With
the introduction of online media and news websites, job prospects for
journalists in news organizations are on the decline, especially those involved
in print media. On average, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is estimating an 13 percent decrease in employment from 2012 to 2022. In this competitive job
field, it is necessary to have skills that make you into a more appealing
applicant for employers. Because there is currently a shift from print media to
digital media, possessing computer skills has become significantly more advantageous.
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| Data from Bureau of Labor Statistics |
Digital Media Has Become Heavily Integrated into Society and Job Fields Outside of Computer Science
The
projected job growth outlook for software development and computer related jobs
from 2012 to 2022 are 22 percent and 18 percent respectively. The increase is
massive compared to the average job growth projections for other jobs in the
same time period. Most of this growth is due to the prevalence of digital media
and electronics. Because digitization is being introduced to all aspects of
society, there is higher demand for workers who understand it.
In
the past few decades, programming has been integrated into our daily lives. The
internet and smart phone applications appear to be the most obvious examples of
advances; however, there are many more that we use without even realizing it.
Thermostats, washing machines, and many other household appliances rely on
computer chips and coding to ensure they work properly. In several modern
appliances, there is the option to use mobile applications that can control basic
functions. The situation is paralleled in the field of journalism.
Originally,
a writer would find a story that would interest his audience and then gather data
from researching at libraries or conducting interviews. Now with databases,
news websites, and mobile applications there is more reliance on digital data.
A significant portion of the information for a story can be found online. The
ability to construct and understand how a database works can make the process of
writing and interpreting much more efficient.
Digitization Has Created Many New Types of Jobs in Journalism Such as Data and Data-Driven Reporting
Computer
skills have become relevant enough that some news organizations are actively
seeking journalists with programming experience. There are websites that
consolidate job listings from across the country for programming journalists.
These news organizations need people specializing in technological skills such as application
and website developers, but they are also looking for data reporters and data
journalists. Having programming skills could give you an edge when searching
for a job in journalism, because of the options it opens up.
Data
journalism has become very popular due to the very large amounts of statistics that
is free to access online. The information is referred to as Big Data. It is the record of everything that has been researched and posted online. This can
include web behavior, user information, surveys, and scientific information. Big
Data is large enough that it is measured in petabytes, which are one quadrillion
bytes each. With so much information, there is potential for stories and news
if it can be translated into a format suitable for the general public.
To
translate Big Data, data reporters are used. Recent studies have analyzed how the style of data reporting has changed journalism, but there were some differences in the results. These jobs are placed
into two different categories. The first one is data analysis where the
reporter reviews the all of the data on a subject and makes a visual to
communicate the facts to the public. This can be done with a graph, chart,
infographic, or video. The second category is data-driven jobs which rely on
making a story after collecting information from a database or somewhere else online. The result would
be a story based on the facts interpreted from the data.
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| Data Journalism Flow Chart |
Going through that process with thousands of documents to gather data cannot be done by hand efficiently, so
other methods must be used. By automating the data collection and analysis,
programming journalists can filter mountains of data easily and communicate the
trends they find.
Learning Programming and Applying It to Journalism Does Not Require College Degrees
Many
colleges are offering a joint major between computer science and journalism or
a digital journalism degree. These types of degrees bring aspects of both mass
communication and programming together. They give the students the tools to convert
data into interactive infographics and other informative styles of
communication for the audience. Although the joint degrees do show the trend of
digitizing journalism, they are not critical to becoming a programmer
journalist.
While
extra schooling and degrees are an option, gaining experience with programming
languages and working in the digital field can provide a similar outcome.
Learning to code does not necessarily require formalized classes. With a bit of
effort and some free time, educational sites and introductory videos to coding
make learning code fast and simple. There is enough available material online
that journalists can apply coding skills to their work without further
schooling.
In a Technology Based World, Programming and Logic Skills Are Very Valuable Even Without a Computer
Even
if you are not planning on using programming frequently, the skills that you
learn can be applied in numerous different ways. Automation of searching,
analyzing, and other computer tasks can be used make work simpler. In addition,
coding is a very logic based skill. The step by step outlook used for writing programs
can be applied to every day problem solving as well.
Programming
is a valuable skill that can be applied to many different fields. In
journalism, it is especially useful because the goal of journalists is to communicate
facts to a general audience in the form of text and graphs. With the ability to
filter and interpret Big Data, programmer journalists can look through massive
amounts of information and pull out factual stories that they can publish.
While a college degree is no necessary to learn coding, it does take a logic
based approach and some effort to understand.
References
http://www.bls.gov/ooh/media-and-communication/reporters-correspondents-and-broadcast-news-analysts.htm#tab-6
http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Computer-and-Information-Technology/Software-developers.htm#tab-6
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