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Journalism Grads Need Basic Skills Plus Openness, Flexibility

Alfred Hermida

by Alfred Hermida, September 15, 2008

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At journalism schools, professors like myself are trying to figure out what we should be teaching students so they can succeed in the newsrooms of today and tomorrow.

At the recent Online News Association annual conference in Washington DC, I posed that question to some of the brightest minds in the media, from editors to professors to entrepreneurs.

The advice for graduates was that they need journalism plus a new set of skills. The basics of journalism -- curiosity, passion, accuracy, serving the public interest -- were still important. But journalist students also need to learn about how the digital revolution has changed, and continues to change, the media.

This involves understanding how people are consuming media and how content flows online, as well as being aware of the importance of community and the conversation taking place online. Teaching journalism has become "journalism...plus" as Robert Scoble says below.

Here is what folks at the ONA had to say in a series of video interviews I made with my Nokia N95 cell phone:

Jim Brady, executive editor of WashingtonPost.com:

Peter Horrocks, head of the BBC's multimedia newsroom:

Geneva Overholser, director of the School of Journalism at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication:

Rosental Alves, director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas in Austin:

Len Brody, CEO and co-founder of NowPublic.com:

Robert Scoble, prominent blogger and managing director of Fast Company TV, a business video network:

What do you think? What skills do you think are important for journalism graduates to have? How much of their skills should be with new media as well as old? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Alfred Hermida is an online news pioneer and journalism educator. He is an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Journalism, the University of British Columbia, where he leads the integrated journalism program. He was a founding news editor of the BBC News website. He blogs at Reportr.net.

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