Feb 19 2008
Why J-Students need to learn programming
http://rji.missouri.edu/projects/rji-adobe-air-competition/stories/10000-idea/index.php
(Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) and partner Adobe Systems are giving $10,000 to come up with new technologies)
This link should say it all.
In a world increasingly dominated by Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and even things as simple as blogs, the methods by which young people communicate, have gone completely digital. In a recent ethnographic survey by Jacobs Media, people under 25 cherish their cell phones as if it were their only lifeline to the outside world. They don’t just love their cell phones, they feel as if they need their cell phones. It’s almost like electricity. When the power goes out, you start to realize just how much you rely on it as you sit there in the dark.
So why do journalism students need to learn programming? Because journalists are relying too much on others to publish to the Web. One only has to ask the question of why a journalism company didn’t become eBay, Yahoo, or even Google. In the 80s, if you wanted to find out about what was going on in the world, you went to the newspaper or TV News. If you wanted to see what people were selling, you looked in the classifieds. If you wanted crosswords, or comics, or read light-hearted columns, you didn’t read blogs, but rather you got those things from news companies. Not true any more.
The news media missed out because they are run by “journalists,” not programmers. And while the journalists were busy telling stories, all of the computer science majors graduated from college and jumped into dot com startups that took control of this online world.
Programming — or scripting — is a lot easier than it sounds. Taken one step at a time, the concepts of JavaScript, HTML, CSS and ActionScript are within reach by the laymen. I personally found high school Algebra 1 was far more advanced than calling functions or writing a for loop.
It’ll be tough though. Journalism has always been more of a liberal arts field. English and History majors become journalists, not engineers. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
