Stuff wot I brought with me 5 - Journalism textbooks

Studying for the NCTJ distance diploma in journalism is no mean feat!

After working for an innovation agency, attending the Edinburgh International TV Festival trainee scheme, and doing a stint on a BBC consumer news show, I registered to study towards a diploma in journalism. I think journalism skills are going to be vital for the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs. They should be taught in every high school.

I fully appreciate that journalism is a tough industry. But despite cut-backs and job losses (such as those initiated by the Philly Inquirer),  the shut-down of many local papers in the UK and the USA,  and the revelations of the unethical 'phone hacking' culture at certain papers in the UK, I don't think it's a dying industry. It's changing. Completing the diploma will qualify me a journalist, but I think there's so much more to modern journalism than shorthand and reporting style. With the growing influence of the internet in our lives there are opportunities to re-shape how people get their information and news, and to re-shape how media businesses get revenue.

That's why I also think programming skills are going to be vital for the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs. At the age of 11 I taught myself HTML and made some zany Geocities sites from scratch. This year I've slowly been working through the Code Year modules, especially in CSS, to brush up my skills. I'm creating my own DIY course in modern journalism skills!

I love to keep tabs on innovations in news, media and community journalism. I love to follow community journalists, journo-bloggers, media analysts and academics on Twitter. Homicide Watch is a really interesting new model for crime reporting in DC and Clear Health Costs is a brilliant initiative set up by journalist-entrepreneurs to help Americans analyze the costs of healthcare options, to name but two exciting examples of new journalism ventures.

My diploma is all long-distance home study, so I was sent a box full of books and I've been working my merry way at them, amongst moving to another continent and spending catch-up time with my hubby. I knew there'd be a time for adjustment to my new country, and doing this has been great for focusing my time while I search for jobs and opportunities. It's tough work though, especially when I don't have class-mates to keep me motivated or to bounce ideas around with and share insights. If you see me on Twitter or like my little blog here, please do send me some words of encouragement!

Oh, and if you love new media as much as I do, I'd love, love to chat to you! Follow me on Twitter or visit my other site where I'm going to try to focus my media blogging in future. And if you don't love new media as much as I do, don't worry, you know I love trashy TV too, and all the new US shows are coming to screen soon.

Are you learning any new skills? What do you think is the future of journalism? And have you been doing Code Year too? I'd love to hear from you!

PAW for thought

"What's your post-apocalyptic skill?" My mum asked.

"Uhhh... I can knit. A bit. But not that well. I don't think I could knit anything useful."

Knitting is mum's skill. She once knitted me an Amy Winehouse doll. No pattern or anything. It was featured on the Heat Magazine website and everything. Okay, so that's not so useful either, but she knits all manner of clothing and toys. She's also a great seamstress and makes clothes...including wedding dresses.

"I can't shear a sheep or spin wool either, so that's useless. Anyway, all the clothes shops would still have clothes in them, for a while, until they all got looted."

"Looting might not happen," my mum pointed out. She'd obviously thought about this. "We're talking about an abstract situation here. There might not be any power or many people, but it doesn't mean shops couldn't open for a time, or that people couldn't function normal lives. In the short-term things might be okay, we'd have food and clothing and structures. It's the long term that we would need to plan for."

"Riiight. Ok." I wasn't quite sure mum was still being hypothetical, and I was also too engrossed in an online flash game.

"So what's your skill then?" She asked again.

"I don't know. I'm really good at this sushi game."

"That's your skill? Playing a sushi game?"

"It's really hard! You have to memorise the menu, make the dishes, keep an eye on all the customers, make sure they are all being catered for, make sure you never run out of ingredients and that you're making enough money..."

Actually. It's just like my job making sandwiches at the deli.

Damn. I pushed my laptop away. I suddenly didn't want to be playing at my job on my day off.

"Well, I know about politics. I can get discounts in taxis apparently."

My mum rolled her eyes and started a new line of knitting the complicated scarf she was working on, "I meant a useful skill. Think about it. In a post-apocalyptic world, you don't know how many people have survived, and what their skills will be. We'll need doctors and medical experts, we'll need farmers and horticulturalists, engineers and electricians, communications experts and teachers to pass on skills to the next generation. The next generation will be really important, and how would we decide which children learn which skills?"

"Well, it'd be a throw-back to early economics. The children of the craftsfolk would take on their parents' trades, most likely. Learn from an early age." I added.

"But is that the best way to do it?" My mum pressed. "Because, in the post-apocalyptic era it'll be vital to have the best people possible learning these skills in the shortest amount of time. What if the doctor's son is better at cooking? At what age would they decide to choose their vocation? Is it truly fair to dictate to them what they should do?"

"That's not really different from now. Capitalism. The best people become successful in their chosen field."

"But it will be more imperative if there are fewer people and survival is the aim, to choose the best skilled people to fill these roles, in a short space of time."

"That could be a democratic decision..." I led.

"Depending on how big the post-apocalyptic community would be, we'd need to be organised and assign roles accordingly so that we could pull together and survive."

"And in order to organise the community you'll need people who are skilled in organising and who know the principles of leading communities..." I continued.

"Well, it'd have to work on group decisions, like community meetings to make these decisions," my mum pondered.

"And you'd need people who knew the best methods for making group decisions, or who knew the theories and difficulties in creating good and fair systems for effective control of groups of people."

"I suppose so."

"So you'd need people who knew about politics then. And had experience in administrating groups of people." I smiled, wide-eyed.

"Well, I suppose so," my mum conceded.

"There you go. Not so useless after all." I grinned.

Captain's Lock

My mum told me this story. It happened to her last week.

Her manager's secretary was on her lunch break, and the manager came running through into my mum's office in a nervous panic.

"I've done something on the computer and I don't know what happened and I can't fix it!"

My mum is no IT guru. She works with young people mostly, giving talks in schools and advising kids on a one-to-one basis. But she offered to help anyway.

"What were you trying to do? What has happened?" She asked.

"I don't know! It's gone all wrong! I was trying to write an email and then it broke."

My mum looked at the email that he had been writing and realised that he had accidentally pressed the CAPS LOCK key. She fixed it, and died a little inside.

I don't know if that's heartening or disheartening to me. I can't decide. It reminds me of my time as a temp when I had to save a phone number into my manager's mobile phone because he couldn't do it. I had to do it several times after that because he refused to learn how to do it himself.

I am not lying when I tell prospective employers how good I am with computers and suchlike. I am the Tempest Typist for a start, and that's just one of my many skills. That works out just fine for me, and I understand that not everybody is as electronically endowed as I, but I cannot abide stubborn stupidity. Now I know for sure that it is not just endemic to the field of temp-work.

As frustrating as this is for overqualified office drones around the world, there is an upside. If someone is too reluctant to learn new skills, that can only make me look better. Stories like these give me CV bragging rights...right?