Interesting, my former boss, Steve Sloan, is offering a podcasting class as part of the journalism department at San Jose State University.
I wonder if it would have been better to offer a “multimedia journalism class” instead (which is what this really is)? But that sounds so “old school.”
The skills journalists will need in the future are going to be a lot more varied than just churning out good text. The better journalists are going to understand how to do that, create illustrations (or at least rough drawings that an artist will be able to take and fill out), capture audio, photos, and video, and edit all that together to tell a compelling story on the Web.
Look at it this way. Let’s say you have two journalists of the same quality. One can only do text. But the other one can capture more media. Which one do you expect will get on DIGG?
Anyway, if I were a student I’d be in this class. Why? Because it would help me expand my portfolio that I could show employers. There are VERY FEW journalism jobs available (we keep hearing about newspapers that are laying off journalists) so if you want to be considered for one of those jobs you have to have a better portfolio than the next person. Especially if you want to work online (TechCrunch, Om Malik, and Huffington Post are all hiring).
One of the things we’re working to do with our audio journalists at Podtech is to get them to do text, photos, and a little bit of video so that their stories are more likely to get noticed.
So, who’ll get hired into “new journalism” outfits? Let’s say Digg was going to hire some professional journalists. Don’t you think they’d be more likely to hire someone who could do more media? I do.
Oh, there’s a San Jose blogger meetup on Thursday. I don’t think I’ll be able to get there, unfortunately, had something else going on that evening already.
One difference between Seattle and Silicon Valley? There are a TON more events. It’s amazing how many more things there are to do here at night.
Another difference? When you enter Freeway 280 doing close to 80 mph and a cop passes you at around 90 mph, you know something is different here. In Washington no one drives over 60 (it seems) and if you do you will get a ticket. Not in Silly Valley.
Scobleizer 
/Unrelated
I just noticed you’re on the Dell one2one blog roll!
hehe
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/Unrelated
I just noticed you’re on the Dell one2one blog roll!
hehe
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I’m a big defender of text as the basis for journalism. Have you ever read Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death?” In it he decries video as a poor medium for conveying information. He says that video is better suited for entertainment. This is in the 80s, so he’s talking about television…but read it, think about it, see if it applies to online media. I think it would be great for journalists to be able to do more than write, graphics and videos would be a nice part of the skill set, but to me the most important thing is the ability to write, and write well. After all, we learn more when we read about something than when we watch it. And I don’t know if you can use the arguement that video or audio helps a news consumer get a better picture of a situation, that such things help a news consumer get the ‘full picture’ of an event. A great writer can do that w/out any help…and do it more powerfully than anything else.
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I’m a big defender of text as the basis for journalism. Have you ever read Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death?” In it he decries video as a poor medium for conveying information. He says that video is better suited for entertainment. This is in the 80s, so he’s talking about television…but read it, think about it, see if it applies to online media. I think it would be great for journalists to be able to do more than write, graphics and videos would be a nice part of the skill set, but to me the most important thing is the ability to write, and write well. After all, we learn more when we read about something than when we watch it. And I don’t know if you can use the arguement that video or audio helps a news consumer get a better picture of a situation, that such things help a news consumer get the ‘full picture’ of an event. A great writer can do that w/out any help…and do it more powerfully than anything else.
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The term multimedia was already passé back in the early ’90s. As that boomlet went bust the en vogue term was ‘new media’. However, I assume that there is an expiration date for any term that includes ‘new’ in it.
If you don’t go over 80 then you are much less of a target on 280 where the speed limit is 65. The fine for going 15 mph over the speed limit is a lot higher. The returns on pulling over a car going under 80 is not worth the investment.
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The term multimedia was already passé back in the early ’90s. As that boomlet went bust the en vogue term was ‘new media’. However, I assume that there is an expiration date for any term that includes ‘new’ in it.
If you don’t go over 80 then you are much less of a target on 280 where the speed limit is 65. The fine for going 15 mph over the speed limit is a lot higher. The returns on pulling over a car going under 80 is not worth the investment.
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Heh… yea, cali freeways are know for their speed … Down in socal on the I-15 driving from riverside to san diego it’s routine to be traveling at 80mph in the slow lane… of course that’s not to fast considering the speed limit is 70 in that area..
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Heh… yea, cali freeways are know for their speed … Down in socal on the I-15 driving from riverside to san diego it’s routine to be traveling at 80mph in the slow lane… of course that’s not to fast considering the speed limit is 70 in that area..
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Brooklyn: me too. But, here, let’s try something.
You write 10,000 words about what the new Halo 3 will do.
I’ll spend one minute of video showing you.
Which one do you think will convey what that product will do better?
Now, let’s take it further. You get 10,000 words to communicate what eating in a great New York restaurant is like. I get one minute of video. Which one do you think can communicate more?
Another one? You get 10,000 words to communicate the horror of being bombed, the destruction, the death. I get one minute of video. Which one do you think can communicate more?
The trick isn’t “either or.” The trick is to find the right combination of BOTH.
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Brooklyn: me too. But, here, let’s try something.
You write 10,000 words about what the new Halo 3 will do.
I’ll spend one minute of video showing you.
Which one do you think will convey what that product will do better?
Now, let’s take it further. You get 10,000 words to communicate what eating in a great New York restaurant is like. I get one minute of video. Which one do you think can communicate more?
Another one? You get 10,000 words to communicate the horror of being bombed, the destruction, the death. I get one minute of video. Which one do you think can communicate more?
The trick isn’t “either or.” The trick is to find the right combination of BOTH.
