Help for a stegosaurus who needs an update

After attending one of my workshops recently, a veteran reporter and columnist confessed in an email: "I feel like a stegosaurus in need of online training and am not sure where to start. ... I want to improve my online skills but don't know where to start. I have decided that this year will be one devoted to professional development and the learning of new skills."

I'll start with congratulations on recognizing the need to update your skills and on the commitment to self-improvement. In truth, professional development and learning of new skills should be a constant part of your professional life, not a one-year project. Our business is changing constantly and if you want to succeed in it, you need to be growing constantly.

The recommendations that follow are first-person suggestions, not just things I suggest for you. These are things I am doing (and in some cases, things I need to get around to doing) to update my skills. And that's not a goal you pursue and someday achieve. It's an elusive goal you chase in hopes of keeping in sight. I don't know what the current prevailing theory is about what killed the stegosaurus and other dinosaurs - meteor, climate shift or whatever - but I'm quite sure that the animals that escaped extinction had to adapt continuously to survive in their changing world.

Next comes the shameless plug: API's Storytelling Innovations seminar, which I lead Jan. 21-24, will be an excellent opportunity to improve your online skills. I will be working out the program details in the next week or so, so check the link above to see some of the discussion leaders and topics we will feature. (One caveat: This seminar includes a hands-on storytelling exercise that will help you develop some skills with new tools by experience. However, we focus more on teaching you to think differently about stories than on teaching you to use the tools and software.)

I asked several colleagues who are involved in training of online skills what they suggested and I'll share their advice, some of which overlaps with my own. But first, here are my suggestions:

Become a content creator. If you aren't already familiar with the social networking and collaborative opportunities of Web 2.0, you need to learn them. Visit some sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, LinkedIn and Del.icio.us and see how they work. Start your own page on one or more of them. Reporters today need to learn how to find information in all these places (and many more like them that haven't drawn as much attention). Count on your own organization developing more and more content in the areas of collaboration and social networking. So you need to know how they work and start thinking about how to use them. I just started my del.icio.us page, but I've done enough to see the possibilities and to see how easy it is. This doesn't have to be just work-related. My Flickr page has photos of my son's wedding and my travels with my wife. But it's helping me learn about Web. 2.0.

Start crowdsourcing. Engage your audience in telling stories. This will turn routine stories into opportunities to learn how online collaboration works.

Learn how to use and present databases. I've written several columns in the past about how essential database skills are in news-gathering today. You also need to think about how to use databases in presenting stories online and giving them evergreen value. Check the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting for training in data analysis. My N2 Blog entry "Databases help you become the source for answers" shows some examples of online databases that will be a growing part of how we cover our communities. If your web staff has someone who knows how to present databases online, start working with that person to develop databases for your stories or your beat. If you don't have someone on staff to teach you, maybe you should become that person.

Read Mark Briggs' book Journalism 2.0. Mark, editor of thenewstribune.com in Tacoma, Wash., has compiled a terrific primer on the skills journalists need today. You will learn a lot, including how simple some of this daunting stuff really is.

Update your thinking. Learning to think for multiple platforms, constant deadlines and different approaches is as important as any skills you need to develop. The handout for my workshop Choose the Right Way to Tell Your Story might help you think through the storytelling choices that multiple platforms demand.

Teach yourself. A couple NICAR programs, some mentoring from colleagues and hands-on experience on stories helped me learn how to use spreadsheets and some other programs to analyze data. But my first data story more than a dozen years ago (a page-one story debunking some claims by state environmental officials) was a result of trial-and-error using the tutorial that came with my Excel program. Most programs aren't that hard, once you start using them. If I were a reporter today, I would invest in my own digital video camera and digital audio recorder as essential reporting tools. And I'd stumble around with the tools and the editing software until I gained some competence and confidence with them. I had my own tape recorder and camera (and notebook and pens, for that matter) when I needed them as a journalist and I would make sure I had the essential tools for a reporter today. When I worked for a newspaper that was dragging its heels into the digital world, I got my own Internet account, so I could use the web and email to enhance my reporting.

