Techno journalists set the skills and work agenda
Technology journalist Charles Arthur sings the praises of…er…technology journalists in this Guardian piece, arguing that where they boldly go today, the world will drag itself along tomorrow.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/sep/21/technology-journalists-pioneers
He has a point (though I’m not sure it applies to the profession as a whole…).
Much of what he says is relevant to journalism schools as well as journalists: see, for example, his thoughts on the skills journalists will need:
Understanding HTML and CSS is useful; being able to tweak embed codes is increasingly important; and quite probably in the next few years being able to write programs (or manipulate spreadsheets) to extract meaning from chunks of data could become necessary – if, for example, David Cameron is elected and implements his plan to get councils to output their data in “a standardised and open format”, as already happens with Tory shadow cabinet expenses.
Data interpretation. Next big thing? I’d say so.
Technology journalist Charles Arthur sings the praises of…er…technology journalists in this Guardian piece, arguing that where they boldly go today, the world will drag itself along tomorrow.
He has a point (though I’m not sure it applies to the profession as a whole…).
Much of what he says is relevant to journalism schools as well as journalists: see, for example, his thoughts on the skills journalists will need:
Understanding HTML and CSS is useful; being able to tweak embed codes is increasingly important; and quite probably in the next few years being able to write programs (or manipulate spreadsheets) to extract meaning from chunks of data could become necessary – if, for example, David Cameron is elected and implements his plan to get councils to output their data in “a standardised and open format”, as already happens with Tory shadow cabinet expenses.
Data interpretation. Next big thing? I’d say so.