About ten days ago, I started writing a blog post about my updated thoughts on recent J-School grads and what skills I think aspiring journalists should be acquiring.

I promise I’ll finish that badboy soon (mostly because I’ve already got a ton of work in it), but I wanted to comment on a somewhat related post that I saw this morning on PJNet. I encourage you all to read that post.

A lot of what I’m blogging about today I also sent in an e-mail to Leonard Witt at PJNet.

Here goes:

+++My message to young journalists hasn’t changed in years:Be able to write and report your ass off, and have a great mindset when it comes to how we might need to tell those stories — regardless of the current technology or methods of distribution. I believe in my heart that the key to being a successful journalist now (and in 25 years) will rest in a reporter’s ability to write well.I would encourage you to read this old post I wrote earlier this year, which is basically an answer to an e-mail question Bryan Murley sent requesting thoughts for collegiate journalists for a piece on Murley’s great “Innovation in College Media” siteI think you’ll see my message is quite strong about being very good at the core journalism skills:

Know how to write. Know how to tell a story. Know how to conduct an interview. Know how to research your ass off.

When you combine strong traditional journalism skills with a great mindset, you’ve got a journalist who’s going to be fine regardless of what new things or technologies come our way.

When a J-School that I worked very closely with a few years ago changed its curriculum to be more “converged,” the most distressing thing I noticed in the school’s students was a deficiency in basic writing and editing skills … and I wasn’t quiet about it.

My biggest problem with a lot of young journalists is that so many of them have the crappiest attitudes on the planet. So many of them are so close-minded that it’s shocking, especially if these folks represent the future of our industry.

To be honest, I’d love to give them all the writing test that all members of our new-media team have to take just to show them that they’re not nearly as hot as they think they are.

But let’s get back to the post on PJNet that started this ramble: I’m not really sure today’s journalists have to pitch and catch. I honestly don’t know.

My best guess is that it’s about them knowing how to do one of those things extremely well, and then understanding how important the other positions on the field are.

And that’s where most of them seem to fall flat.

My biggest question to J-Schools now is why are your students so dang close-minded? Where was that instilled, and what are you going to do to help them graduate with a degree and a mindset that will keep them employed as long as they want to be members of the Fourth Estate?

+++Well, I gotta go now. I’ll try to come back later today to look over this post again to make sure that I haven’t embarrassed myself too much.Besides, the Jayhawks are on TV right now. Priorities.

First, we have to make a distinction between reporters and the writers who are writers and reporters too. I think in terms of a continuum from straight news reporting to feature writing to literary nonfiction.

The vast majority of people in the news business are reporters, they collect facts and write them in a coherent fashion. These fact collectors could shoot some photos, put together some audio and video, and have a better story than if they were just transferring notes to story copy. They are on the straight news side of the continuum. As we move across the continuum past the feature writer towards the literary nonfiction writer, we have a different breed of writers with different abilities and skill sets.

 These writers see the world in ways most of the rest of us cannot. It takes practice and it takes time because they do far more reporting and research than the reporter who runs out and collects information and instantly pushes it into the paper or onto the web.  It requires the ability to see little details, nuances. Once that writer has to start fumbling around with a camera and tape-recorder and spend times editing all those pieces together, there is little time for the finely crafted written story.

Here is my Kent Hrbek theory of writing. Hrbek, a former Minnesota Twin, was a great first baseman because he was tall, and could stretch, if he had thrown left handed, he would have been even been a better first baseman because it would mean throwing to home, second or third or would be a natural move. On the other hand, if you moved him over 30 feet and asked him to be a second baseman, you would have turned him into a bum. Everything that worked for him as a first baseman would work against him at second especially if he had been left handed, because that’s a not a natural throwing arm to first.

Think of any position on the field; who would want the pitcher to be the catcher too? But that’s what we want from our best reporter writers. We want them not only to play any position but also to play the equivalent of two or three sports — and video,  audio and writing for the page are indeed different sports.  

My advice to the journalism student who wants to be a great writer above all else is to then concentrate your energies in that area. Get some exposure to the other mediums media, but don’t let them turn you into another cog in the machine. Seek your passion. Do all that is necessary to become a great literary journalist, our democracy for sure, and maybe our trade, needs you as much and probably more than we do need all the jacks of all trades.

However, if great nonfiction literary writing, with all the reporting, research and observation skills it entails, is not your first passion, then follow the advice of Curley, Owen, Conley and Murley, learn all the web skills you can because that is where most reporting jobs will be.

Update:  See Rob Curley’s reply to this post. Also see what Mark Hamilton  and everyone else says in the comments below. It’s an excellent discussion. Bryan Murley says at his site:

The consensus would seem to be that there might be places for some pure-play “serious non-fiction writers” in the future of journalism, but they’re going to be few and far between.

He is another update, point of view from Paul Conley, who works with folks who hire young graduates:

…what I hear every day from my clients and other professionals — a college kid with a resume that could have been written in the 1970s is not worth hiring. I don’t care how well he writes. Writing well is not enough.

Earlier Mindy McAdams in a thoughtful post wrote from her Teaching Online Journalism site:

Journalism is a team sport, as Witt encourages us to imagine.

Being a writer is not.

Click on the comments button below and join the discussion,  as of this morning already 1,600 people have visited this discussion.

…this report is designed to help both new and old media companies identify and aggressively redefine business models, create dynamic processes, develop flexible organizations and inspire vital leadership to navigate industry changes ahead.

Here is what the Washington Post’s Rob Curley, who is a report participant, says about the report:

It’s about 50 pages long and includes interviews with 36 executives from both old and new media companies, including several folks from The Washington Post Company, like my boss, Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive CEO Caroline Little.

Curley writing about Don Graham, the Post’s Chairman, says:

…the coolest thing I ever saw Don do was have lunch with our team’s summer interns and write down three pages of notes from his discussions with them.