Lead the charge for change in your organization. If your employer isn't providing the tools and training journalists need today, use every opportunity to demonstrate the value and necessity of the skills you are developing. And don't be above nagging and shaming your employer. That's one of the ways change happens.

Learn about Newspaper Next. Read API's Newspaper Next report and try to attend a Newspaper Next program. We will be producing a new report next year focusing on new ways to generate revenue. Innovation is our industry's most pressing challenge now. I can't think of a more pressing need for any journalist or newspaper manager in any department now than learning about disruptive innovation and new ways to build audience and generate revenue.

Find a class in your community. Investigate the possibilities of a class in multimedia skills at a local university or even an adult education program (in the Web 2.0 world, people are seeking these skills in a variety of professional and personal pursuits).

As promised above, here is some advice (slightly edited by me) from some top-flight trainers who answered my call for help for my stegosaurus friend:

Here is one of the most helpful responses I have received, from Joe Grimm of the Detroit Free Press:

I may be from her generation, yet I have some Web sites, write some blogs, use print-on demand book publishers and am now learning to mashup databases and Google maps for the Free Press Web site.

Here's the deal: A lot of these skills are easy to learn and they are not the sole turf of younger people. There is quite an adjustment that has to be made in thinking about digital media - and I may never get all the way around the corner on that - but older journalists have some bedrock journalism skills that will serve them well, and they might even have some time and money to learn these things that younger people lack.

The key, I think, is initiative. Buy and learn a new digital device every year: cameras, audio recorders, phones. You have to know what is possible. Also, learn a new skill EVERY YEAR that can go on your resume. And don't count a skill as learned until you reproduce something with it. It is not enough to take a course in sound editing. You have to produce and post a piece of your work to really claim it.

Training is available in lots of places and smart journalists have to be ready to invest in their own training. Community colleges and universities are doing training. Private training centers are. An Apple store, if there is one nearby, will let you have hours and hours of one-on-one training for just $100 a year. And you can learn from colleagues in your newsroom who have these skills and are eager to share them.

Don't spend a lot of time trying top figure out the best place to start. Digital training is not linear. It does not have a "best" entry point. Think about where you natural skills are and choose the area of new media where you will have the smoothest transition. Then set an appointment to do something.

Buttry note: I endorse everything Joe says, but I might say to learn a few skills every year. One is probably not enough. And I would say the best entry point for digital training is right now.

Steve Yelvington of Morris Communications offered some excellent advice, including a reading list that overlaps with mine:

Where to start? Perhaps with despair that this question would even be on the table seven years into the 21st century.

You mentioned that your correspondent was an educator. Educators are always looking for opportunities to do publishable research. A history of how the online medium developed would be a profitable effort.

I'm teaching a daylong citizen media workshop Tuesday for the Ohio Newspaper Association. One of the points I'm going to be making is that we can learn a lot from the mistakes made in the era of Viewtron and Trintex.

Here's an example that you'll find interesting for its fit with the N2 model:

Back in the 1980s, Sears, CBS and IBM joined in a project to create an "online newspaper" experience that eventually was named Prodigy. The three big dinosaurs set out to spin something new out of their old-world expertise in retailing, content, and technology. It was a huge project.

The entire physical data network on which Prodigy ran was designed on an assumption that online information consumption patterns would be similar to those seen in a print/broadcast model. IBM deployed a spindly 56K network that distributed information to minicomputers located in metropolitan areas for fast local download by consumers. But it turned out that people really wanted to use the online medium for interpersonal communications: email, forums and interactive realtime chat. They wanted to be active participants and producers, not just consumers. The network wasn't designed for that.

The point of learning/adjustment was much farther down the road than it should have been, and Prodigy found itself with a huge infrastructure that was ill-suited to the human-interaction realities of the online world.

When I moved from print to digital media in 1994, AOL was openly sharing its 3-C formula: Integration of Content, Commerce and Community. Today most news organizations seem to think it's a one-C formula and that somehow giving video cameras to mo-journalists will make everything OK.

