

Rethinking J-school - awwstn
https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/b8d43e4c204d

======
jawns
I was an editor at newspapers/magazines for 10 years before making the leap to
full-time software development. My degree is in journalism, and the
programming skills were something I acquired on my own. At my last journalism
job, a metro daily newspaper, the fact that I could code made me a valuable
asset ... but let me tell you why I left, and why I think the push toward
programmer journalists (or journalists with a background in math or economics)
is not necessarily going to have the effect the journalism industry is hoping
for.

I left because as much as I love journalism (it's extremely fulfilling work),
the fact is that the business side of the journalism world is in terrible
condition, and it didn't appear to me that there was any strong turnaround
plan. Meanwhile, because of layoffs, furloughs, cuts in benefits, and more
work heaped upon those who survived the cuts, morale was low.

In contrast, salary, benefits, job stability, and morale in the software
development world are much higher. So I finally made the leap, and as much as
I miss journalism, it was definitely the right move for my family's sake.

Now: Here's why I don't think colleges spitting out journalist-programmers is
necessarily going to help journalism. If you are a half-decent programmer,
your skills are going to be pretty portable, and certainly in demand
elsewhere.

Why, then, would you stick it out in the journalism world while the business
side of things crumbles around you, when you could be making significantly
more elsewhere at a place with higher morale and more job security? I mean,
yes, it's nice to feel like you're making a difference ... but you've also
gotta pay the bills, right?

~~~
subsystem
I don't think the solution is to make journalists skilled programmers, but to
provide platforms that make it easy enough to do things like data journalism.
I mean music, architecture, business intelligence, construction, industrial
design etc. are all computer aided to large degree and they all mainly
practice their individual discipline even if if it now involves some
programming. So maybe what we are really is looking for is to combine the
journalist with the statistician. Which, I would assume, currently leverages
computers more than a journalist does.

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switch33
This is like shooting yourself in the foot.

Sure journalism should be more attuned to the tech world if the job market is
moving that way, but if it's completely changed to be a combined program where
some sort of developer or computer science skills are included then it's just
extra requirements. And she was already complaining about extra requirements
having to fill out the checkmarks. This is especially true of any second major
nowadays.

I think the big problem with college nowadays is two-fold. The colleges
dictate that certain majors have requirements based on what skills may be
required to work in the field, but the students who actually know what they
want to do suffer. This is because they wouldn't mind taking more classes but
they want them to be "worthwhile."

For example, I'm a Marketing Major and a ISM major. I don't see how there is
any overlap degree/class through the university program. This is primarily
because they don't exactly even touch base when they are talking about them in
classes. But to be honest I've found a lack of real material in the marketing
classes. It's just rehashing of terms after the first two classes or so I have
lost some interest in it.

I'm near graduation and I don't think I've learned as much as I should have
through ISM to work as good as I would want to with some technology. ISM is
unnecessarily too light in programming. I would take another computer science
class or two if it was more "worthwhile" but being so close to graduating with
all the extra requirements it seems not worth it to me at all.

However it's been good to learn about both of them. Marketing in software
design and implementation helps you understand how to expand business markets
and target more specific customers. It is about choosing the right product for
the right audience. It is also about responding to people asking about your
product with great help so that they feel like you are there for them and
having retention rates for customers because it's not just the right thing to
do but it also is more rewarding.

You are better off taking computer science classes at community colleges if
you want to get some extra credits that show your prowess and they are not as
harsh. And that is my major issue with this. Your better off filling
niches/everything you really wanted to learn in community colleges because
public colleges are just for show of a degree.

My advisor basically said that even graduating with two majors is not really
any better than graduating with a single major. Graduating with one major is
just as good if you get good grades. The job market will hire you regardless
if your a double major or a single major thinking you have about the same
amount of skills either way for that specific job. This is only fair, but I
think employers should at least recognize that having a second major shows
that they are more willing to learn.

In short maybe the broader alternative that Obama suggested that a computer
science major be required is a good idea for graduation. But the problem with
that is many people want to do other majors instead and those classes would
have to be broken up more and delegation of them would be very confusing.

In my opinion the problem is that colleges have really become institutions
where you can't just pick what you want to learn it's become much more of a
requirement game over years and that only hurts students because they want to
just finish the requirements and get on with life.

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logn
There have been a lot of medium.com links lately. On Firefox version 20 on
Mac, the text always takes forever to load. This doesn't happen in other
browsers and in Firefox it's the only site I ever notice this with.

~~~
mehrzad
Wouldn't be surprised if some developers laughed at us for using Firefox.
Especially companies like Twitter/Medium.

~~~
lazugod
Why would you think that?

~~~
AdamTReineke
Chrome is the browser of choice these days. [Posted from IE10.]

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fatjokes
The author states that CS + Journalism does not exist as a formal major. This
is not exactly true. Columbia has a MS in CS+Journalism.

