ALJ301 reactions, thoughts and musings » Teaching Online Journalism

WEEK 12 – Are Australian journalism students getting a raw deal?

koren — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 09:03:40 +0000

Mindy McAdams, journalist, journalism
educator, web developer and blogger.

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

I finally discover the joy of RSS

koren — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 08:56:05 +0000

Holy smoke. I just discovered what a huge technophobic rock I’d been hiding under…

Because how great are RSS feeds? I was inspired to give the “scary” (read: new) technology a go after reading a post by Mindy McAdams. She said:

“There was a time when I used my own blogroll like a daily reading list, but RSS is so much more efficient.”

And I thought: “Hmm, I’m doing the same with my blogroll and I’m incredibly time-poor… could I be missing something?” (Ah duh, I’d even written a post about RSS!!).

If, like me, you aren’t yet into RSS, give it a go. It took me about one minute to set up my first feed using Google Reader, which is amazingly similar to email and sends relevant information straight to me – heaven for a journalist!

Some quality advice… (will we take it?)

koren — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:38:05 +0000

Mindy McAdams posted two awesome blogs at Teaching Online Journalism this week.

The first lists advice from a journo graduate on how to make it in the online world. I love it. Learn the lingo, learn html, succeed.

The second is about self-promotion. Do you have a quality, professional online presence? Let’s put ourselves out there people!