Universal journalist prototype

The pros and cons of shorthand for journalists is a question that seems to vex j-students up and down the UK, as I discovered when Tom Rouse asked me for my view recently. 

As our conversation continued on Twitter and others joined in I learned that a) shorthand was essential b) shorthand  was not essential and c) North America isn't as enamored with shorthand as the UK.

So, that's less than conclusive. Personally, I think it's necessary to have a benchmark standard and 100wpm shorthand does offer that but I think ruling out everyone who doesn't have it is pretty short-sighted to.  

Tom's journalism.co.uk article is here; I think that possibly the best advice I'd be able to give would be this: If I were a student shopping for journalism courses right now, and wanted to go into mainstream media, I'd pick one with shorthand and bust my chops to get 100wpm. 

Once you have that piece of paper no one can take it from you and many editors will not consider anyone who doesn't have it. But... I think that within 5 years this will no longer be the case, and shorthand will be with the 'nice to haves'.

I know award-winning journalists with shorthand and without; editors who insist on it, and editors who take pride in clambering the slippery slope without ever troubling a dipthong. 
Such dichotomies are of no use to would-be reporters considering courses though. 
But I'd have more concerns about the journalistic attitude of an interview candidate who couldn't talk - with enthusiasm and authority - about sourcing, verifying and creating content. That sort of thing is a lot harder to learn - and time-consuming to teach. 
Frankly, my universal journalist prototype gets tweaked all the time but, in addition to having a mind that was basically one big question mark, I'd want them to be a bit like this...

What message are the NCE editors sending out to their newsrooms?

I saw an update on Twitter today that read: 

Editors: 'Traditional skills more important than new media' 

with a link that I clicked, and it took me to this Press Gazette story. 

(I appreciate the above isn't an award-winning opening sentence but bear with me, all will become clear I hope...)

So once I'd clicked my link and visited PG this was the first thing I read: 

Editors involved in a review of the National Council for Training of Journalists' NCE qualification for senior journalists have urged the training body to continue emphasising traditional journalism skills over the use of new media.

More than 100 editors and senior managers were asked to assess the importance of skills ranging from legal understanding to how journalists use social media.

The top four most important skills cited by editors were: writing, finding news stories, interviewing and legal knowledge - while at the bottom of the list came social media, web skills and interaction with readers.

It's possible that third par has been worded to prod the hornets' next a little but I guess these are - if not explicitly stated as being luxuries - viewed as of being of some usefulness but not really what journalism is about.

However, I'd be amazed if all editors really saw things as narrowly as this - after all, they are journalists and we're trained to see the angles in everything.
Surveys can be so one-dimensional and I cannot imagine many editors who have believe the frankly-ludicrous Interview part of the NCE is more useful than web skills. Or video. Or an ability to moonwalk, to be honest.
I used to act as an 'observer' on the interview part of the exam (yes I was that shadowy figure who at in the corner and never spoke) and I can honestly say all that part of the day ever did was teach journalists to fire questions like 'and did anything unusual happen during the rescue?'  in a most un-real world manner, simply because the candidates all knew there was always a hidden nugget of information - like, the guinea pig alerted the family to the fire or the rugby team was actually a women's XV, lawdblessmysoul!

I wholeheartedly agree that finding stories, interviewing, local knowledge, are fundamental skills for anyone who wants to report (whether that's in msm or otherwise). But here's the thing; why would any editor say these were more important than social media, web skills and interaction? Why would any editor not understand that these are intrinsic to finding stories, interviewing and local knowledge?

Finding stories could just as easily be called crowdsourcing, something made possible by  online social networks. Web skills surely boil down to an ability to work online effectively - be that on Facebook or in Google search - and what editor wouldn't view an ability to use Google search that as essential?

What are print skills? Are they an ability to write a headline, sub a story, design a page? Because if you're going to break things down into web or print, then the universal across both include: 

Audience

Accuracy

Sourcing 

Attribution

Impartiality

Objectivity

Meanwhile, online you have the added ability to 

Market

Converse

Share

Update

Reflect

Expand

Add media

... and much more

It's no controversy to state that nine times out of ten you'll find more stories through judicious searching on social media than you will reading public notice boards on your beat patch or the death notices in your paper. You'll also get a faster, wider, more engaged response if you ask for help on a social network than if you put 'Got  a story? Contact our newsdesk' on the strap of a page. How would I have found the PG story if it hadn't tweeted it? I'm far more likely to visit a website when prompted by a Twitter link.

Another editor's comment that stood out for me as this one:

“I think the exam is still about fundamental journalistic standards – it is not a test of Facebook and Twitter skills or, for that matter, audio and video,” commented one editor. They have their place but they are not as important as the underlying principles of accuracy, objectivity, balance and news sense. The NCE should be about testing those.”

How must that editor's digital team feel? Less than valued, I'd imagine, if they knew what their boss really thought of them.
As a digital journalist, you have more skills than most of your colleagues: your toolbox includes soundslides, video, running multiple social media accounts, creating unique online content, and the ability to rewrite (or just write) webheads that are SEO-ed, add photographs, embed multimedia, move the the sports pages football splash out of the Tennis story list where it's inexplicably ended up, the list goes on.
If an editor doesn't think that's at least as important as what's being done elsewhere in the newsroom, what sort of message does it send out?

