These are just a few of the positions that have been secured over the past year by students from our digital media programs, both graduate and undergraduate, at Texas State University. Many of our more experienced alumni now work as digital editors, digital content managers, product managers, digital advertising creatives, and user-experience designers. Some have quickly advanced to executive leadership in digital and innovation roles.
Is your college’s media program preparing students for these jobs and future leadership positions? In 2020, media curricula will need to be overhauled to cater to the demand for these emerging roles and others that don’t even exist yet. That means preparing students for in-demand skills, not job titles.
These could be positions at innovative media organizations that are exploring a range of products for disseminating news and information to the public. These could also be positions at companies like HEB, a major grocery chain in Texas that’s developing a mobile app to support its curbside and delivery services. These could be jobs at technology companies, big or small, who need good communicators to navigate the critical intersection of ethics and technology culture.
Every company is trying to figure out how to become its own version of a technology company, and that means there are numerous competencies in high demand. Take a look at some of the common skills on a few descriptions across a range of job titles, and you’ll see what I mean: analyze data, track and report metrics, HTML/CSS and interactive programming languages, social marketing skills, experience with social media platforms, virtual and augmented reality, machine learning, prototyping, user-centered design, multimedia editing, design thinking, understanding of the technology landscape…
But these descriptions often also require strong communication and leadership skills, collaboration and strategy, problem solving and the ability to learn — exactly what a student should be getting from a modern media degree.
This could seem like an overwhelming list of items to add to a media curriculum. A culture shift is necessary to move your program’s center of gravity toward product thinking and digital product management, in which these competencies integrate naturally. Communication proficiency must be taught in a digital product context to prepare students with relevant and desirable skills, regardless of job title. How will your curriculum address these trends in 2020?
Cindy Royal is a professor and director of the Media Innovation Lab at Texas State University.
These are just a few of the positions that have been secured over the past year by students from our digital media programs, both graduate and undergraduate, at Texas State University. Many of our more experienced alumni now work as digital editors, digital content managers, product managers, digital advertising creatives, and user-experience designers. Some have quickly advanced to executive leadership in digital and innovation roles.
Is your college’s media program preparing students for these jobs and future leadership positions? In 2020, media curricula will need to be overhauled to cater to the demand for these emerging roles and others that don’t even exist yet. That means preparing students for in-demand skills, not job titles.
These could be positions at innovative media organizations that are exploring a range of products for disseminating news and information to the public. These could also be positions at companies like HEB, a major grocery chain in Texas that’s developing a mobile app to support its curbside and delivery services. These could be jobs at technology companies, big or small, who need good communicators to navigate the critical intersection of ethics and technology culture.
Every company is trying to figure out how to become its own version of a technology company, and that means there are numerous competencies in high demand. Take a look at some of the common skills on a few descriptions across a range of job titles, and you’ll see what I mean: analyze data, track and report metrics, HTML/CSS and interactive programming languages, social marketing skills, experience with social media platforms, virtual and augmented reality, machine learning, prototyping, user-centered design, multimedia editing, design thinking, understanding of the technology landscape…
But these descriptions often also require strong communication and leadership skills, collaboration and strategy, problem solving and the ability to learn — exactly what a student should be getting from a modern media degree.
This could seem like an overwhelming list of items to add to a media curriculum. A culture shift is necessary to move your program’s center of gravity toward product thinking and digital product management, in which these competencies integrate naturally. Communication proficiency must be taught in a digital product context to prepare students with relevant and desirable skills, regardless of job title. How will your curriculum address these trends in 2020?
Cindy Royal is a professor and director of the Media Innovation Lab at Texas State University.
Kourtney Bitterly Transparency isn’t just a desire, it’s an expectation
Jeff Kofman Speed through technology
Nico Gendron Make better products if you want to reach Gen Z
Knight Foundation Five generations of journalists, learning from each other
Gordon Crovitz Fighting misinformation requires journalism, not secret algorithms
Greg Emerson News apps fall further behind
A.J. Bauer A fork in the road for conservative media
Joanne McNeil A return to blogs (finally? sort of?)