We should be learning from the past, not repeating it.

On a more contemporary note, I'm recommending three "required readings." The first provides a good theoretical business framework; the second will help fix the 1-C problem, and the third is a great workbook for learning a lot of detail regarding the tools of the Internet.

The first is the N2 Blueprint for Transformation.

The second is Dan Gillmor's book "We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People," which should still be available from Amazon.com and O'Reilly.

And the third is Mark Briggs' book "Journalism 2.0: How to Survive and Thrive," from the J-Lab at the University of Maryland.

All three of these can be purchased in print, and all three can be downloaded freely.

Ultimately, though, you learn this stuff by doing it.

Picking up on Steve's final line, Guy Lucas of Media General added this response:

If she wants to develop the skills, she has to try doing them. When there's a column or story she wants to do, she needs to try doing it without "writing" it, including merely reading for audio what otherwise would be a traditional column or story in print. That's the biggest challenge: How do you tell the story when you are forbidden from doing it in the way you are used to? It's hard for print people to break out of using words. A print reporter can tell the story of the homeless. A photographer also tells the story, but in a very different way. Same thing with audio and video.

Michael Roberts of the Arizona Republic has some of the best insights on journalism training and shared some on this topic:

Training in multimedia should be driven by the news organization's goals and strategies. If the person who wrote the above works at a newspaper, focusing on those outcomes is a good place to start. The newsroom should provide layers of training aimed at new roles and new outcomes. The newspaper may decide, for example, slide shows will drive web traffic and also provide more photos for print. For photographers, that might involve training in the slide show tool, the art of writing cutlines for slide show sequences etc. For reporters handed point-and-shoot cameras, that might involve basic photo training in portraits, environmentals, flash fill, AND the slide show tool, the art of writing cutlines for slide show sequences etc. So if your reporter-educator is going to produce something specific, the training should focus on that outcome.

In our massive conversion to the Information Center model, we have deconstructed outcomes and a good many new job descriptions into required skills. Training is then built around providing those skills and specific outcomes. And in many cases, the list of skills needed to succeed expands as we go forward. One sequence of video training we originally thought would take three classes is now up to seven as we discover more of what people need to know to succeed. Going through one door leads to another and another, like the fright factory in Monsters, Inc.

Eventually, the results will come. Consider this audio slide show.

If the person does not work at a newspaper, as in teaches for a living now, then Mark Briggs' book is a good place to start. Use Mark's introductory help to play with blogs, photo sharing sites, YouTube and all the rest to get a feel for the digital realm and vocabulary. Then the person might focus on one thing they'd like to produce and learn how to do it.

Multimedia content is what I assume the person is referring to. But if they want to learn HTML or web design or other, more complex parts of online work, that probably requires classes.

Bill Dunphy, who's leading the WebU training for Metroland newspapers in the Toronto area, offered some advice:

Since I'm in the midst of re-vamping our own WebU's 30-course curriculum, this question comes at a good time. Unclear from the note whether this old stegosaur is looking for formal training or self-led learning.

If it's the latter, I have some simple suggestions for any journalist wondering how to get up to speed on these issues:

• Learn how to use your favourite MP3 player and free software like iTunes to catch podcasts. Start with IT Conversations - spend time with the "Most Highly Rated" list, picking and choosing topics and speakers that seem interesting. Then begin picking shows weekly. They feature some of the brightest minds in the web/digital tech field and giving them an hour or three a week of your time (while you're commuting, running, raking leaves etc) is like a free University extension course.


• If you haven't already, join a social network, (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc) and try to participate. You won't be able to separate the hype from the hollaring without putting in some time. Study it, don't just turn your nose up at all those people wasting all that time. Start imagining what role social networking could/should play in the news game. Go to Ning.com and roll your own for you kid's swim club or your spouse's book club.


• Ditto Twitter. Short sharp messages you can broadcast to whoever signs up for them. Tool or toy? No snap judgements - study it, figure out what it's doing for all those tens of thousands of loyal users.