Updated August 24 2011

There have been some very eloquent blog postson the report that I've caught up with today; I'm adding them in here as they address a wide variety of points, from different perspectives...

Educator and digital star Andy Dickinson: "Frustrating as it is, I’m not surprised by the report or the reaction to it. I’ve kind of moved beyond being annoyed by the continued blurring of the lines between NCTJ marketing and the ‘views of industry’. What annoys me about this report is that it’s so output driven – it’s all about getting the paper out not about the process"

Full post here 

Martin Belam, Lead User Experience & Information Architect at Guardian News & Media: "If you get a job in a newsroom, you will be surrounded by years of experience in “traditional” journalism. What you won’t generally have is frequent access to people with the digital skillsets the industry is transitioning towards."

Full post here

Adam Tinsworth, Editorial Development Manager for Reed Business Information: "Trying to separate working a beat from social networking and the web is pretty much like trying to separate it from using the telephone: ridiculous. But the problem is that anything new has this vague sheen of "techie" that people seem to use as an excuse not to move beyond their comfort zone - and there's plenty of evidence of that in the comments on the original post."

Full post here

David Higgerson, Head of Multimedia for Trinity Mirror: "Ironically, interaction with readers scored more highly than using social media, but lower than finding news stories. Surely the three go hand-in-hand. Each can be done by the journalist on its own, but the successful, employable journalist will be one who can do all three without thinking about it."
Full post here

I've now uploaded the NCE report to Scribd (embedded below)

NCE report 2011 - * Pic via AccessHollywood 

Related articles

• Memo to newspapers: The future of media is a two-way street (gigaom.com)
• What Actually Happened (technologyreview.in)
• Social chaos deciphered through social media (nextlevelofnews.com)
• Great job: Washington Post Seeks Social Media Editor (cyberjournalist.net)

Who'll teach the new tricks now the old dogs have left?

Last week I got tricked up in a gown and mortarboard to graduate from the Journalism Leaders Course, courtesy of a Trinity Mirror team-up with UCLan.
It was a good day but it struck me as I sat in Preston Guildhall that there was a very large number of newly-qualified journalists sat in rows around me. And that was just from UCLan - I guess all over the country hundreds of journalists are pouring, freshly-minted, into the World of Work.
I'd bet some are better equipped to cope with the changing industry they hope to enter than many of those already ensconsed, but still - there were a lot of people in that hall.
I wish them all the best for the future, and I'm happy that so many people still want to pursue a career in journalism; open minds coming in to the industry are just what we need - I hope whichever newsroms they wind up in appreciates the optimism, ambition and training that has walked through the door.

Mark Thompson, the Director General of the BBC, was awarded an Honorary Fellowship, which meant he had to sing for his supper, ie. make a speech. He kicked off with the obligatory hilarious story about something involving interviewing a turkey for regional televizzzzzzzzzzzzz... but then he moved on to the future of journalism, and the BBC, and it got more interesting.

He spoke of the move to Salford Quays, and said it would create hundreds of quality journalism jobs (so kudos to UCLan for getting in ahead of the competition and making him a Fellow - nothing like having friends in high places).
And he also spoke at length about the need to mainstain standards, saying that technology was changing journalism and journalists but that the core values of a brand - by which I assume he meant accuracy, status, reputation etc - should always be a constant, no matter what other changes occurred.

But it all sounded so passionless. This was a room filled with talent, from newly-fledged hacks to broadcasters, but there was nothing I heard that would have inspired me at the start of my career. I might have been vaguely comforted by the idea of those 'hundreds of jobs' but no more than that.

Driving back from Preston I found myself thinking of when I was a cub reporter covering Pembroke magistrates court. It boasted a press bench that had gained some fame among Welsh journalists as reporters from local nespapers, tv, radio and even some exotics from the nationals, had sat and added their names to the oak banding around the green leather table top down the years.

My late and so-much-missed colleague Vernon Scott once told me he wanted to buy the press bench because of the journalistic history etched on its timbers. His name was there, of course, and - after a few weeks of recording the misdeeds of the recidivists of Pembroke borough, so was mine, next to the name of Hugh Turnbull, carved when he was a local reporter covering Pembroke court. He went on to become a national news editor and the brain behind Blackie the Donkey.

I remember a lot of the names on that bench still - Len Mullins, John Evans, Martin Cavaney - they were local legends, and adding my name alongside theirs made me feel a bit of a fraud, because I worried I would never be as good as them.
These were some of the people who helped me learn my trade; working alongside them I learned more than I ever did from swotting for the NCE.
I wonder how many of those newly-qualified journalists I sat by in Preston will have similar old dogs to help them learn new tricks - to discover the real stuff of being a local reporter, and a writer. I fear that there won't be that many... they've taken redundancy, early retirement or the PR option.