By
Jessica Weiss
At
events like data bootcamps and hackathons, journalism training across the world
reflects the huge changes in the media landscape over the last decade. Today,
journalists often learn how to tweet and make data visualizations instead of
how to conduct interviews or write breaking news stories.
A
new report by veteran journalist and media trainer Bill
Ristow details the evolution in international media training in a new
report from the Center for
International Media Assistance (CIMA). “Journalism Training In The Digital
Era: Views From the Field,” both highlights the importance of making sure
training keeps pace with technological change and raises concerns about the
potential pitfalls of focusing such a large portion of media training on
digital media and innovation. The report asks:
“Are
we properly tailoring the work to the wildly varied technological environments
of the developing world? Are we mistakenly assuming that the problems Western
media have faced are the same ones facing the media elsewhere? Are we being
dazzled by the “shiny toys” of digital media, offering things that aren’t
really useful in local contexts? Are we placing platform too far ahead of
content, and running a serious risk of shortchanging critically important work
in support of journalism skills and business training for media organizations?”
In
the field, mastering digital media may not always be the most significant need.
Ugandan journalist and former chair of the journalism school at Uganda’s
Makerere University Peter
Mwesige shared with Ristow what he believes are the five most important
training needs in Africa. The top three items included understanding the
workings of big institutions, better understanding public policy as well as
strengthening analytical skills.
“Only
the fifth item, data journalism, is even somewhat connected to the trend toward
digital and social media development work,” Ristow writes.
“The
mix has to be there,” says Jerome
Aumente, professor emeritus at the Rutgers University School of
Communication and Information. “What you must do is line it up with the
realities of the country you’re in and calibrate it to make it match up.
There’s no point in teaching higher-end technology to a region that is still
basically newspaper-focused.”
The
report lays out five main suggestions for media-development donors and
organizations to keep in mind as they develop projects in the field. They are:
1.
Carefully analyze the broad
environment and conditions surrounding each intervention. This includes the legal and
business climate as well as other development projects or programs. It’s also
important to analyze the “level and nature of local demand for the work that is
being proposed,” the report says. While journalists might want to be trained
in digital tools, “it is important to know whether [those journalists] will be
able to use the training in their workplace, whether the management of their
news organizations supports the training, or … if such training could put the
journalists at risk of being targeted by a hostile regime,” the report notes.
2.
Diagnose the specific “media
ecosystem” and technological conditions of the country. Training efforts need to be
“designed and tailored for a particular environment,” the report says,
“including its ability to support specific digital techniques and approaches.”
Often, technical conditions are far different from those in the West, and can
vary widely in the region, so a “one size fits all” approach is rarely
successful.
3.
Emphasize a mix of solutions. The intervention should
“maintain a strong, calculated emphasis both on core journalism and on support
for media business sustainability, even when the focus is on training for
digital platforms,” the report says.
4.
Invest more in research, especially at the front end of
projects. For this, the report says “universities could make an invaluable
contribution to improving our knowledge of what programs work best under what
conditions.”
5.
Rigorously evaluate the new
types of projects.
Stronger evaluations are important overall, but they are “especially important
with the evolving digital-oriented work,” the report says, “because lessons
learned at the beginning will have the greatest impact on future projects.”
Read
the full report here.
Jessica
Weiss is a Bogotá-based freelance journalist.
Photo
from India Unheard training camp courtesy of Video
Volunteers with a Creative Commons license.
Source: Ijnet.org
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