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Robert- I’ll hold off on answering your questions for a moment. Have you read the Postman book? If not, pick up a copy and read it. It won’t take more than an evening or two. After you’re done, think about how the majority of people create video content and how most people consume video content.
Do consumeres want to be entertained or do they want to be informed? We can’t just talk about geeks and “early adopters” because that’s not real life. Most people out there want to be entertained.
Read the comments on Ze Frank’s show, for example: do you think those people ‘get it’? At times Ze says some pretty good stuff, communicating political opinion with style and good humor…but do most people perceive the content, or do they just like the funny?
A whole lot of people just want to be entertained, they already have preconceived ideas about how certain forms of media should be aprehended, and don’t understand it when it doesn’t fit that mold. Video on the web will inevitably go the way of television, degenerating from a way to convey information, to just entertainment. In the early days of TV they thought that that it would be a liberating tool, a tool that would make human beings greater, but it just ended up to be crap.
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Robert- I’ll hold off on answering your questions for a moment. Have you read the Postman book? If not, pick up a copy and read it. It won’t take more than an evening or two. After you’re done, think about how the majority of people create video content and how most people consume video content.
Do consumeres want to be entertained or do they want to be informed? We can’t just talk about geeks and “early adopters” because that’s not real life. Most people out there want to be entertained.
Read the comments on Ze Frank’s show, for example: do you think those people ‘get it’? At times Ze says some pretty good stuff, communicating political opinion with style and good humor…but do most people perceive the content, or do they just like the funny?
A whole lot of people just want to be entertained, they already have preconceived ideas about how certain forms of media should be aprehended, and don’t understand it when it doesn’t fit that mold. Video on the web will inevitably go the way of television, degenerating from a way to convey information, to just entertainment. In the early days of TV they thought that that it would be a liberating tool, a tool that would make human beings greater, but it just ended up to be crap.
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The course is officially called “multi-media” because that is the course name we reused to get the course taught at SJSU. It is not really inaccurate, as we will be working in audio, video, still photography, illustration and text with the focus on Internet delivery.
But wait, there is more. We will also be looking at how the one-to-many (one-way) relationship of past forms of mass media has, thanks to the Internet, become a two way many-to-many conversation between individuals. Also, we will look at how individuals have the power to create rich content channels through RSS.
This is an experimental class and we are prepared to fail at some things as long as we learn from them. We are hoping to build a community around this and to take chances. It will be exciting to see where this all goes.
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The course is officially called “multi-media” because that is the course name we reused to get the course taught at SJSU. It is not really inaccurate, as we will be working in audio, video, still photography, illustration and text with the focus on Internet delivery.
But wait, there is more. We will also be looking at how the one-to-many (one-way) relationship of past forms of mass media has, thanks to the Internet, become a two way many-to-many conversation between individuals. Also, we will look at how individuals have the power to create rich content channels through RSS.
This is an experimental class and we are prepared to fail at some things as long as we learn from them. We are hoping to build a community around this and to take chances. It will be exciting to see where this all goes.
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Postman is brilliant on this. I agree that everyone who communicates in media should read and appreciate Postman. But that’s not an argument against training journalists in multiple media.
Something was lost when public debate shifted from expository prose to clips and soundbites. Fact is, most of what Postman talked about WRT television also applies to blogging. Chronologically organized blogs with lots of short entries that flit from topic to top imitate the structure of TV news.
see Dave Winer’s recent take on last week’s blog flap on gatekeepering, islands, castles, A-listers, and trolls. Said Dave, “I think a lot of people skim quickly and click on links, skim quickly and then hit the back button, then hit the back button again.” In other words–they turn blog-reading into a form of channel surfing.
I don’t think we’re going to bring back what’s been lost by asking journalists to confine themselves to pr ose and not learn anything about graphics, photography, illustration, motion, and conversation.
Because the question isn’t whether the pros can write prose. The harder question is how do you get back to a public that can read and evaluate considered written communication?
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Postman is brilliant on this. I agree that everyone who communicates in media should read and appreciate Postman. But that’s not an argument against training journalists in multiple media.
Something was lost when public debate shifted from expository prose to clips and soundbites. Fact is, most of what Postman talked about WRT television also applies to blogging. Chronologically organized blogs with lots of short entries that flit from topic to top imitate the structure of TV news.
see Dave Winer’s recent take on last week’s blog flap on gatekeepering, islands, castles, A-listers, and trolls. Said Dave, “I think a lot of people skim quickly and click on links, skim quickly and then hit the back button, then hit the back button again.” In other words–they turn blog-reading into a form of channel surfing.
I don’t think we’re going to bring back what’s been lost by asking journalists to confine themselves to pr ose and not learn anything about graphics, photography, illustration, motion, and conversation.
Because the question isn’t whether the pros can write prose. The harder question is how do you get back to a public that can read and evaluate considered written communication?
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I agree. The future of all public corporations, communications fields, and basically life in a connected world is multimedia interaction. Like Cluetrain says, all markets are conversations, and those that speak the best in many markets will go the farthest. I look forward to seeing you at JMC 163 Tuesday. Oh, yeah… I’m one of the students in Steve Sloan’s journalism class- some of us are listening.
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I agree. The future of all public corporations, communications fields, and basically life in a connected world is multimedia interaction. Like Cluetrain says, all markets are conversations, and those that speak the best in many markets will go the farthest. I look forward to seeing you at JMC 163 Tuesday. Oh, yeah… I’m one of the students in Steve Sloan’s journalism class- some of us are listening.
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