Journalism Education in the New Media Landscape:

It’s STILL the story, stupid!

By James Anslow, City University London

Old skills in a new home

Generation

PC Magazine, December 1998

Google! is a Stanford University project designed to find the most relevant Web pages (those with the most inbound links)

and run searches against them. The 25 million pages currently catalogued seem to be good choices; the site has an uncanny knack for returning extremely relevant results.

There's much more to come at Google!, but even in its prototype form it’s a great search engine.

‘Stop thepresses’

Journalism

‘in cr

isis’

Replacing newspapers

So we don’t need another different kind of institution…We need a class of institutions or models, whether they’re endowments or crowdsourced or what have you…There will not be anything that replaces newspapers, because if you could write the list of stuff you needed and organizational characteristics and it looked like newspapers, newspapers would be able to fill that role, right? It is really a shift from one class of institutions to the ecosystem as a whole.

Clay Shirky 2009

WHAT is it ???

If journalism ain’t dead..

Bloggers like Guido FawkesShowbiz blogs like TMZStart-ups like Daily BeastAnd the must-read Huffington PostDIY UK hyperlocals like SE1Edgy news like The LatestBig-business hyperlocalsLocal papersNationalsInternationals

So what SHOULD we teach?

Ask the family!

10 Rules of New Journalism• THERE ARE NO RULES: Or if there are, nobody knows them yet. And if they think they do, it’s too

late..they’ve changed. We’re all feeling our way and it’s best to be honest about it. But there are useful guidelines.

• TINA: There Is No Alternative. But one size doesn’t fit all. There are many models.

• MOBILE not static. iPhones not laptops. Journalists have always understood updating.

• LINK IT! Add hyperlinking to your newswriting habit.

• COME-ON! That’s what print journalists used to call the conversation with their readers. Now it’s centre stage.

• LO-TEC not hi-tec. Flips not film cameras, YouTube not DVDs, WordPress not code. Don’t be a slave to software. Use what you have, what works. Self publish. Do It Yourself. No one without a public blog can convincingly claim to be an active journalist.

• MEDIUM CARE: Choose the right one. Cross platform not multimedia

• OLD SKOOL RULES: It’s still the story stupid. And the consumer reads the WORDS. But now they are aided by sound and vision when appropriate. But it’s NOT broadcast journalism..and web text takes twice as long to read as print. So keep your chunks bite-sized, intros tight, key words high..one thought, one sentence, one par..just like your grandaddy taught you.

• WORLD WILD WEST it isn’t. The Law still applies. So do Ethics and Copyright.

• KEEP UP! Stay on top of developments throughout new media. Keep your blog updated and your bookmarks fresh.

How SHOULD we teach it?

Show ’em how to tell the story

Words Images Video

•Procure

•Present

•Produce

Teaching tips

• Just DO it! Hands learn faster than heads• Emphasise networking and CONTACTS• News is people and people TALK. New quotes

beat churnalism every time• They MUST keep blogs and sites up to date• Immerse the students in New Media landscape• Keep module descriptions as unspecific as

possible and ready for instant change• Stay ahead of the game and maintain global

academic and professional networks

Conclusion

Journalism is alive and well and living online…and in more need of effective teaching than ever