Learn Arcview. Refresh statistics knowledge. Produce more multimedia. Just three of the ambitious goals on newbie reporter Shannan Bowen’s list. Bowen’s been out of college a little more than a year and works for a small paper in North Carolina, the Wilmington Star-News. On her personal blog, she’s tracking her progress as a young journalist.
It seems like I’m always working on something. If I’m not working for the paper, I’m working on learning new things and, well, just being a journalism nerd.
It’s both inspiring and a little intimidating to read Shannan’s plan for “getting on track.”
She wants to learn a lot, especially in the multimedia realm: Flash, Python, Django, MySQL, Perl and PHP. And she wants to brush up on skills she learned in school.
I love creating packages to go along with my projects for both the paper and online. The newspaper I work for gave me a digital camera that takes some really good video. We have a Final Cut Pro license. I took a couple of film classes in college where I used Final Cut Pro often. That was over a year ago, though, so I also need to refresh my memory there.
It’s a good reminder that skills get rusty when you don’t use them and that you have to make time to stay fresh and keep learning. What’s on your to-learn list? Mine includes a free application I just read about called SlideShare that lets you create slide shows and presentations to embed on a blog or Web site, while also keeping them private. Stay tuned!
