Dear Bill,
This is my entry for the lab session on Feb 16. The title is: “Journalism education in digital revolution”. I have text, video, photos, links.
Some people argue that journalism cannot be taught. Others say that without education, journalists cannot know how to behave and work as they are supposed to do.
Now, journalism education is changing quickly to meet the digital revolution.
The print readership is declining in accordance with the booming of Internet and multimedia storytelling. The readers now can read, listen, watch, giving instant comments, sending by email or saving the stories that they are interested in.
Bloggers and citizen reporters are putting more pressure on reporters, thought they were not meant to be. Every one thinks that they can be a reporter.
It is said that it is never easier to be a reporter and publish your stories like we can those days.
There are assistant tools available on the Internet for you to self-train to be come a reporter.
So how students who pay money for their journalism education should be trained to be employed and to do good job?
Definitely they need to be equipped with new skills and competencies to succeed changing professional world in this 21st century.
The usual training classes are writing, listening, speaking, leadership skills, cooperative processes, press law and ethics,
fiscal responsibility, and media design and production.
Others can be media history, media evolution, functions, limitations and influences of media in society. Those are basic knowledge.
Students also need to learn to distinguish different forms of journalistic writing, such as news, features, opinion with appropriate styles.
Students also need to learn how to utilize computers for texting, graphics designing, radio, television, and new media. As they reach a high command on these skills, they would know how to work to utilize the techniques to high light the stories.
Watch a short movie about what citizen journalism is:
Provided by YouTube
How the journalism education is being carried out is different from countries to countries, places to places.
In London, where journalism courses are highly recommended at University of Westminster and City University London, the students are immerged in so many modules that they feel sometimes too tired to catch up. There are writing and reporting, journalism and society,
international news, print production, online journalism and Internet journalism (what is the difference between those two subjects, by the way?)
All the modules are interesting, but to tell the truth, they seem not enough to make the students confident to cope with the fast changing spectrum of current journalism.
It is important that journalist trainees are taught how to spare space for creativity, not just running after the journalism revolution.
(Bài viết 16.02.2007 20:47)