J-School Confidential: Hook, Line, and Sinker

Well, no. When it came time to choose a focus at j-school, picking newspapers was a no-brainer. I'd just spent almost five years at a magazine, and I felt comfortable with the ins and outs of magazine production and writing. Newspapers represented the type of rigorous reporting and writing at which I wanted to excel. I didn't give the new media concentration a moment's consideration.

But during orientation, one headline from Sree Sreenivasan, our charming and persuasive dean of students and resident new media proponent, was "Learn New Media Skills." The message burned so bright in my brain that when it was time to choose an elective for my fall schedule, I set aside my original goals of working on national affairs and business reporting and signed up for a brand new class: New Media Newsroom.

The goal, as stated by our professors, was to acquire a "new media mindset" so grads can fully envision the possibilities of online storytelling, even if they can't themselves create all the elements.

Over the course of the semester, we used Google Maps, Blogger, SoundSlides, Audacity, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, and Brightcove Storymaker to generate multimedia packages. We discussed telling our stories through strong characters, not talking heads, and reviewed some general guidelines of visual media. You can judge the results for yourself: New Media Newsroom 2007.

Fifteen weeks later, I emerged savvier but frustrated. I wanted serious instruction in creating top-notch multimedia elements. Instead, I felt like I just scratched the surface. While the new media concentrators at school are delve deeper into Adobe Flash, Dreamweaver and other programs, I fear my next attempt at editing video may be another three-hour ordeal easily solved by clicking off an errant check box in a buried menu.

My classmate Andrew Nusca, who is consummately Web savvy and in the new media program, pinpointed the source of my semester-long frustration.

"Instead of spending time thinking about how to shoot video, or how to implement audio, or design a Web page, I found many of my classmates wasting time on the intricacies of a particular program that will be either completely different or obsolete in three years' time," he says.

What the courses like this need are open-ended classtime: A chance for the class to come together and do some work under the supervision of an instructor, so a tiny software problem didn't consume an afternoon better dedicated to reporting. I took a class in radio skills, and it functioned exactly this way: One night a week, we met in a lab and, under the watchful gaze of two professors, fiddled around with ProTools, a program I now actually feel comfortable using.

RELATED: mb Seminar Transcript: Grammar and Style Essentials J-School Confidential: One Down, One to Go

The market is already full of expert photographers, TV, and radio journalists. Which begs the question: can a hybrid new media reporter be as good as the three put together?

Of course, I'm proud of the work I did this semester. I tried my hand at things I've never done before and achieved moderate amounts of success. But I'm sure I didn't learn enough to compete with the real pros.

My classmates feel the pressure to get savvy: "If you leave j-school and you don't know basic HTML and how to use Photoshop and Audacity and even elementary video editing programs, you're gonna be quite limited in the jobs for which you're qualified," Nicholas Phillips, a magazine student, says.

An anonymous classmate who is also studying new media has the same worry: "I don't think I'm experienced enough in NM to be a more appealing candidate for publications looking for Web developers or NM people, whatever that means."

On the other hand, we keep hearing new media training is a must if you want to get a journalism job, but as I think of all my media friends and their jobs -- Scholastic, This Old House, and my old job at the dance trade mag -- none of them are doing much more than writing for the Web.

My classmate Andrew said that reality is what new media programs have to compete with.

And I agree. In the limited time I have left at j-school, is it better to work on new or old media? And can I get the level of expertise I need to get hired?

I don't know. In the meantime, I'll be spending next semester working on feature and narrative writing and investigative reporting. Timeless.

Katia Bachko is a writer and editor in New York City. You can reach her at www.katiabachko.com

> Send a letter to the editor > Read more in our archives