have some toes left over.

No disrespect meant to you, Phil.

I totally hope you are correct that “more and more of them will begin looking for serious programmers” — and soon!!

You are also correct that “Authoring on the timeline exclusively really limits the capabilities of Flash,” but it is NOT enough if you are only making slideshows — because you can’t properly control the audio if you rely on the Timeline.
December 3, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Phil writes:

You’ll notice I said “slideshows,” not “audio slideshows.”
December 4, 2007 at 2:06 am
Pat Thornton writes:

Phil,

I hadn’t thought too deeply about AS3. I’ll have to look more deeply into the language, and if a programmer is using AS3 to develop than he or she wouldn’t need to know Photoshop.

Most newspapers, however, are looking for people not at your level for the majority of Flash projects. Those people would be well served knowing Flash and Photoshop.

As some of you know, I’m not a huge Flash fan, because I think it’s a resource hog and often poorly used. Although, I have seen some very good uses of Flash with ActionScript (I like a lot of what WPNI does with it). With more real programmers using Flash, maybe I’ll start to become a bigger fan, but I still see a lot of sites built entirely in Flash when they should have used mostly CSS and then Flash for some of the content.
December 4, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Electric Fishwrap › If I had a do-over writes:

[...] McAdams yet again comes forth with a great post right as I was writing this. Journalists who expect to get a job will “walk in the door [...]
December 5, 2007 at 10:35 am
The Journalism Iconoclast writes:

[...] Mindy McAdams says that journalists who can flourish online and in print can do at least these skills: [...]
December 7, 2007 at 12:49 pm