Comments on: Jumping From The Frying Pan Into The Fire http://blog.socaltech.com/2007/05/24/jumping-from-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire/ Thoughts on Southern California's high tech and venture capital industry Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:06:35 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 By: richgor http://blog.socaltech.com/2007/05/24/jumping-from-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire/comment-page-1/#comment-196 richgor Fri, 25 May 2007 05:11:17 +0000 http://blog.socaltech.com/2007/05/24/jumping-from-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire/#comment-196 Thoughtful post, Ben. As the guy who put together the proposal that won this grant, I would say that there could be many reasons this won't work -- but lack of opportunities won't be one of them. Journalists without programming skills? They have some reason to worry. Programmers whose only ability is writing code? They have a lot of reason to worry -- unless they're in India or Russia, where their skills will earn them a nice living at a lot lower pay than U.S. programmers get. But a journalist/programmer? I truly believe they will have lots of options -- from working in a traditional media company that needs people who are bilingual in tech and journalism ... to being part of a startup ... to being an entrepreneur. I don't think we've scratched the surface yet of how journalism might benefit from a programming mindset -- nor how Web applications could be built to fulfill the journalistic mission. Rich Gordon Read about the program here: http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/admissions/programmers.html or my blog post about it here: http://www.readership.org/blog2/2007/05/seeking-new-breed-of-techno-journalists.html Thoughtful post, Ben. As the guy who put together the proposal that won this grant, I would say that there could be many reasons this won’t work — but lack of opportunities won’t be one of them.

Journalists without programming skills? They have some reason to worry. Programmers whose only ability is writing code? They have a lot of reason to worry — unless they’re in India or Russia, where their skills will earn them a nice living at a lot lower pay than U.S. programmers get.

But a journalist/programmer? I truly believe they will have lots of options — from working in a traditional media company that needs people who are bilingual in tech and journalism … to being part of a startup … to being an entrepreneur. I don’t think we’ve scratched the surface yet of how journalism might benefit from a programming mindset — nor how Web applications could be built to fulfill the journalistic mission.

Rich Gordon

Read about the program here: http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/admissions/programmers.html

or my blog post about it here:
http://www.readership.org/blog2/2007/05/seeking-new-breed-of-techno-journalists.html

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