This week’s blogger Lisa Bradley is course leader for the NCTJ-accredited MA print and digital journalism and BA journalism courses at Leeds Trinity University.
Lisa, pictured left, has been a journalist for 15 years, predominately in the regional press, as a deputy editor for Johnston Press and as a freelancer for women’s magazines. She trained at the University of Sheffield on the NCTJ masters course before going to the Wakefield Express.
Lisa would like to thank Lindsay Eastwood, associate principal lecturer in journalism, for her input. Lindsay started her career at the Craven Herald, before joining the ranks of the Yorkshire Evening Post. She then moved to Calendar where she still does freelance shifts.
Every time I hear the term digital journalism, it makes my toes curl. So the irony is not lost on me that just last year we changed the course title of our long-standing NCTJ accredited MA to print and digital Journalism in a bid to reflect the course content.
We had decided to do away with our printed course newspaper, much to the raised eyebrows of some of the NCTJ panel members, in favour of investing in an all singing all dancing daily website.
We assess on Twitter. We teach on iphones. We ditched the production journalism exam because let’s face it – there aren’t any subs anymore. And before the backlash starts – yes we ARE teaching the all-important headline writing and proof reading skills still. But there’s little point in teaching students how to design a page when they will be writing into boxes in InDesign.
What we have tried to do is emulate the current newspaper industry – but take it a step further.
There is no such thing as digital journalism. Journalism, by its very nature, is digital. So once more we are changing the title of the course for 2015 to simply journalism. The digital skills are implicit. We don’t have modules in web journalism. Everything we do is geared towards that.
Because let’s face it, no-one knows the future of newspapers. Cut me open and you’ll find ink in my veins – but the jobs we are training our students to go to may not have even been invented yet.
So how do we keep one step ahead? Who knows if what we are doing is right, but one of the major investments we have made in the course, and now filtering down to under-graduate level, is mobile journalism.
One of our tutors, Lindsay Eastwood, has championed our ‘mojo’ teaching after we both looked extensively at the skills regional newspapers and television are requiring – and online video was at the top of that list. Not broadcast packages with pieces to camera – but tightly edited video that adds value to a story, but doesn’t replace the telling of it.
With smartphones you don’t need the cumbersome cameras or editing equipment. You can edit a basic piece of video with overlays, cutaways and transitions as effectively on iMovie as you can on Avid: done at the scene, edited in 10 minutes, filed to newsdesk in 11.
Use a monopod (aka a fancy word for a form of selfie stick) and there’s no shaky camera work that makes it look like a bad version of the Blair Witch Project.
I probably won’t be very popular by saying the many regional newspapers just haven’t got the gist of online video. In fact, when screening examples of existing online content in lectures we probably find more bad examples than good ones *runs for cover*.
One editor told us recently that he didn’t mind shaky camerawork as it made it look exciting, like you were there at the scene. We recoiled in horror. It’s like saying it’s ok to have spelling mistakes because you filed it fast.
Trained right and good video takes no longer to shoot than bad video (and is a damn sight easier and faster to edit).
And we’ve had to teach ourselves. Luckily having tutors like Lindsay from both a print and broadcast background means we’ve had a head start. But in order to teach and champion these skills, we all have to learn them ourselves. And I’ve thrown my phone at the wall a few times in the process but at 37, I’m now a newspaper dinosaur. Unless I skill up and fast, I’m going to be extinct. And that’s only three years out of the industry.
Who knows if what we are doing is right. When you start out, there is nothing like holding a printed paper in your hands and seeing your byline. But there’s also nothing like seeing your story has 32,000 hits from our humble student website.
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Well said Lisa. I agree with every word.
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…although I should say that we still run the Production Journalism exam at Sheffield. Yes, there are few subs around. But I think that makes it vital that reporters writing direct to page can edit copy, craft good headlines and deal capably with pix.
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Also agree in general with Lisa. We are doing exactly the same at De Montfort University’s Leicester Centre for Journalism – teaching students the core values of story gathering and story telling using multiple platforms including print, websites, social media and video. Also agree with David that subbing skills are vital – whether that is assessed through the NCTJ’s Production Journalism exam or a revised Reporting exam is being reviewed. Smartphone Journalism is the future but we should never lose sight of the core values of reporting.
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Thanks David! Yes, I agree I should have probably been a bit clearer on the subbing front. I actually think it is tragic what has happened to subs, and don’t agree with it at all. What I meant to say was we decided that video journalism was a skill more likely to get a trainee into a job than quark skills. Totally agree on the importance of all those other skills.
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Fabulous story Lisa
At last someone appreciates that the future is visual.
It is a real shame no one at the NCTJ has your vision
Good luck
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It is, indeed, a tragedy there aren’t more subs left; the errors of grammar, capitalisation and punctuation in this article are an absolute hoot (iphone? ok? all singing all dancing? anymore?) I’m hoping Lisa herself isn’t to blame, which would be deeply ironic given the stress she lays on the teaching of “the all-important proof reading skills” (though of course digital-first means that in five years’ time no journalist, nor indeed anyone else, will be able to spell or punctuate anyway and no one will care, or at least no one important, and when this old sub goes to his long home the inscription on his headstone will be littered with typos – or perhaps by then we will memorialise our dead simply with the dates of birth and death and a sad-face emoticon).
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Insightful stuff Lisa,
I wish I was 30 years younger and attending your course! Your students will have the practical knowledge that will get them work in a developing market.
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Nowadays some journalist uses Selfie Stick Pro in taking a news coverage.
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I agree with most of what Lisa says apart from: “With smartphones you don’t need the cumbersome cameras or editing equipment.”
You can get a cheap Canon/Sony/Panasonic etc camcorder for less than the cost of a smartphone and it’ll get much better results. You can zoom with it (like, actually zoom – not an artificial crop zoom), it’s got built-in stabilisation (i.e. decent handheld shots even without a monopod) and it’s still small enough to put in a little rucksack.
Yes, you can shoot video on a smartphone, but in the same way that you can hammer nails into a wall with a dessert spoon. It’s far from the best tool for the job and I don’t get why people are so keen to use them in favour of camcorders.
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