Teaching skills for new media I'm seeking advice for an upcoming Poynter session for journalism educators. This group of college journalism educators is especially interested in learning more about:
Bill Mitchell - The Poynter Institute The instructors need to teach new media skills in the context of being tools to get journalism done. I think they probably get that; where I have some concerns is when traditional journalistic courses are aced out to make way for new media skill courses - taught, at some times, by professors who know less about new media than the students. I would prefer that we stick with the same sorts of journalistic exercises, but require students to do reporting and database work with computers. We should never scrimp on news judgment or writing skills for new media skills. Essentially, I am suggesting no change in the requirements, but new media components in all classes. I'd also like to see a serious elective for database work. I think that the other branch of new media - on-line reporting - is best incorporated into writing and reporting classes. I'd really stress that they go back and see how many copy editing courses they are teaching. Even some of the best J schools in the country offer just one. That is pitiful. They should offer at least two on editing: basics and then one about different kinds of editing, news judgment, negotiation and leadership, and one about pagination that could have a heavy technical component. For more than 30 years, we have not been addressing the nation's need for more copy editors. With more technology crowded onto the copy desk (pagination and, in some cases, web coding) this may be an appropriate forum for bringing that up. As for jump starting college papers on the web, let's keep them focuses on content. It's king. Let's have them think, too, about how web sites should differ in form and arrangement from on-paper newspapers, given web readers' needs. I think there are some issues to address such as server space (whose) and having a web designer, but these are manageable. As I understand it,
these are some key considerations for starting up: unique content, strong
brand identity, timeliness and utility. I would urge them to spend a lot
of time planning this - a semester, anyway - before the launch. (A guy
I mentored in high school threw his high school paper on the web a couple
years ago; we just hired him as a full-timer for the web team - he works
with Tran. He has just turned 20! He started his high school paper up
through a personal aol account, I think.) Following on Joe Grimm's suggestion to focus on basic skills, especially copy editing: In both those classes, and in writing courses, I'd suggest the rise of new media makes even more important teaching would-be journalists to work on deadline. Make sure your courses include a strong dose of in-class assignments that teach the importance of getting it done quickly, making judgments about what can be done in the time available, being able to kick into a different speed when the news requires. To his suggestion of an advanced copy editing course, I'd add wire editing skills -- combining stories, rewrite, turning long stories into briefs. And I'd agree strongly with Joe about trying to teach "negotiation" -- or plain people skills. Perhaps by having the copy editing class work with a reporting class? I'm not sure how much of the technical side of pagination I'd teach; much as it would be good to hire folks who could fire up the PC and start paginating immediately, are the current systems compatible enough to make such skills transferable, or fixed enough to make such skills valuable by the time they graduate? But I would want every journalist to have experienced trying to put together a newspaper page or assemble a Web report amid breaking news, changes in story lengths, and all the other normal chaos. Finally, I would ask,
again for new media and old, that students learn basics about graphics
-- not how to produce a chart in Illustrator, but how to judge whether
numbers are reliable and would produce a useful chart; boiling info down
to a highlights box; gathering the data needed to produce a complicated
infographic. I'd talk about the different kinds of graphics and when each
is appropriate. I'd throw in an introduction to statistics, at least enough
for them to know what questions to ask about a poll or how to figure a
percentage. Joe beat me to the punch by seconds. I couldn't agree more with everything he has said here. Rather than rush in and figure out the latest, flashiest new media technique, we need to teach the essentials of basic reporting AND editing skills to students coming through the newsroom door. The last thing we need to encourage is learning the bad stuff from the Web--fake polls, design at the expense of content, flash at the expense of news, etc. The Web will teach them one good thing--how to deliver the news quickly. It won't teach them how to report or write or edit.
