How much computer science does a journalist really need? | Journ. Earlier this month, Columbia University announced that the first ever journalism and computer science degree will launch in the autumn of 2011. Perhaps it’s a positive reaction to all the technological uncertainty that journalists face, but some perspective is also needed. The digital trinity Good digital publishing requires expertise in three completely separate disciplines, all of which are callings in their own right. As journalists we’re all here because we want to tell a good story, so we apply our presentation skills, written, audio or visual, along with our ability to make an intelligent overview. To ensure that our work then reaches the largest possible online audience we work with designers, who are highly artistic, and web developers who tend to be mathematically astute computer scientists.
When it all works together the result can be great, interactive, accessible and attractive online content. Victory. Life. Be informed, be practical. The utility belt approach to journalism and development : The (e. Ever since I’ve been involved with the ideas of online/digital/data (delete as appropriate) journalism – I’ve been using the metaphor of Batman’s utility belt as a way of thinking about a journalist’s skillet and how it can evolve over time. Rather than a rucksack full of tools, the Caped Crusader was able to easily change items in and out of his belt pouches to solve the issue at hand. The constant debates about the skills required to operate in a mediasphere that has rapidly change and will continue to do so for some time to come (unless the departures of Simon Waldman and Will Lewis should have all of us involved in paid journalism worried) have brought me back to this idea.
A while ago some 79 people kindly helped answer a mini survey around this core idea of what skills journalists need. I posted up quick graphs of the responses in a Flickr set, but haven’t had a chance to get to grips with the full responses… yet. Colombia set to manufacture robo-journalists The guerrilla approach. An Alternative Future for Journalists. There's no doubt that the number of traditional journalism jobs is shrinking, and shrinking fast. I struggle to think of a single publishing company that hasn't had layoffs or title closures in the last few years. There is, suggests David Meerman Scott of the WebInkNow blog, an alternative: You went to J-school to learn how to tell a story in words and images.
Yes, the employers who traditionally hired your skills are shrinking fast. The pay wall is a vision of the past, a retreat to a model that looks all but identical to the print days. Is there a middle path? Can Computers Replace Journalists? - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes. Using spreadsheet formulas to mark-up HTML - Part 1 - Martin Bel. I blogged yesterday about the growing debate about whether journalists need to be able to write computer programs. I'd argue that knowing HTML mark-up is a must, but that it is thinking like a programmer that is more important to journalists than actually cutting code. In fact, I don't think this applies to just journalists, but to anyone publishing on the web. Today I'm going to show a simple example of using a spreadsheet like Excel to take some easy short-cuts. Let us imagine that you need to include a list of links in your article. If you are using a WYSIWYG editor in your CMS, then the chances are that you have to type all the names in, then go back and add the hyperlinks in one-by-one by pressing a little button with an icon of a chain link, and filling in some text in the box that appears.
If, however, you can insert a chunk of HTML directly into the piece, you can save yourself some time with a spreadsheet. ="<a href="""&A1&""">"&B1&"</a><br />" What is going on here?