• Get yourself an RSS reader (Google Reader, Bloglines, various plug-ins in Firefox, Safari itself ) and start getting serious and organized about reading writers whose ideas speak to you. Find one you like and then spider out from there, tracking the peopel they read and refer to. Organize it in a reader and pay yourself with at least 15 mins of quiet reading time daily. Gather it all, but be choosy about what you dive into. Don't know RSS? Wikipedia is almost always a good "explain it for me" tool.


• Get a smart phone with a cheap data plan (that rules all us Canadian out) and make it a point to use SMS, to text your spouse quick bursts of info, instead of saving it up for a call. Figure out the real uses of the tech. Take pics and shoot them off to photo sharing sites or back to your paper. Use Google Gears to download your blog reading onto your phone.


• In short - if you want to understand the internets, jump right in and start using them.

Writing Coach Ken O'Quinn added:

I think a person would be wise to learn more about online storytelling. There are different ways to present a story, using audio and video (when appropriate) in addition to text, and learning how to structure, or package, a story is vital to reaching readers today. And there are numerous people in the country who excel in this area. As much as we all love the traditional newspaper, we are naive if we don't embrace online storytelling.

Adell Crowe of USA Today shared this introduction to a training program for her staff:

Before we get started, I wanted you to hear an excerpt of a Nov. 1 speech AP President Tom Curley made. It is posted online and I urge you to read the whole thing. In it, he talks about the things in our industry that must change. Here's one:

Editors (and I would throw in the whole newsroom here) need to stop pining for the old world and intensify the leading to the new.

We are approaching an amazing point in the history of media. Quality will rule. With traffic to destination websites flattening and new distribution making all content accessible, we are entering a new era of brutal competition. The best will stand out because they will be sought out.

One other thing I would like to share with you is something I ripped off a media blog called howardowens.com. Howard has a list of things we can do to "help recreate journalism for the 21st century." And he offers a very persuasive argument as to why we should to them:

Howard Owens writes: "Quality journalism and the news organizations that finance it, needs individual journalists to become personally responsible for their own role in changing newsroom cultures and practices. The smartest publishers with the greatest strategic plans (even if they have bottomless buckets of cash to execute all the best ideas) can't save news organizations without the concerted support of individual journalists."

He continues: "Don't wait for a boss to tell you to become a learner and explorer. Your job is just where you collect your paycheck. Your career is what you do. Your boss isn't responsible for your career. You are. Don't wait on others to make changes. Start making changes now for your own benefit. It's great if your employer benefits from your growth, but you'll benefit more."

And here are some of those things Howard thinks we all should do.

Become a blogger: It's not so important that you have a blog - though that isn't a bad idea - but more important that you read some. Read blogs related to your beat, read blogs related to your hobbies. Read the media blogs - Romesko does a good roundup but there is so much more being written out there.

Become a producer. Take a class about how to use your digital camera. Read the owner's manual on a digital or video recorder. Pick them up, play with them. Think about the way video or sound could help you tell your story. Don't wait for one to be assigned to you or someone to give you a step-by-step lesson, take the lead and teach yourself. Post stuff on Flickr or You Tube or make Grandma an online photo album. Just do something that gives you an understanding of equipment. And it's a good idea that whatever you pick up and play with is compatible with the editing programs we use here.

Participate. As you read, leave comments. Have a conversation on line with someone who agrees or disagrees with you. You can even talk with your own readers as long as you are totally open about who you are. We encourage you to blog and to comment on blogs and other sites with the understanding that it is all public and no one is really anonymous. A good rule of thumb is not to write anything you wouldn't want to appear in the paper. At a minimum, create a Facebook page so you can wander around there and see what goofy pictures fellow staffers have on their sites.

Become web literate. Understand what people are talking about when they throw out collections of letters such as HTML; RSS; XML; HTTP and FTP.
Check out terms on wikipedia.

