Reinventing journalism
If you have any doubts about how critical the web is to journalism, this should help convince you:
The Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, one of the top J-schools in the country, is recruiting web programmers/developers. They are offering partial and full scholarships for their one-year master's program to applicants with experience or degrees in programming or related fields.
Here's how the folks at Medill explain the connection between journalism and technology:
In the digital age, journalism is more than just reporting and storytelling. And technology is more than just business systems or inventory management or e-commerce. For people to discover and act upon the information they need to be citizens in a democratic society, journalism and technology must increasingly intersect...The media industry realizes that people with programming skills are essential to the future of journalism.
One example they use to make their point is the website Chicagocrime.org, now part of Everyblock Chicago. The site, originally created as a Google Maps mashup, gives very detailed crimes statistics on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis. They also like Digg.com for how it enables users to help each other find good stuff on the web by recommending and voting for it.
The goal of the Medill program is "to have you leave Medill with an unusual combination of skills and perspectives that will position you to help reinvent journalism for the digital age."
For those interested in web/new media, classes include Digital Storytelling, Web Production, Advanced Interactive Storytelling, Non-Fiction Narrative in Interactive Storytelling, and other media-related courses.
If this sounds interesting, find out more at the Medill website.
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