The thing that I love about this industry is that new technology continues to keep the job interesting. Unfortunately, this hurts the students who don't take it upon themselves to investigate the new tools and techniques. Alana Taylor talked about her university "not offering the kinds of classes that she wants" and she mentioned that they are still focused on "traditional journalism". While I believe that the traditional methods are an essential part of an education in journalism; I also believe that graduates can't survive in the industry without being familiar with new media. Our media culture has changed from 20 years ago, even 10 years ago and it's important for those of us in the media industry to stay on top of what the rest of the world is interested in.
As long as we have people like Steve Jobs around, we are going to have to constantly adapt to our new mobile culture. We check our email in coffee shops on our cell phones and we upload videos of our crazy friends for the world to see. Let's face it, we are in a world where people like easy, immediate, interactive and user generated. I love that we can get news wherever we are and that we are logged in 24 hours a day.
In order for us to be successful in this new culture of user generated and interactive, universities need to offer more classes on new media. Mary Lynn Jones talked about journalism schools lagging in their curriculum and she mentioned that professors "may not have used these skills in their careers as working journalists". A number of the professors have been teaching for over 20 years and unfortunately a lot of them are going to lack the necessary skills to teach a course on new media. I think it's important for universities to offer classes for these professors and hire new educators that are familiar with new media. It's not enough to just teach a traditional professor the necessary skills, we need to have someone that is immersed in the culture and that uses these new tools like myspace, youtube and twitter to be able to teach us everything we need to know.