The jobs are in editing,
copy editing, to be specific. Look at the job listings for the last 20
years, or more. And Joe's right--too many schools have cut back or even
eliminated editing, exactly the wrong step to take. There is a bigger problem with many who teach editing at many journalism schools -- including the established programs. That is, the teachers don't know what editing is and they don't know what an editor does. Too many teach proof-reading, all the while hammering "don't do this" and "don't do that" into students heads, which drives many promising wordsmiths elsewhere. In some cases, these "teachers" blend in their own personal politically correct agenda, confusing students on the great message of The First Amendment. Thank God for the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund and its editing scholarships. If Bill Mitchell and his Poynter colleagues could persuade men and women editors around the county to take a year's leave of absence and get into the classrooms, that would be wonderful. Maybe those men and women could teach the teachers what editing is while, at the same time, inspiring a generation or two of students that editing is honorable work on most days and noble work on some. The pay is good, too, no matter what faculty tells them. If that isn't possible,
maybe Poynter could encourage editors around the country
to check in on the nearest journalism school in their area and see how
things are done in the classroom and laboratories, maybe even offering
some insights
into what the professional world needs. Anyway,
thanks, Joe. I agree with you -- and Pam Robinson. I have found, as a recruiter and an adjunct faculty member, that an instructor can make a huge difference in students' perception of what copy editors do if we focus on the challenges, value and qualities of good editing and spend a whole lot less time (here I plead guilty) on the down sides of copy editing. There are some, but I think they pale in comparison to the huge upside. What we wind up doing, I think, is discouraging people for whom copy editing could be a path to professional success and happiness by diminishing the value of the job and nudging whole classes of people away from editing, where so many jobs are - and into reporting. Once when I interviewed four students at Howard - all from the same class and all excited about copy editing - I asked them what was in the water. They said it was an instructor who showed them that the work is difficult, demanding and important. They BEGAN their careers with jobs at the Kansas City Star, Detroit Free Press, Akron Beacon Journal and Knight Ridder's Washington Bureau. Two are now at the Washington Post and one is at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Where would they be if they had been turned away from editing? For those of you who
are on this list and share some responsibilities for recruiting and retention,
I would see what I could do to get some of your best teaching copy editors
into gigs at local universities - even just for cameos. This can help
you mine for local editing talent and give your copy editors a new dimension
that keeps them engaged and excited in their work.
Courses, even good ones, will never substitute for newsroom experience. Just as an example, here in New Hampshire, two papers who have taken UNH editing interns for years have managed to "grow their own" copy desks simply by respecting what the students already know, helping them build on the basics to acquire more skills, and showing them how the profession, for all its stresses, can be a ton of fun. Practically everyone who does an internship at these papers has a job waiting after graduation. Other papers, meanwhile, have taken our interns after making a commitment in name only. Despite our attempts to work with these papers, they offer little training or encouragement, assume any decision an intern makes is suspect, and basically convey to the intern, "Sink or swim, kiddo; that's what this profession is about. We're much too busy and important to care about any one person's development." Then they wonder why graduates don't want to go into journalism. I'm not saying anyone reading this message has done this; I'm saying it's happened repeatedly with papers we've tried to work with. To reiterate my
screed from ACES last fall, it's up to both journalists
and journalism educators to convey to students that journalism in
general, and editing in particular, is not just crucial to society but
the most satisfying and
rewarding and downright COOL profession you can enter. And of course it
helps if the people teaching editing love editing. If you do, check with
your local college about teaching it. Speaking from as a
teacher at a small school: Sure, we don't get as much attention as the larger schools in the area, and I'm not a Pulitzer Prize winner turned professor. But there are great things going on here. Typically my editing class is small and very informal, affording a pleasant interaction and depth of discussion between the students/teacher/guest speaker. And for those of you
who are newsroom trainers: In the interest of
finding solutions, please tell us even more about the tactic that worked
than the one that didn't. My recommendation is that journalism instructors
go to other journalists, rather than through PR or community relations. I agree, Joe. My problem was that I had quit my job as a reporter in California and taken a job as a teacher near D.C. and didn't know anyone in the area! My strategy was to cooperate with the PR office for the first few times. Once I got people onto campus, I'd get to know them and call them back. I'd also ask them who they would recommend for this class or that event. I found that working with my local circulation manager was helpful. We worked together to implement a campus newspaper reading program. As a favor, he put me in touch with reporters at the local county bureau. Going to grad school in the area has also been helpful. I try to collect the cards of the interesting speakers I meet in my own classes in the area, and when appropriate, ask my professors for speaker suggestions. After three years
I've built up a pretty good stack of rolodex cards. But I was
shocked by the initial brush-off. We (ACES) have been
talking for some time about how to
help out in classrooms, and our Ohio group has in fact,
started work on an "editor in the classroom" idea.
