By Isaac ASABOR
There is no denying the fact that technology has altered the global information ecological unit by dislodging media and journalists from the exclusive role of editorial facilitation. The foregoing fact cannot be pooh-poohed as the Internet and social networks are fast giving audiences and media sources the opportunity to equally work and come across as Journalists, particularly on social media platforms. More detrimental to professional Journalists who have spent so many years building their journalism careers is that they now strive with non-professional journalists on social media platforms that have the capacity to define the public agenda in a much more immediate and global way than some professional journalists can.
Unless a Journalist has been living on Mars, he or she will be aware that Journalism as a profession is going through a bout of disruption, particularly from the perspective of the fast emergence of internet technology that is threatening enough to take his or her job. The concerns are not new. But they are now more exigent than ever before.
Today, a career in journalism is more than just writing, editing, and reporting. As gathered, not a few journalists who graduated from higher institutions a few years ago with a degree in mass communication or related fields thought that their degrees would have greatly improved their job prospects, but with the emergence of social media platforms and their attendant applications, particularly the YouTube and Tik Tok, it did not. It will shock anyone to hear that there are some Journalists in this computer-driven age that find it difficult to work with a computer or smartphone.
In Nigeria, some mass communication graduates, like yours sincerely, landed jobs in the field only because not a few newspaper publishing outlets are yet to fully immerse their operations in digital technologies.
Currently, most media entities are still producing news and broadcasting programmes using 19th-century technologies. Programmes which are companies’ biggest assets are still not digitized for easy access. Therefore, when there is breaking news, citizens on social media broadcast or publish it first.
At this juncture, it is expedient to clarify that this write-up is not meant to be a critique of media entities or higher institutions that offer journalism or mass communication courses but to highlight the fact that there is an urgent need to address media education and training in order to prepare graduates to function effectively in the digital landscape. In the American and European continents, students are taken through an array of courses that basically acquaint them with the introduction to the web and then deal with the basics of journalistic writing, not just from a web-centric viewpoint but with knowledge of media law and ethics, and then finally on how the internet functions with specific reference to how best to use social media.
The web-based lessons, no doubt, provide students with a picture of web-based journalism today, and also help them to understand how technology has changed media form and content, and how web-based stories differ from those in print. They are also taught the challenges faced by the media when it comes to making a profit in the internet age and the challenges by web-based journalists and by investigative journalism in particular.
Given the foregoing method of teaching journalism or mass communication in other climes, there is no doubt that such graduates will confidently hit the media with the skills of writing for the web. Not only by imbuing them with confidence, but the teaching method also helps them to understand how people read and negotiate content online and how to write in a way that is web-friendly, and how to organize their web content. The teaching method also put them on a better pedestal to understand the ‘inverted pyramid’ form used for news stories generally, and web-based content more specifically.
It is germane to note at this juncture that journalism as a profession has today gone beyond the age of writing. It is therefore not surprising that Journalists and student-Journalists on other continents are today taught to understand the scope and range of web-based citizen journalism and to appreciate how a website might be useful (and how to go about setting up one). It also helps them to understand the limitations of blogs, vlogs, and podcasts and how to set them up.
Still in the same vein, the teaching method helps them to have a more comprehensive idea about what is what in the world of social media and how to make the best use of it as journalists. Before considering interactive social media, the teaching method looks at Google and Wikipedia, then gives pen sketches of different social media options, suggesting how best to use them (including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, and TikTok).
Without a doubt, the advent of communication technologies has revolutionized the way news and information are produced. This has caused participatory media to emerge whereby private citizens who are not journalists are involved in producing content and reporting news on social media, including blogs and podcasts.
With the ongoing disruption in the media sector, no longer do people sit and wait on major newscasts a few times per day, rather, they are kept up-to-date with news and information from around the world every second through social media.
Understanding the role of the media in society has become essential. Therefore, educational institutions and media organizations must invest in innovative training and education to reflect growth, and prepare professionals for the future world of work, specifically in the field of journalism.
As it is at the moment, it is apropos to encourage journalists to strive towards retooling themselves with digital concepts, social, data, web, mobile, digital business, analytics, data journalism, and internet history as not retooling is capable of rendering them unemployable in the field of journalism in the near future as media-related technology keeps advancing.
Against the foregoing backdrop, it is expedient to say that practicing journalists must be aggressive in their pursuit to acquire the knowledge and training that will equip them for media careers in the 21st century and beyond
It cannot be denied that not a few universities and polytechnics may be experiencing challenges from outdated equipment and competent faculty in their efforts to change their curriculum, but at any cost, change must happen if they are to shape the careers of future journalists and affect the society as a whole.
In fact, the digital landscape journalism ape is not to be feared, but to be understood and embraced. It is high time we embraced digital media education one student at a time. Be that as it may, fellow gentlemen of the press, Let us retool in this digital age or Become Unemployable.
