The Courant has never been good at training and updating its staff. Like who has time for that?
A few people with initiative managed to educate themselves in things such as Excel, Jackhammer, Assembler, Quickbase, and other software. Many don’t even know what those words mean. Some journalists enroll in college courses to learn these new skills, or they invest their own money in special equipment and software. They are seldom asked to help fashion a vision for the future, except perhaps when there’s a crisis.
I’ve always thought that the paper made a costly mistake in not exposing everyone to these new technologies. Too few people could participate in moving the paper into the digital era, and too much “old school” thinking inhibited progress. (I apologize here for sounding like Lee Abrams.)
This piece reminds me that now, more than ever, the remaining nine journalists in the Courant newsroom should be capable — or at least minimally functional — in a variety of online software and systems. Folks who hope to remain in the business for much longer (or re-enter the business if it ever recovers) need to know how to put their stories online, how to shoot with a digital camera and edit their work, and how to speak knowledgably with other journalists who are exceptional at these tasks. Apparently some people outside the world of journalism agree.
In the case of The Courant, more reporters need to know how to use Assembler — Tribune’s proprietary software for creating content for the web. Past Courant.com editors have jealously guarded the Assembler gates, partly because a doofus could do incalculable damage to the system if he or she started stumbling around in it. But the reluctance to let the main newsroom in also stemmed from an unwillingness to negotiate with “old school” thinking, or ideas born out of limited understanding of the web. The result was that the number of minds that could think creatively in the web context was limited.
I guess I’m saying that every remaining journalist in the building should be learning a new skill and/or teaching one to a colleague. The cross-training, though time-consuming, is critical to getting the most out of the ever-shrinking team, and there needs to be a structured approach to it.
Teaching Assembler, in particular, is fundamental in creating a newsroom that is truly web first. (Ironically, the mechanism now in place — with the exception of iTowns — is essentially a print-to-web technology, despite all the philosophical yakking to the contrary. At least it was when I left there six months ago.)
I wonder if there are any retraining funds out there.
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I’ve actually been taking an HTML class in Boston and will probably take some more, in order to expand my abilities beyond putting words together. Plus, it gets me out of the house, which makes my girlfriend happy.
Hey Paul,
I agree with much of what you write, but please allow me, as a former online editor who did some jealous guarding, to disagree with you on one point.
I don’t see how access to Assembler would be of any more value to reporters than would access to CCI Layout Champ. At least one reporter who writes mostly for the Web has been trained to write in Assembler, and some editors and reporters have been trained to release their stories to the Web from CCI. But it’s not critical for most reporters and editors to work inside Assembler. Having them actually post their stories — deciding in which of hundreds of collections the stories should appear in and in what order — would be as chaotic as having every reporter lay out his or her own story in CCI for the newspaper. And the value of learning Assembler is limited in the job market because it’s a proprietary system that is not used outside of Tribune.
Reporters who are not interested in becoming Web producers would be better off learning multimedia journalism: shooting and editing video, working with audio, creating mashups and the like. These skills and many more should be taught to every newspaper reporter who wants to learn them. Add it to the long list of what should have and maybe could have been done at newspapers everywhere.
Jeanne
“In the case of The Courant, more reporters need to know how to use Assembler — Tribune’s proprietary software for creating content for the web.”
Here is what I knew before and reinforced after life at the Courant.
It is best to create a workflow … from the main publishing system … CCI, DTI, Hearst … that feeds all downstream publishing
this allows journalists … who want to quickly move words from the tool to web to online, then, later re-craft for print, to work in a single, understandable and comfortable technology.
The goal is to make the front-end serve all masters equally.
Assembler is not the front of assembly line, it’s the Earl Shibe repaint show in Illinois after the car is built in Michigan.
To win … o/p [online/print] journalists have to work in a SINGLE technological environment that makes journalism start/end/distribute for all outlets.
It is a single tool that … sends to web, updates to web, later finesses for print, syndicates for RSS, mobile, Twitter, aggregation … all outlets from ONE technological environment, one live and updating source. The source of record.
The “story of record” begins to move online for a website, exports for an rss feed, rings for an sms perk, updates a twitter tweak, feeds a blog, updates a Yahoo feed, updates a mobile environment and all from the SAME source.
We will not abandon print … so, then … the source of the river’s flow is the print tool, and the delta of its distribution is the print tool feeding ALL sources.
Assembler only feeds one or two sources …
Syndication is likely the future of Newspaper journalism
whereEVER the reader turns, he/she must find our content. One ring to rule them all … one technology to disseminate them all
but I digress …..