Take a look at a newspaper. Any newspaper. Even a newspaper’s web site. What do you see?

Writing is every newspaper’s foundation. Stories require writing, photos require cutlines, multimedia requires titles and usually uses written introductions. Are journalism schools beginning to minimize this foundational skill to make room for multimedia? I believe they are.

Journalism schools know it’s their duty to train students in all aspects of journalism: writing, audio, video, photography, layout and basic web design. But they don’t know how to properly allocate time so that a journalist’s most important asset remains at the top of the training planner while still instilling knowledge about and the value of new media technology. So every school fumbles with their scheduling decisions and builds students in the way they believe is best. Have they stopped to decide why? As far as I can tell, they believe multimedia skills will be instrumental in our …