Writing news, writing code

Posted by Elizabeth Redman on January 18, 2010 at 12:44 PM

New media skills are becoming key for journalists, as social media such as Twitter and Facebook are increasingly used for sourcing information and distributing articles. So in the future, will all journalists need to know how to write code as well, The Guardian's Digital Content Blog asks?

One on level, coding appears lucrative, with former Daily Mail journalist Greg Hadfield founding football news website Soccernet and then selling it for $40 million.

But further, it's a question of the platform that is used to communicate the information, according to blogger Mercedes Bunz. "Up until now, as a journalist you worked with information, researching facts and figures which then you passed on to the reader," she writes. "However, in a digital world there are more platforms you can use to convey that information - think of maps or mobile applications, augmented reality. And to be able to do that you will have know how to code."

Indeed, Ryan Tate at the Gawker blog notes a trend of journalists, particularly younger ones, who code, including Nick Bilton from The New York Times, Jennifer 8. Lee, formerly of the same publication, and Taylor Buley from Forbes. "Learning to program is yet another way journalists are becoming generalists," he writes.

Not all journalists need to have these skills, Bunz argues. In the future, there will be two ways of doing journalism: finding out information and writing about it, and finding out information and building a platform to express it in new ways, she concludes.

In the rapidly changing newspaper industry, as readers increasingly migrate online, it's handy for journalists to have as many strings to their bow as possible. Will coding become the next indispensable skill?

Sources: PDA: The Digital Content Blog, Gawker