Also, the author should check out the Brown Institute for Media Innovation (a
joint program between Stanford Engineering and Columbia J-School).

~~~
rckrd
Someone posted a question on reddit regarding this - it seems like Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute (RPI) also has a similar program. Though not much
information is given here,
[http://www.reddit.com/r/columbia/comments/1c5lxl/prospective...](http://www.reddit.com/r/columbia/comments/1c5lxl/prospective_masters_student_seeking_advice/)

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jakarta
This might be an unpopular view, but here goes -

All of these efforts to create valuable journalists will probably fail. The
fact is, the business side of news has a lot going against it. The current
newspaper model just isn't very viable because ad spending in newspapers
continues to go down and page views can't mitigate the decline enough.
Subscriptions help, but those dollars tend to flock to really important
publications which offer some kind of differentiate product to an affluent
client base. E.g.: the WSJ serves the business community and businesses will
continue to pay for it.

That's very different from something like the Boston Globe, which doesn't
offer enough value. Sure, there's local reporting, but I have a feeling that
people don't care as much as you'd hope about that and as a result wont be
willing to pay up for subscriptions.

You can learn programming and R to do some data viz, but it's not going to be
enough to counteract the secular decline you're facing as capital exits the
industry.

Honestly, I think journalism and being a journalist will be a career that
eventually goes to rich people / people with other income sources than their
primary job. Those are going to be the only kinds of people who can afford
working for long hours and really low pay and gradually working their way up
during school and afterwards with unpaid internships.

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auctiontheory
The article seems much ado about nothing. It's not necessary to "major" in a
subject to learn a lot about it. In the US (unlike the UK), undergraduates
have the flexibility to take coursework in a broad range of disciplines.
Nothing stops a journalism major from taking plenty of math and statistics and
CS classes, assuming s/he can hack the work.

Should journalism programs require a course on "making sense of data and
technology"? Yes, probably they should.

~~~
obstacle1
The author didn't suggest that you had to major in a subject to learn it. Her
thesis is that it's wrong for journalism programs to not _require_ stats,
math, and coding courses, since modern journos must do stats, math, and
coding.

>My frustrations are with the lack of an applicable concentration that
reflects the state of the news industry in 2013.

>How is it okay that journalism students are able to graduate without ever
taking a real statistics or mathematics class, given the crazy demand for data
journalists? Or without ever taking a programming class?

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nopal
To the author: since you're at Northwestern, don't forget about Rich Gordon
[1]. He's the guy who started the scholarship program to bring working
programmers to Medill to learn journalism [2].

To hackers: check out [2]. You can get a scholarship to learn journalism at
one of the best schools in the nation.

[1]
[http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/faculty/journalismfulltim...](http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/faculty/journalismfulltime.aspx?id=128735)
[2]
[http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/admissions/page.aspx?id=5...](http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/admissions/page.aspx?id=58645)

~~~
whimsicality
Author here.

Re [1]: True. But (a) that's a grad program and (b) it's aimed at giving
programmers a journalism education, not teaching journalists how to code.

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oob205
Ah, the problems with the college. College majors are by design imperfect.
Journalism, Math, Computer Science - those are very broad strokes and rarely
map directly to the skills one would need for a job. OP's is a good example of
why college education should move away from majors and departments, and into
something more akin to "individualized studies." My undergrad had something
like that. For students who had a passion and an idea of what they wanted to
learn, it was golden. They got to design their own unique, multidisplinary
paths through university.

~~~
whimsicality
Agree that it's very hard for academia to keep up with industry, and the
shortcomings of the design of college majors. I still see value in a liberal
arts undergraduate education, but that's awesome your school had more leniency
with individual studies.

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charlesjshort
I dueled law-math in grad school. It made me weird; but I also gained a
perspective very few have. You might find your self as being the only person
who notices something cool; but its pointless to tell anyone because they
won't be able to see it. Which can be frustrating. On the other hand; being
that journalism is about communication; maybe you will be able to communicate
interesting computer science type things to people who would otherwise not be
able to get it.

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subsystem
I really hope journalism can go a different route than CAD, DAW, ERP, BI and
most other non-developer areas which are dominated by proprietary solutions.

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danso
I did a double degree in computer engineering and journalism. Though I do both
now professionally, I think I would've been a lot more helped out with a focus
on software engineering and visual design rather than circuit design and
PowerPC instructions. In most newsrooms, there is little to no logistical
support for news developers, so practical development skills come much more
into play than hard science and math.

The situation is not much different than photojournalism. If a newsroom hasn't
created a workflow that allows for streamlined editing, processing, archiving,
and retrieval of photos, then even Robert Capa is going to be too swamped with
shitwork to do satisfying photojournalism. The difference is that photography
has had about a century to develop editorial best practices. News-programming,
or whatever you want to call it, has just gotten started, at a time when the
industry is too busy flailing in a downward revenue spiral to put serious
thought into anything.

~~~
switch33
"News-programming, or whatever you want to call it, has just gotten started,
at a time when the industry is too busy flailing in a downward revenue spiral
to put serious thought into anything."

I wouldn't say it's completely in a downward spiral, and it's not exactly
super new either. There are a lot of prominent tech sites and programming
sites many that have been around for centuries. Many have gotten bigger
audiences over the years I am sure it's not exactly just a "fad."

And the curriculum change she was describing did not sound very expensive to
add equipment wise. It just requires new teachers with more tech skills. But
you are right in the sense that any change involving technology just takes
time.

