I'm training to be a journalist on what's purported to be the UK's best postgraduate magazine journalism course at City University, London. I've learned how to find stories, how to structure and write features, how to lay them out, how to integrate visuals and sub them. So far, so useful. But what about multimedia? Roy Greenslade lectures us about journalism in society and is always talking about how the internet is causing a revolution in the great wide media world. Bill Thompson is constantly talking to us about the digital world. All of which begs the question: Are we being adequately prepared for this brave new media world?

Here's a optimistic, sobering and slightly frightening look at the potential of the web and what it means for the digitised world.



It's optimistic because it's telling us that change is good, but sobering for journalism students like me because it shows just what we're going to have to understand, and to a certain extent, master. Slightly frightening because it shows just how much a four minute clip can communicate if done well. The bar is set high and is ascending. Rapidly.

The problem for the trainer is simply that everything moves so quickly, by the time you get something set up, the digital world has moved on. Core skills are still essential: we'll still need to know the basic stuff: how to find news, how to write. The same goes for students on the broadcast, newspaper and television courses. Now here's an area that the academic mandarins could do something about. Why divide the courses when media seems to be converging? If you want to work for the BBC you're better off knowing how to write and broadcast, it's no long one or the other. They've decided to address the issue by setting up their own in-house journalism school to make sure everybody has the right skills.

The postgraduate journalism programme at the University of California offers multimedia courses as a matter of course (no pun intended, no really), allowing their students to choose what they train in. This would seem a sensible way for us over here in the UK to go. Why not have optional broadcast, video and web skills (beyond html) courses? It would certainly prepare us better.

Here's one of their projects, it may sound a little amateurish at times but these students are clearly learning useful skills.

North gate radio podcast

Still, i'm not too pessimistic, if there's one thing i am learning on this course, it's that i need to go out and teach myself a whole lot more. Which can be kind of fun.

Rant over - that last post is life at city.

Going to concentrate a little more on a few things that have been raised over the last few weeks. the importance of the web has been raised again and again - Prof Greenslade gets it in to his every lecture at least once or twice - he's definitely seduced by the glittering light of New Media. In the online lessons, the impact of the web and it's importance has been refined. It seems that the old, static web (they write, you read) is dying a death, and Web 2.0 is rising from its ashes.

The thing is, the whole concept of web 2.0 is fairly nebulous, what exactly is it. The best definition that i can come across is that it is an idea, a concept that uses the web as a application. It seems to be a loose coalition of interactive sites such as MySpace, Flickr and LastFM. the key is their interactivity.

These would seem to be ringing the death-knell for old-fashioned, lecture-style journalism. Who wants to be dictated to if you can go somewhere else and make a comment. But it pays to be careful. the screen can be all too seductive. I went to a talk on the late Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya - she was murdered, probably becasue of the investigations she pursued into the heart of the murky criminal, business and military powers in Russia. There is still a need to get out there and find things out.

The week of the deadly deadlines

Next week, what a pain in the arse - three major deadlines and an exam. Look's like Friday will be the BIG NIGHT OUT. Thursday's dead - long live Friday.

After all that, the much maligned 'son of FoI' and Project Betty will be a breeze. If the hangover has worn off.