Comments on: Wanted: Required Web journalism skills

By: 70.136.156.6

70.136.156.6 — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:32:36 +0000

OK, a journalist’s most important task is, well, to be a journalist. But even print journalism has changed and require reporters to have a number of skills. I used to work in Europe for a major international daily and all the writers ae required to lay out their own pages, find their own photos, etc. Basically, we had to have a perfect knowledge of QuarkXpress, Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. All this to the detriment of the written word: “I don’t care about the content; I just want it to look good because people (read advertisers) pay attention to the visuals first,” said the former editor-in-chief.

By: 24.18.1.94

24.18.1.94 — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:17:51 +0000

Nice Article, but I think it’s highly missing the point of the transition taking place among Journalism within the online world.

Here’s the issue:: You’ve got all these great Journalist and they do such great work and they get paid a handsome wage for some by a company needing there unique skill set. Now let’s say the company does not need there so called unique skill set anymore. This is exactly what’s happening now and the one skill set that Journalist better nail down real quick would be SALES, period.

Editing, SEO, HTML, Video, Photoshop, Journalism skills, etc…The giant Tag Cloud you have in this article represent a bunch of techniques, but without getting PAID, nothing matters. You could be a great writer, but you can’t write for very long without getting paid. You could be great at Photoshop, SEO, HTML, Writing, etc…None of it matters unless your making money.

If there is one skill that all Journalist better have it better be the skill to make money off there writing cause content is coming from every direction and it’s cheap, it’s on the fly, it’s SEO friendly and it just needs to be enought to wooo a search engine. I guess great content can stand for something, but people aren’t reading much anymore than a few lines, so really it’s just “Content is King” because that’s what the web can interperate and find when doing “Search Algorhytms” and “Spidering” certain sites…

Journalist have to get paid and they are getting laid off in drones and yet most of them don’t have a SALEs skill in them. Sales is where it’s at, always has been, always will be. Content does not matter at all if the entity that it relies on can’t afford to pay the bills to keep that entity up and running.

SALES should have been the number 1 SKILL. Just by looking at this chart Journalist are in a lot of trouble, cause number 1 is EDITING, sure hope those people have jobs working for someone who is doing SALES.

By: 69.229.36.55

69.229.36.55 — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:47:31 +0000

Anyone surprised that the phrase data analysis isn’t in the wordle cloud?

By: Kevin Sablan

Kevin Sablan — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:04:23 +0000

Thank you for using Wordle properly, not to be flashy or trendy, but to effectively make a point. The knowledge of web tools and the wisdom to choose the right one (or to opt for words, photo or illustration) is a great example of a web journalism skill that makes for good content.

The devil’s advocate in me asks if the title of this post could have been “Journalism recruiters are asking for the wrong skills.”

In reply to that fictional advocate, I refer to a recent Mashable post, where the web 2.0 site announced that it is looking to hire “experienced journalists.” Traditional skills – like sourcing, research, writing and editing – appear high on the list of requirements for each position. Missing from that page are words like interactive, flash, html, javascript, ajax and even django. I think Mashable understands where all these new storytelling tools are headed, and even though they report on all the whiz-bang widgets and technologies they obviously value traditional journalism skills over other technologies to report the news.

By: 216.43.158.88

216.43.158.88 — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:28:36 +0000

Required Web journalism skill: proofreading. In the case of this article, knowing when to use “who” or “whom” and understanding proper capitalization and punctuation.

By: 128.146.154.176

128.146.154.176 — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:17:11 +0000

Amen. Although I was a little disappointed that “accuracy” was less than half the size of “HTML” in your Wordle.

By: 174.196.174.134

174.196.174.134 — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:01:17 +0000

Great post. Verbal communication skills are important, as journalists are often called upon to make a video, or moderate a webinar discussion. Project management skills are often critical, as journalists are increasingly doing conference planning.

Todd Raphael
Editor-in-Chief
ERE Media
http://www.ere.net

todd@ere.net
212-671-1181, ext. 806
http://twitter.com/toddraphael

By: 70.240.219.120

70.240.219.120 — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:09:06 +0000

The most important skill required for web journalism in today’s, and tomorrow’s market, is the same skill required for NONweb journalism: Fundraising. Convincing editors or publishers or readers (or other interested parties) to pay enough to allow the journalist to work, and, possibly, survive while working. (This is perhaps not so important for hobby journalists, cause journalists, and PR flacks posing as “citizen journalists,” who are being paid to put the word out.)

By: 74.72.251.92

74.72.251.92 — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:29:49 +0000

I agree. The most important skill is journalism, but that makes it sound like journalism hasn’t changed. The skills required to do journalism, as you mention, have changed and require a new set of skills. Fundamentals are still at the top, but even our understanding of what journalism is today needs to change and be included as we think about the skills required.