Poynter: Journalists Lacking Multimedia Skills

From Journalism.co.uk:

One in five journalists lacks 'essential' multimedia skills, suggests Poynter research

By: Rachel McAthy

One in five journalists still do not have "essential" multimedia skills and news organisations need to do more to motivate staff, the researchers behind a Poynter Institute News University study said today.

Discussing the results of the survey at the World Editors Forum, Howard Finberg, director of the Interactive Learning & News University, said while journalists assessed that their own proficiency had significantly increased, more than one in five still do not feel they have the "essential" skills to go forward.

A total of 62 per cent of respondents said that five years ago their multimedia skills were non-existent or poor, whereas now this has dropped to 22 per cent.

The research was based on the answers of more than 425 respondents who were asked to evaluate the training they had experienced. The majority of those surveyed were from North America.

A total of 84 per cent of respondents said they have received some multimedia training in the last five years, which Finberg said was "great progress".

But he added that he was concerned about the remaining 16 per cent."This should be 100 per cent. Are we going to leave them behind?"

In video production skills respondents also claimed to be better trained, with 55 per cent rating themselves in categories from proficient to expert, when only 22 per cent would have given themselves these ratings five years ago.


"This still means about half of the staff do not know how to put together an effective video story," Finberg said.

"The number one motivator for success is 'I need to learn'. You need to tell journalists that there is a reason why you're getting the training, it is because we need to move the organisation from here to here. Give them the reasons to learn, give them the background."

He added that in the fast-developing and constantly changing media world training cannot stop.

"We do not have the luxury of declaring victory and moving on, this is not mission accomplished."

"We have moved the needle from improving peoples' work to actually making them feel smarter about what their doing," he told Journalism.co.uk.

"Training is an ongoing process, it's not that you get trained and you stop."