View a complete list of CNJO's member organizations at CNJO.org/members
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has used the Tomorrow's Workforce journalist training project as a launching pad to reinvent an aggressive, but somewhat random training effort into one that would be the envy of most newspapers for its scope, focus and aspiration, Tim Porter reports. Training is "the way to get a better newsroom and a better newspaper," Editor Julia Wallace says about her newspaper's plan, which requires a minimum of 20 hours training during the year for each of the newsroom's 385 staffers and at least 30 hours for its 100 managers.
More information about other major training projects under way and the Council's role is below.
In 2001, the Council worked with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to develop a survey on the state of training in the journalism profession. It was the first major effort on the subject since the 1993 publication of "No Train, No Gain" by The Freedom Forum.
In 2002, the Knight Foundation published "Newsroom Training: Where's the Investment?," a study for the Council. The survey, conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates, involved interviews of 1,964 news executives and news staffers.
Its major conclusions were that U.S. journalists say the lack of training is their major source of job dissatisfaction, ahead of pay and benefits; more than two-thirds receive no regular skills training; news companies overall have not increased their training budgets in the past decade; and news executives say time and insufficient budgets are the main reasons they do not provide more training opportunities.
In a related project, also funded by the Knight Foundation, the Council in collaboration with the Society of Professional Journalists developed a Web site that lists all journalism training programs in a single, easily searchable place.
The Web site, www.journalismtraining.org, was officially launched at the SPJ convention in Tampa, Fla., in September 2003.
The Council keeps its members up to date on five other parts of a $10 million newsroom training initiative of the Knight Foundation:
Tomorrow's Workforce, based at Northwestern University's Medill School
of Journalism, helps news organizations determine how strategic investments
in training and professional development can approve the appeal and value
of their news content. For more information, see
www.tomorrowswork.org
NewsTrain, sponsored with the Associated Press Managing Editors and
Radio-Television News Directors Association, brings training for newsroom
middle managers to regional locations. See
newstrain.org for more.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism's Traveling Curriculum offers
in-newsroom workshops to help journalists sharpen critical decision-making
skills. www.journalism.org/resources/education/traveling.asp
News University, based at the Poynter Institute, offers on-line learning
for journalists. www.newsu.org
The Learning Newsroom, a project of the American Press Institute
and the American Society of Newspaper Editors, is developing tools to
help newsrooms become learning organizations.
www.learningnewsroom.org