(Re)training a journalist

This is an excerpt from a much much longer post on multimedia reporting by Frédéric Filloux on his blog MondayNote:

"Five things should be considered when training journalists, whether in schools or in companies.

1. Production skills. Scripting, staging a story are now key elements in modern journalistic storytelling. It is about designing mockups, showing how the story will unfold, finding the best viewer interactions, the type of media that will be more appropriate at what time, etc. I say this to my students at Sciences Po: train yourself on PowerPoint; it can be a great tool to pre-design rich multimedia stories or even to complete a simple but clever one for a blog. Many easy-to-use tools dedicated for multimedia productions such as SoundSlides are also helpful.
2. Dealing with complexity, handling datasets, from public statistics to GIS. These are key instruments to spread knowledge in an increasingly visual society. Pr. Hans Rowling’s video with its mind-blowing use of statistics on global development has been viewed about 200.000 times. His talent was mainly to convert sets of complex stats into an attractive format, using a program (Gapminder), that is now available as a widget on Google Apps.
3. Enroll pure technologies competences. Journalists need to learn how to deal with techies. Cross-pollination between the two is crucial.
4. Encourage nerdy tendencies among students or rookies journalists. In doing so, they will dramatically increase their employability.
5. Teach them how to sell their work, skills, passion. This ranges from setting pro-like blogs to — yes — creating their own tiny company, the commercial vehicle for rising above the crowd and monetizing their work.

This is what I’m saying to the aspiring journalists I coach. I’m even able to convince some that, in fact, these troubled times in the media bear great opportunities to develop the storytelling techniques of the future."