Jeff Beckham

A new study of the skills and characteristics important to online newsrooms has been released by the Medill School of Journalism with the cooperation of the Online News Association. Surprisingly, the most important skills cited weren’t tech-related.

A few of the key findings, as pointed to by Rich Gordon in E-Media Tidbits:

• The skills deemed most important by survey respondents included attention to detail, news judgment, grammar and style, multitasking skills, communication skills and ability to work under time pressure.
• Less than half the producers and managers said reporting original stories was part of the job expectations for online newsrooms.
• HTML, Photoshop, use of a content management system and Web usability are the most important tools and technologies for online newsroom workers.

(As an ironic aside, when I looked this morning, there were two typos in the opening sentence of this page that links to the report.)