Era ora che si parlasse di cose serie come le rinnovate competenze di chi fa lavoro giornalistico. Si prevedono in Italia reazioni scandalizzate di ordine professionale e sindacato.
People say that if you want to become a journalist you have to blog or use Twitter – to show to the world that you have something to say, and that you are desperate to get it out there. Well, that’s old news. Now, if you want to become a journalist you need to be able to code.
There is a certain logic to this. Up until now, as a journalist you worked with information, researching facts and figures which then you passed on to the reader. However, in a digital world there are more platforms you can use to convey that information – think of maps or mobile applications, augmented reality. And to be able to do that you will have know how to code.
In fact, more and more younger journalists code or are starting to learn how to do it. The trend was first spotted by Ryan Tate for Gawker, and he listed Nick Bilton and Jennifer 8 Lee of the New York Times, Taylor Buley of Forbes and the novelist Elizabeth Spiers among others, with most of them learning or coding Python, the key programming language used at Google.
Coding for them is simply a way to hand out the information in the best way possible, and can sometimes lead to a multimillion-pound venture.