Sarah Hartley

Guardian Local Editor, The Guardian

“Coping with the rapid pace of change in the news business means examining the potential implications for the future training of journalists and the likely skillsets needed. The opportunity to step away from the day-to-day and take a longer-term view using the Sandbox facilities not only provided some much-needed space but also strengthened relationships”.

The aim of this project was to collaborate with media industry professionals and leading thinkers to co-produce 3 MA level modules for future journalists. The modules will be delivered on-line.

Context

As content is commissioned for multi-platform dissemination individual journalists roles will extend to include commissioning agency specialists to supply a range of 'value added' services e.g. interactive programming, additional graphics, photography and video etc. Their relationship with audiences will change. Networked journalists will deliver niche audiences to mainstream media. All Journalists will need a series of entrepreneurial, technical and creative skills to manage themselves and these new relationships. They will need to demonstrate a thorough understanding of future business models for cross-platform content creation and demonstrate they can apply new thinking in this context. This project will produce the toolset to equip future editorial content creators with the necessary conceptual, creative and technical skills to do this.

As the modules will be validated at level 4 it is key to focus on the development of conceptual skills to enable future journalists to produce work in this shared media space, to develop audiences through a range of social media applications and technologies (above), to manage and deliver complex multimedia projects, to grow and develop new audiences and to monetise content and maximise its audience – in short, to apply a range of new skills in the appropriate context and to innovate. None of the above is truly expected of current journalists – hence the need for the practical ‘head-shift’ nature of this programme.

Process

To enable this to happen Sandbox will facilitate a series of workshops with key editorial, creative, business and technical staff from a diverse range of media and creative companies wishing to address the impact of digital convergence on the business of gathering, producing, editing and circulating content over web, broadcast, mobile, and games consoles like PS2, Nintendo Wii etc.

The first stage of the process is a series of intensive ‘future-scoping’ sessions providing the opportunity for panel members (from competing businesses drawn from across the sector) to meet each other, determine the ‘rules of engagement’, set their objectives and hear guest speakers with a reputation for creative innovation talk about the various challenges and opportunities of ‘digital’. Guests will include senior representatives from Reuters, Sony, Hewlett Packard, BBC World, Headshift, and Magic Lantern. This is not a forum – it’s a peer lead working party who will be charged with the task of developing solutions to some of the issues they will identify.

At the end of stage 1 of the process the industry panel will have agreed the curriculum for three level 4 cross platform content creation modules.

The second stage of the process has two elements. Firstly, it uses a variety of online tools to encourage all panel members to refine and hone the suggested content drawn from stage 1 of the process. Secondly, this virtual development is complemented by further Sandbox facilitation sessions where draft content is fed back to the panelists for further revision. As part of this process the industry panel are also invited to explore the preferred method of content delivery – in line with the expectations of the funding criteria.

Once agreed the content, which will include audio, video, flash animation as well as text based material for delivery on the MELD ICT platform developed specifically to host and support online leaner’s in the work environment. As this project builds on work already done in this area through the previous Pathfinder project there are a series of residual themes which will provide some framework for the early discussions and may become the backbone of each of the modules. These themes are

• Social Media – Applying social media to the craft of storytelling (rather than teaching people Twitter!)
• Games narratives - using game dynamics to design interactive applications that teach people about the real world. (poss - Phil Trippenbach)