New skill sets for journalism

NEW SKILL SETS:
JOURNALISM
Mindy McAdams, Professor
Department of Journalism
University of Florida
Gainesville, Florida, USA

My background
• BA in (print) journalism, 1981
• Copy editor, book publishing, 1982–1984
• Reporter and editor, weekly business newspaper,
1984–1988
• Copy editor, Time magazine, New York, 1988–1993
• MA in media studies, 1993
• Copy editor, The Washington Post, 1993–1994
• Content developer, online editor, The Washington Post,
1994–1995
• Online journalism trainer, 1995–1999
• Professor, journalism, 1999–today

TRANSITION
From print and broadcast to online media

Effects of the transition
1. Variety: Public has more access to more sources
(no monopolies)
2. Time: News is now 24/7 (when you want it)
3. Place: Computers and mobile devices are the site of
news delivery (where you want it)
4. Trust: Not always clear who is providing information
online
5. Business model: Advertising and subscriptions are
decreasing
6. Authority: Control of media and information has shifted

SKILLS
New competencies for the (digital) journalist

Skills in demand for digital journalism
1. Collaboration and participation
2. Aggregation and curation
3. Data analysis and data graphics (including maps)
4. Photos and video
5. Social media (sharing and mining)
6. Apps and other digital-only products
7. Audience research

Collaboration and participation
• From us … to/for them (old style)
• Two-way street: “My audience knows more than I do”
(new style)
• Asking readers/listeners/viewers for tips
• Actively recruiting audience to help report
• Not same as citizen journalism
• Not same as UGC
• Not same as old source models (not only officials)
• Encouraging audience to interact with one another on
your site or about your content

Aggregation and curation
“Aggregation and curation are techniques
of using content from other sources to
provide content for your audience. They
occupy overlapping spaces …”
Definition
—Steve Buttry, Digital Transformation Editor
for Digital First Media and Journal Register Co.

Aggregation types
• Fully automated, no humans are selecting content (for
example, Google search)
• Partly automated (for example, an RSS feed from one
newspaper)
• Only automated in a small way (for example, a reporter
performs several Google searches to create an annotated
list of links to useful resources)
• Not automated at all; mainly uses human intelligence and
judgment (for example, a reporter interviews several
experts to compile a list of links to useful resources) —
this is more like curation

Aggregation and curation
More about this on Tuesday morning!

Data journalism
• Data collection
• Public records and documents
• Information submitted by the public
• Information gathered by journalists
• Data analysis
• Numeracy
• Data cleaning
• Use of Excel (or Google Sheets)
• Data graphics
• Simple (made with Excel, for example)
• Complex (includes animation and interactivity)
• Maps (can be Google Maps)

Photos and video
• This is huge … and multifaceted!
• Stills
• Shrinking photo staffs at daily newspapers
• Use of (mediocre) user-contributed photos and stock photos
• Wire services: Photo curation, e.g. The Big Picture (from
Boston.com)
• Instagram
• Online video
• Short documentary style
• Examples from National Public Radio
• New York Times Op-Docs
• Super-short videos: Vine, Instagram, and even animated GIFs

Photos and video: Proposals
Every journalist should be able to:
• Capture usable photos and video on a smartphone (or at
least on a point-and-shoot camera)
• Record a usable short man-on-the-street interview as
video on a smartphone
• Crop, tone, and resize a photo using Photoshop (or
comparable software), save the file, and upload/send it to
editors
Every photojournalism student should be able to:
• Curate photo stories using wire service images
• Edit video for the Web

Photos and video: Proposals (2)
Every journalist should be able to:
• Compose and shoot a reasonably good photo of any
interview subject
• Select acceptable photos from any batch of images
• Write accurate and complete photo captions
• Recognize dangers of fakery (Photoshopped fakes)
• Understand specifics of copyright and permissions for all
online images — because all journalists will work online,
and none of them should be stealing images

Photos and video: Proposals (3)
Every video journalist should be able to:
• Compress and export video for the Web (balancing quality
and file size)
• Create readable titles, credits, and lower thirds in an
editing program (for stand-alone video)
• Write a headline that can be used as a link to the video
and that clearly represents the content of the video
• Write a brief, accurate text summary of the video that
does not spoil or repeat the first 30 seconds of the video’s
content
• Come up with suitable tags for videos posted to YouTube
or Vimeo

Social media
Sharing
• Attract followers, develop an audience
• Share articles and other content via links
• Start and participate in conversations
Mining
• Spot new trends
• Curate conversations
• Cultivate sources
• Monitor breaking news situations
• Verify
Note: Journalists must use social media regularly and in a
professional manner (to understand it).

“60 percent of
our audience
is not coming
through the
homepage.”
—Raju Narisetti, managing
editor, The Wall Street Journal
Digital Network (2012)

Social media
More about this topic on Wednesday afternoon!

Apps and digital-only production
• Here’s where we get to the “Web code” topics
• Should all journalists learn a programming language?
• Difference between Web design (HTML, CSS)
• And actual programming (e.g., JavaScript, Python, Ruby on Rails)
• Can journalists contribute — as part of a team — to
development of a mobile app, an interactive game, or
other code-intensive development effort?
• Should newsrooms be developing apps?
• What do we mean by “apps,” anyway?
• Could JMS students collaborate with computer science
students at Rhodes?

Audience research
• Niches (the end of mass)
• Digital tracking of every click:
• Pageviews (number per story) — only the tip of iceberg
• How many stories viewed by each visitor
• Referrers (where they came from)
• Time spent
• Return visits (users who are logged in)
• Analysis of user behaviors, patterns — richer than
“number of subscribers” or “number of viewers”
• Which device(s) did they use?
• How and what they share (beyond “most emailed”)

NPR has programmed its own “social media dashboard” to track audience activity.

Dao Nguyen, Director of Growth,
BuzzFeed.com:
“How do you get people to share your great content?
“How do you get people to click on content that [is] most
likely to be shared?
“How do you know which content will be most likely to be
shared?
“How do you give editors information about what is being
shared real-time, and what has been shared a lot in the
(recent) past?
“Good technology can answer these questions.”

NEW SKILL SETS:
JOURNALISM
Mindy McAdams
mmcadams@jou.ufl.edu
Twitter: @macloo

New skill sets for journalism

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