Essential skills for journalism training

Frédéric Filloux in his Monday note takes a look at the issue of journalism training.

Comparing the attitudes of this year's crop whom he sees as far more realistically centred he concludes that five areas should be considered when training journalists

1. Production skills. Scripting, staging a story are now key elements in modern journalistic storytelling.

2. Dealing with complexity, handling datasets, from public statistics to GIS. These are key instruments to spread knowledge in an increasingly visual society.
3. Enroll pure technologies competences. Journalists need to learn how to deal with techies. Cross-pollination between the two is crucial.

4. Encourage nerdy tendencies among students or rookies journalists. In doing so, they will dramatically increase their employability.

5. Teach them how to sell their work, skills, passion. This ranges from setting pro-like blogs to — yes — creating their own tiny company, the commercial vehicle for rising above the crowd and monetizing their work.