Journalism discussion

The dialogue about journalists learning to program, which I pointed to the other day, and earlier, continues on several journalists' blogs, among them Mindy McAdams' Teaching Online Journalism (which I've added to the sidebar as a great source for news and tips on multimedia projects -- too bad most of the good ones she points to are unavailable to me on dialup).

McAdams points to a New York Times graphic and notes that programming isn't the only skill needed here: good writing and fact-finding skills and graphic designing aren't always skills that programmers have.

Also on this topic: Matt Waite, who agrees:

If you try and train people at cross purposes though, you end up with a Great Writer who writes junk code and a Great Programmer who writes crappy stories. Who, again, is served?
But there are people, like myself, who live in newsrooms and have made a living writing stories who should learn to code and are learning to code no matter who thinks we should or not. The idea is to create new forms of journalism with whatever tools we can, and if they don’t exist, create them too.

As usual, some good comments on these postings too.
Several more postings on this subject on Matt's blog.

Also noted, while browsing these discussions: Journalistopedia, by the Orlando Sentinel's Danny Sanchez (worth the link just for the cartoons, especially this one on this topic).

More, also, from Howard Owens, here .

On a totally different note, couldn't pass up the pointers to Journalism rules: Here are the secrets by Michael Rosenberg in the Free Press, including this one:

5. Internet, Schminternet. It will be gone in five years. People will always love reading a newspaper -- and so will you, our intrepid reporter, once you accept our buyout offer.