The person to contact for more info is Jeff Pierron
(jpierron@ee.net). We use several approaches to teaching copy editing. We encourage journalists to take the ACES basic copy editing course that is available online, which is self paced. This is a good refresher for existing copy editors, but also a good introduction to copy editing for journalists who have never really line edited or been responsible for handling someone else's copy as a Desk would. On the menu of editing classes we offer is a half day course (3-4 hours) in which we discuss the responsibilities of copy editors, what copy editors should be looking for in stories, rewriting, etc. and work through several exercises that lead to discussions about everything from libel and copyright law to structure, balance, fairness, sourcing, grammar and punctuation. We work with published copy in our exercises with an eye on identifying any problems/holes in stories that got past a desk and also looking to see how stories could have been improved. The half day course has now been translated and adapted for our Spanish language copy desk for the Americas. We also include copy editing in other courses so that the editorial staff becomes familiar with line editing their own copy as well as stories written by colleagues. In addition, we created an online Copy Editing Center with links to a variety of editing resources, such as acronym finders, currency calculators, dictionaries, etc. There are also links to The Elements of Style, Poynter, IRE, the Yellow Pages, US Postal Service, National Weather Service, etc. We are now collecting links for similar sites in Spanish, Portuguese and French for our services in the Americas that work in those languages. I don't think any of us can say enough about the value of a good desk/good copy editors and do enough teaching in this area. I'd love to see this
group build a suite of copy editing courses, ranging from short to a few
days, using online as well as classroom formats. Please encourage their students to learn a foreign language like SPANISH. The most important story in this country is the changing demographics. It's truly historic. You can't get at the rich immigrant stories if you don't speak their language and have an appreciation for their culture. Kids grow up with
technology. They'll always know more than their editors.
But they don't grow up understanding different cultures and languages. Amen. I want to disagree
a little bit with this point. The kids are more comfortable with technology
because they grew up with it, but they don't necessarily know how to apply
it. In the end technology is only as good as the human who runs it. Please
don't assume that because some kid is a whiz on Playstation (or whatever
they're called), s/he understands how, for example,
to design a newspaper. Nimble fingers don't mean a nimble mind. And
Bobbi's point about language and culture is right on. I agree with the comments regarding copy editing's image problem and skill sets. And I also agree with the warning that devoting precious teaching/training resources on new media at the expense of core copy editing skills is a temptation and a mistake. When it comes to young reporters, computer-assisted reporting skills are the issue, if you want to include them as new media. Experience in Access and Excel, with examples of stories produced with those skills, will quickly elevate any resume. But as in the example of a computer savvy copy editor who does not know how to edit copy, the ability to merge databases and crunch numbers is not enough. The critical thinking skills needed to set up even a simple database project, analyze the numbers, and then report well beyond the numbers are essential. I think research skills
and critical thinking skills are enormous needs that
both journalism educators and we newsroom training editors need to address
more. (Does anyone in academia offer basic courses in logic?) So much
bad writing and so many lame stories begin with weak ideas. From here, this discussion thread turned into a discussion of teaching and training journalists in the use of numbers. That thread is posted here.
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