What Journalists Need to Know

The hot word in journalism education these days is Convergence--a marriage of sorts between the old world of print journalism (words and photos primarily) and the new world of digital reporting (video, blogs, Twitter, interactive maps, hypertext and hyperlinks, etc.).  Ask a group of journalism educators what skills and qualities future journalists must possess and you're apt to hear about versatility and innovation:  "Learn the new technology."  "Know the power of the visual."  "Be able to tell a story through words, images, music, and interviews." "Know how to converse with your audience."  "Know that the printed word can be enhanced by other versions of the news."

All true.  Just as photography--and later typography--once changed the look of traditional newspapers, making them brighter, more inviting, and less texty, the new technology has raised possibilities that have yet to be fully realized.  A college student aspiring to be a 21st century journalist must be able to think, write, and speak well AND understand the potential of technology to cover the world in new ways.  It's all a package.

But wait.  There's more.  Besides having tools and techniques, journalists must also know the world.  They must be conversant with history, literature, science, politics, art, psychology, religion, business, economics, and culture (classical, pop, and other).  They must know people (especially those who have left their mark on the world); places (there's big territory across those oceans!); and issues (ideas that were/are on people's minds and that continue to be discussed and debated). 

A tall order?  Yes and no.  While no one can be an expert on everything, the best journalists are true citizens of the planet.  They're interested in the world, in all its diversity and complexity; they try to rise above the partisan and provincial; and they work to make sense of a global picture that changes rapidly and that's often contradictory and confusing.  

What does this mean for students wishing to be journalists?  Besides refining interviewing, reporting, and editing skills and mastering a fast-changing technology, they must be interested and informed.  They must be smart.  They must know things.  The more they know, the better reporters they'll be.

So for those who may sometimes sit in classes and wonder whether it's really necessary to know about the Magna Carta, the Black Plague, the Salem Witch Trials, the French Revolution, the underground railroad, the Reconstruction Era, Prohibition, Brown v. Board of Education, the Middle East, eating disorders, DNA, and the science of hydrofracking,  the answer is yes.  For aspiring journalists unfamiliar with Aristotle, Confucius, Sophocles, Galileo, Gutenberg, Newton, Napoleon, Austen, Darwin, Malthus, Whitman, Stowe, Douglass, Joyce, Freud, Gershwin, Woolf, Picasso, Einstein, Ford, Sanger, Churchill, Curie, Ghandi, Chavez, and Mandela, time to get acquainted. 

For good journalists, the world is THE story--always has been.