Stefanie Murray Charitable giving goes collaborative
Jake Shapiro Podcasting gets listener relationship management
Emily Withrow The year we kill the news article
Tanya Cordrey Saying no to more good ideas
Kristen Muller The year we operationalize community engagement
Monique Judge The year to organize, unionize, and fight
Jennifer Brandel A love letter from the year 2073
Joni Deutsch Podcasting unsilences the silent
Logan Jaffe You don’t need fancy tools to listen
Mario García Think small (screen)
Brian Moritz The end of “stick to sports”
Elizabeth Dunbar Frank talk, and then action
Rachel Schallom The value of push alerts goes beyond open rates
John Keefe Journalism gets hacked
Annie Rudd The expanded ambiguity of the news photograph
Irving Washington Leadership isn’t something you learn on the job
Juleyka Lantigua A changing industry amps up podcasters’ ambitions
Sarah Schmalbach Journalist, quantify thyself
Jeremy Gilbert and Jarrod Dicker A call for collaboration between storytelling and tech
Anthony Nadler Clash of Clans: Election Edition
Eric Nuzum Podcasting finally creates another mega-hit show
Bill Adair A Nobel Prize, a Brad Pitt film, and a Taylor Swift song
Cory Haik We’re already consuming the future of news — now we have to produce it
Rachel Davis Mersey The business of local TV news will enter its downward slide
Sara K. Baranowski A big year for little newspapers
Beena Raghavendran The year of the local engagement reporter
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The business we want, not the business we had
Heidi Tworek The year of positive pushback
Dannagal G. Young Let’s disrupt the logic that’s driving Americans apart
Mira Lowe The year of student-powered journalism
Peter Bale Lies get further normalized
Ståle Grut OSINT journalism goes mainstream
Whitney Phillips A time to question core beliefs
Nicholas Jackson What’s left of local gets comfortable with reader support
Fiona Spruill The climate crisis gets the coverage it deserves
Jasmine McNealy A call for context
Barbara Gray Join local libraries on the frontlines of civic engagement
S. Mitra Kalita The race to 2021
Sue Robinson Campaign coverage as test bed for engagement experiments
Kerri Hoffman Opening closed systems
Cristina Kim Public media stops trying to serve “everybody”
Zizi Papacharissi A president leads, the press follows, reality fades
J. Siguru Wahutu Western journalists, learn from your African peers
Matt DeRienzo Local broadcasters begin to fill the gaps left by newspapers
Don Day Respect the non-paying audience
Sarah Stonbely More people start caring about news inequality
Raney Aronson-Rath News deserts will proliferate — but so will new solutions
Rick Berke Incoming fire from both left and right
Talia Stroud The work of reconnecting starts November 4
Jeremy Olshan All journalism should be service journalism
Tom Glaisyer Journalism can emerge newly vibrant and powerful
Linda Solomon Wood Everyone in your organization, moving toward a common goal
Alfred Hermida and Mary Lynn Young The promise of nonprofit journalism
AX Mina The Forum we wanted, the forum we got
Heather Bryant Some kinds of journalism aren’t worth saving
Moreno Cruz Osório In Brazil, collaboration in a time of state attacks
Monica Drake A renewed focus on misinformation
Mike Caulfield Native verification tools for the blue checkmark crowd
Nathalie Malinarich Betting on loyalty
Alana Levinson Brand-backed media gets another look
Doris Truong The year of radical salary transparency
Mariana Moura Santos The future of journalism is collaborative
Alice Antheaume Trade “politics” for “power”
Nushin Rashidian Are platforms a bridge or a lifeline?
Steve Henn The dawning audio web
Felix Salmon Spotify launches a news channel
Laura E. Davis Know the context your journalism is operating within
Errin Haines Race and gender aren’t a 2020 story — they’re the story
Ernie Smith The death of the industry fad
Victor Pickard We reclaim a public good
Hossein Derakhshan AI can’t conjure up an Errol Morris
Meg Marco Everything happens somewhere
Matthew Pressman News consumers divide into haves and have-nots
Helen Havlak Platforms shine a light on original reporting
Jim Brady We’ll complain about other people living in bubbles while ignoring our own
Rachel Glickhouse Journalists get left behind in the industry’s decline
Jakob Moll A slow-moving tech backlash among young people
Michael W. Wagner Increasingly fractured, but little bit deliberative
Richard Tofel A constraint of the reader-revenue model emerges
Tamar Charney From broadcast to bespoke
Joshua P. Darr All that campaign cash will make the media’s problems worse
Masuma Ahuja Slower, quieter, more measured and thoughtful
Logan Molyneux and Shannon McGregor Think twice before turning to Twitter
Imaeyen Ibanga Let’s take it slow
Josh Schwartz Publishers move beyond the metered paywall
Craig Newmark Formalizing newsrooms’ battle against disinformation
Colleen Shalby Journalists become media literacy teachers
Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper Power to the people (on your audience team)
Christa Scharfenberg It’s time to make journalism a field that supports and respects women
Bill Grueskin Our ethics codes get an overhaul
Francesco Zaffarano TikTok without generational prejudice
Alexandra Borchardt Get out of the office and talk to people
Candis Callison Taking a cue from Indigenous journalists on climate change
Carl Bialik Journalists will try running the whole shop
Lucas Graves A smarter conversation about how (and why) fact-checking matters
Brenda P. Salinas Treating MP3 files like text
Julia B. Chan We 👏 take 👏 breaks 👏
Sonali Prasad Climate change storytelling gets multidimensional
Ben Werdmuller Use the tools of journalism to save it
Margarita Noriega The platforms try to figure out what to do with single-subject newsrooms
Kathleen Searles Pay more attention to attention
Lauren Duca The rise of the journalistic influencer
Catalina Albeanu Rebuilding journalism, together
Tonya Mosley The neutrality vs. objectivity game ends
Sarah Alvarez I’m ready for post-news
Geneva Overholser Death to bothsidesism
Cindy Royal Prepare media students for skills, not job titles
Sarah Marshall The year to learn about news moments
Kevin D. Grant The free press stands against authoritarians’ attacks on truth
Dan Shanoff Sports media enters the Bronny era
M. Scott Havens First-party data becomes media’s most important currency
Carrie Brown-Smith Engaged journalism: It’s finally happening
Joe Amditis Collaborative journalism takes its rightful place at the table
Elizabeth Hansen and Jesse Holcomb Local news initiatives run into a capital shortage
Meredith Artley Stronger solidarity among news organizations
Seth C. Lewis 20 questions for 2020
Madelyn Sanfilippo and Yafit Lev-Aretz News coverage gets geo-fragmented
Pablo Boczkowski The day after November 4
Jonas Kaiser Russian bots are just today’s slacktivists
John Garrett It’s the best time in a century to start a local news organization