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Young journalists should begin, not rebel against the newspaper revolution

I just can't take it anymore.
It seems like most of the young journalists I meet (some still in school, others just graduated) are rebelling against rather than leading the revolution to make news media successfull in the future.
Why?!?!?!
This article on HigherEd.com discusses how schools are lagging behind the real world of media: less college newspapers than professional newspapers have Web sites, students are not taught what they are expected to know when graduating and so on...
And, in talking with older journalists, they don't get it. Almost always they talk about how the older newspaper folks are faced with relearning how to work online and how young journalists are lucky because they know how to work online. NOT TRUE!
Look around your newsroom: how many of the young journalists know how to post their stories, photos, graphics, interactive Flash projects, related stories, etc. to the web? How many young journalists even know how to use the web better than their old editors?
I recently was job shadowed by six different high school students. One student said her newspaper at school had a Web site and another was working on starting one - but both said they were relying on one non-journalism web braniac to actually build and run the Web site.
Come on guys! We need professors to get off their butts and teach new media and new job skills, we need students to not focus on how to be a reporter in 1970 and instead 2010 (when they'll likely graduate) and we need those of us who recently graduated to find a way ourselves (management won't always do it for us) of learning how to lead in this internet-journalism revolution!
Published Tuesday, August 14, 2007 3:47 PM by SonyaSmith
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Comments

# re: Young journalists should begin, not rebel against the newspaper revolution

Wednesday, August 15, 2007 4:35 PM by Dale Denwalt II
In a word, Sonya: money.

I would assume that university papers may not have sufficient funding to purchase web-publishing programs. And especially if the broadcast and print departments have any sort of separation, there might be a little bit of consternation when it comes to sharing equipment.

# re: Young journalists should begin, not rebel against the newspaper revolution

Wednesday, August 15, 2007 8:29 PM by ElysseJames
Gotta say I agree. It's hard to move to the Web without the tools to do it. College papers may not have the funding. High school papers are lucky if they can, and even professionals have difficulty getting the funds to really do something great online.
And many of the professors are a bit stuck in their own past, when they were working as journalists instead of teaching. I'm sure the professors realize the field is changing but aren't in the marketplace to see for themselves which direction to go.
Though I'm pretty sure that's not the case for ALL professors, it seems to be a majority in my experience.

# re: Young journalists should begin, not rebel against the newspaper revolution

Thursday, August 16, 2007 12:24 PM by SonyaSmith
I know that programs like Dreamweaver cost money. I know that professors may not know or care to know about the web. But do you think it was free for college and high school newspapers to get computers to publish newspapers that way instead of using dummy sheets and typewriters? Yep. What I'm saying is the journalism and communications departments (whether inspired by teachers or students) need to do whatever they can to get the equipment and training necessary to prepare students for the real journalism world. Plus, there are plenty of free web publishing programs out there! And.....on Dale's point that broadcast and print groups might not share equipment - they should start! I don't think its a good idea that the whole journalism world is being expected to converge - while schools keep students segregated (and, at my school, taking classes in another field would not have counted towards my major!). But....as Elysse points out in her most recent post on this blog - if schools don't teach students, then those students should find a way to learn outside the classroom!

# re: Young journalists should begin, not rebel against the newspaper revolution

Thursday, August 16, 2007 4:51 PM by Hannah Marney
It does not cost a lot of money to make a web site of some form. Most schools have web servers and many provide space for student groups. You don't need Dreamweaver or a web geek on your side. You just need a web server, Wordpress,and a few minutes.
I agree that J-schools are way behind and that is what makes me mad about my alma matter not turning my degree program into the a cutting edge j-school. I am a communitations and information technology grad from Macon State College in Macon ,Ga. In the new media track, I took courses in Flash animation, 3-d animation, desktop publishing, photoshop, illustrator, video production,audio production,web design,and many others in addition to journalism and humanities courses. Please, some from the outside tell my school they are nuts not to get at least two journalism professors hired to make that program a j-school for the future.
I realizing more each day how useful that program would be to journalists. We have graduated journalists before from the school including war correspondent Drew Brown.
anyway, here is a link to the program.

[html]http://humanities.maconstate.edu/cit-newmedia[/html]

# re: Young journalists should begin, not rebel against the newspaper revolution

Thursday, August 16, 2007 10:13 PM by Hannah Marney
Please disregard the typos in the my post...*hides in shame

# re: Young journalists should begin, not rebel against the newspaper revolution

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 3:55 PM by GenePark
Great post Sonya. What irked me when I went to school was how in my newspaper design class, we were forced to design layouts with dummy sheets. Now, I'm all for learning the fundamentals of newspapering, but we spent an unnecessary amount of time studying and learning something that a simple computer program can do for us in a fraction of the time.
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