Shop online. If you need help, see me. And check out the Life's section's holiday shopping blog for recommendations - even better, offer your recommendations. The idea here is not to stimulate the economy but for you to start thinking about how those sites work and how we might use some of the same technologies. Ideas are everywhere, as are bargains.

While you are shopping, buy a mobile device. Get a video ipod or a smart phone and think about how the content you produce should be delivered over it. How would that delivery system change how you write and what you write about?

Finally, be a learner. Soak up as much as you can because technology is changing fast and we have to change right along with it. This quote by Eric Hoffer sums it up best: "In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves beautifully equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."

Samantha Sommer of the Springfield (OH) News-Sun gave this response:

I suggest she look around for a fellowship. I attended the Knight Digital Media Center's week-long multimedia training fellowship at UC-Berkeley and it was phenomenal, as well as extremely affordable. All expenses, minus half of air fare, was covered. The center also has a commitment to a diverse body of fellows, ranging in experience, job titles and backgrounds.

Laurie Hertzel of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis:

Here at the Star Tribune we are realizing that cross-training isn't just a good idea, it's crucial. We have an excellent online staff (they win many awards), but it is a small staff and they can't do everything that we would like to do. So we have established in-house classes in audio gathering, audio editing, videography, and other multimedia skills. Our photo staff, in particular, has embraced this - they love the fact that online allows them to showcase photography in a way we can never do in print, and so they have learned to put slide shows online, and gather and edit audio to accompany them.

You should check out the slide show for last year's narrative, "A Prayer for Father Time" (available at ). The online presence was all done by photographer Jim Gehrtz.

Reporters are also learning to do audio gathering, and some have taken the videography classes.

In addition, we have established a rotating six-month "fellowship" in which one photographer moves over to online to work almost exclusively with video during that time period. It has proved extremely successful.

The idea is that it is important for everyone in the room to at least become familiar with the possibilities and limitations of multimedia. Not everyone will end up doing videos and audio themselves, but everyone will have a better understanding of how it works, and everyone will have the chance to pursue it as far as they would like.

Miguel Morales, who I hope by now is an alumnus of Johnson County Community College in Kansas, wrote:

Maybe she should take a class at her local community college. She'll learn as much from the students (who've probably mastered much of these skills already) as she does from the instructor. In addition, she can serve as a valuable resource for students who are dipping toes into the waters of journalism. And while she's at it, her mere presence will show that journalism training never stops. Who knows, she might end up working for one of those students one day ...

Ana Estela de Sousa Pinto of Folha de Sao Paulo in Brazil answered the stegasaurus' questions with more questions:

What do you need new skills for?
Which are your goals?
Have you been asked to do things you haven´t been able to do because of a lack of skills? What exactly?
Or you are able to do your job as well as ever, but just feel old-fashioned and would like to get updated?
I would have very different suggestions depending on her answers...

Howard Finberg of Poynter's News University added:

First: NewsU has a number of courses that can help the dedicated journalists better understand the online world. I would start 5 Steps to Multimedia Storytelling. It is free. It is easy to grasp the key concepts. Then I would move to one of the three modules from the Online News Association. They breakdown successful online projects so you can understand the thinking that went into these award winning efforts. Next, I would take "Telling Stories with Audio." This is an intro to use sound.

Second: The Poynter Institute is offering 9 (count 'em) new multi-media seminars in 2008. These range from using video to being a "backpack journalists" to writing for online. Check them all out at the Poynter site.

Of course, these ideas aren't restricted to stegosauruses [stegosaurusi?]. We welcome everyone.

One good plug deserves another, so I should follow Howard's Poynter plug with a list of some of the API seminars for 2008 that might be helpful to a stegosaurus seeking to outrun the meteor:
Visual Storytelling for Print and Web
Building a Niche Product Portfolio
Leading the 24/7 Newsroom
Interactive Community News
The Third Screen: Maximizing Mobile
Leading Local Content Teams
Designing the Digital Experience
Transforming the Newsroom
New Editors' Survival Guide
News Editors and Copy Desk Chiefs: New Roles in a Changing Newsroom
Growing Audiences Beyond News