Training journalists online -- a response

I think paul conley is missing the point in his response to my last post.

His message would be valid if following the thought experiment "how would you build a newsroom from scratch if you had £x million?"

Certainly, other people have weighed in on what seems to me to be a technology-rich, but experience-poor, position.

Mindy McAdams has been oft-cited, but then uses her blog to expand training possibilities for people who, while perfectly adequate reporters or copy editors, "don't get" the web. Bravo. If there were more people like her in newsrooms, I doubt we would be having this debate.

Pat Thornton, as mentioned in a previous post, would do well to look up the meaning of the word "culture". Added to that, he should probably check "iconoclast" because most of the semi-religious veneration online seems to be for people who can use Facebook, MySpace, bebo, flickr and twitter rather than a telephone.

All of those Web 2.0 platforms are fantastic resources, fantastic means to promote your journalism and your chosen medium and fantastic developments in technology generally, but not one is a replacement for a well placed, well phrased, well timed question. And that, alas, is what cannot be taught. It can, however, be learned.

The fact is that most newsrooms have existing staff that do a very good job chasing stories, making calls, using contacts, etc, in order to get stories. Denying yourself their experience and ability just because you "get" a 10-year-old concept and they "don't get it" is a little short-sighted and will diminish your online efforts whether they "get it" or not.

To quote Paul, and I agree with him on this 100 per cent:

"What journalists -- all journalists -- need is curiosity, open-mindedness and a willingness to learn."

In my experience, that is what cannot be fixed by training -- the platform on which someone's work appears is irrelevant and there are bigger fish to fry.

Journalists, by and large, are employees-- newspapers are businesses. If newspapers expect a certain return from their existing staff, they have to be very clear about what they expect. If the business cannot convince the journalists of the merits of the web, that is a different story. But how many have really tried? I am reminded of the lament of Ned Flanders's beatnik parents at their inability to control an unruly child: "I've tried nothing and I'm all out of ideas".

Is it a failing of the journalists to see the light or a failure of management to make the case?

If you want to take a proactive approach, you could do worse than follow Howard Owens's advice on Objectives for today's non-wired journalist as endorsed by Jeff Jarvis.

That's just technology -- it's no mystery -- it's reasonably easily taught.

You stand to lose a lot more by sacking the technologically inexperienced web-skeptics than you do by hiring the journalistically inexperienced web-acolytes.

Teaching a young dog old tricks

Just weighing in on the ridiculous "you can't teach culture" posts popping up around the place.

Paul Conley kicks off with

"I'm urging employers not to offer any training in Web journalism."

I've trimmed the two reasons he posts for this:

"1. You cannot train someone to be part of a culture.
...An online journalist isn't a journalist who works online. He's a journalist who lives online. He's part of the Web.
It's a waste of time and money to teach multimedia skills and technology to someone who hasn't already become part of the Web.

2. When the fighting begins, the training must end.
As revenue shrinks, we can't spend money on training. We can't gather up the print folks and "prepare them as online journalists."

I completely disagree with his argument in general, but, in Paul's defence, he is writing about B2B press, an area I have no doubt he knows much better than I do. However, his post has been picked up and expanded upon.

Pat Thornton adds:

"Not every staff member can become an online or multimedia journalist.

And if they aren’t really great in their traditional media role, they probably don’t have a long-term role in your news organization. That’s the sad reality, but it’s the only way for newspapers to evolve.

You can’t teach culture."

I know dictionaries might be considered a dead-tree, olde worlde way of checking information, but I suggest Pat looks up the meaning of the word "culture". If paper offends thee, or you suffer from pulpuslacerataphobia, you could even try dictionary.com.

Try an analogy: an immigrant comes to your country -- they want to work, they have the right to work, they have an as yet unknown contribution to make. But they are turned back at the border because, despite their willingness to learn the language, the customs and the skills, they are informed "Sorry mate, but you can't learn culture".

Pat goes on:

"I think Conley would agree with me that the kind of training we can never offer is how to be an online journalist. We can only offer people with online skills the opportunity to learn more skills. You know CSS, well it’s time to learn javascript/Ajax. That sort of thing."

So, essentially, experience, contacts, even raw ability with language or images, count for nothing? This argument smacks of the "come back when you've got some experience, son" but in reverse.

I might be missing a trick here, but few of the journalists I know have the slightest notion how a printing press works, or how to repair a distribution van after a breakdown, or how to work out a newsagent's returns. And yet they managed to churn out pretty good, old-school, dead-tree journalism.

The blogosphere can't have it both ways -- either journalism is independent of platform (and therefore the skills are independent of platform) or they are not. Journalism happens between the brain and the pen (or the typewriter/word processor/blogging software/CMS) not once the text hits your RSS feed or website -- that is distribution.

What is important about what you read, listen to or watch online? Is it the background software applications that enable it to reach your screen? Or is it the content? That content does not come from programming knowledge. That content is generated by inquiring, skeptical minds who have the perseverance, the contacts and the sheer will to wring a story from what seems like thin air.

When those minds meet -- that's culture. And journalists, as a body, decide what their culture is -- the web will transform, inform and, I honestly believe, improve the content generated by that culture, but it should not dictate which minds will or will not be allowed to join the club.