One j-school professor in the audience asked what the panelists were looking for in young journalists — should they already be focusing on multi-tasking, shooting video and the like?”
“I want journalists who think first and foremost about how people are consuming media,” Wilson responded. “It’s not about necessarily learning software or reporting on different platforms. It’s more about how much time people spend with media and how long they are going to spend on various types of consumption.”
That’s Kinsey Wilson talking, the executive editor of USA Today.
Is he talking about editors or reporters? Does a reporter coming out of j-school need to know “how much time people spend with media,” or is he talking about having a basic understanding of news consumption, as in, what sort of people will read a story online and what sort of people will rip a story out of the print edition to hand to a friend?
The question the prof is asking, of course, is whether or not j-schools have to start teaching the print kids how to do a stand-up. Note to the prof: you don’t, but you’ve gotta teach someone with a journalism degree how to decide what sort of audio & video to post online, when, where, and how to do it. We need to learn how to edit for the Web.
Bonus: Here’s a year-old interview Terrence Smith did with Wilson.