WEEK 12 – Are Australian journalism students getting a raw deal?
Mindy McAdams, journalist, journalism
educator, web developer and blogger.
Photo: Teaching Online Journalism
I’ve highlighted the quality work of Mindy McAdams several times already in this blog (see here and here).
But Mindy’s latest couple of posts got me thinking. She’s trying to create a “starter package” list of skills that employers could reasonably expect journalism graduates to possess when they graduate.
Now let’s be honest straight up: I don’t know how to do some of the stuff she lists. And, though just two modules away from completing my journalism major, I probably won’t learn them before I graduate.
At first this annoyed me. I wondered if Australian students were getting a raw deal compared to our overseas counterparts. I wanted Australian lecturers to take the bull by the horns and get more practical in their training (assigning more hands-on tasks like this very blog, a component of Deakin University’s ALJ301 course).
Then I read comment #13 by Brendan, who says “focusing heavily on skills is dangerous” because the basics can become lost among all the technology.
The debate, funnily enough, seems to mirror the uncertainty surrounding developments in the media industry overall. How do we sustain quality and meaningful “old fashioned” reporting while embracing the constant and rampant technology changes?
There’s got to be some sort of happy medium here. And I don’t think the formula is quite right just yet. Let’s do away with this “publish first, get it right later” online mentality, for starters.
– Koren
