Tidbits: Ditch Dreamweaver

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Permalink Reply by Molly McDonough on January 30, 2008 at 10:25am

I was part of a similar discussion at Columbia College (Chicago) about tech priorities in j-school. I'm not sure that it's imperative to learn a specific program, only that j-students learn how to publish on multiple platforms. The technology changes too fast to get hung up on any one particular system.

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Permalink Reply by Amy Gahran on January 30, 2008 at 11:01am

I agree that j-schools shouldn't get hung up on which CMS they teach, but that they should teach *some* real CMS and not focus on Dreamweaver. Tools embody mindsets, and Dreamweaver treats sites like isolated and fairly static islands. You can't learn how important it is to make your content findable, easy to follow (feeds, etc.), and connected to the community (comments, etc.) with a static site.

- Amy Gahran

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Permalink Reply by Digidave on January 30, 2008 at 8:27pm

Amy
I've had this exact conversation many times before.
I remember while studying at Columbia's J-school and learning Dreamweaver taking my prof. aside and asking: Why don't we either learn a specific CMS or at least talk about the basics of CMS's.

The only reason I knew about CMS's was because I was a part-time student and was working on the Assignment Zero project which was essentially us building a CMS for citizen journalism. If it hadn't beef for that experience - I'd be clueless now - and upon the first job I got after grad school - I would have been at a loss.

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Permalink Reply by Alexandre Gamela on January 31, 2008 at 2:02pm

I was a bit surprised when i read this. Dreamweaver is awesome, but it's a tool, where you work with html, css, etc. It's like having a car, but without knowing the traffic rules or having a map. You might get to your destination anyway, but if you knew the way from the start, a bike would do as well. My point is, though i like dreamweaver to create joomla templates, or change minor programming, i always remember those hardcore programmers that used notepad only to create their stuff. And they could, because they understood the rules and the ways to their destination.
CMS need basic html, CSS and php knowledge, and that's it, and most of the times (hardly ever, if you're not a developer) and nothing much. Beyond that it's all about understanding the logics and quirks of each system. An there's always a geek somewhere trying to make our work easier-we should thank them all.

So, dreamweaver? Great. But you can hit the same nail with a cdifferent hammer.

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Permalink Reply by Christopher Mims on February 1, 2008 at 11:51am

As someone who has operated at every level of the online journalism process (from bits to reporting) I would say that if that's what they're teaching, I am glad I didn't go to journalism school. :)

Seriously though, given what's out there, what really matters these days in online media, I would call insisting on Dreamweaver (or even mentioning it) criminal negligence.

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Permalink Reply by Michele Jones on February 1, 2008 at 4:48pm

Why not teach both? Most CMS's are proprietary, so there's no point teaching a student one program in depth because they will end up using another program entirely at their first job. However, they need to be introduced to the concept and understand the basic characteristics of a CMS.
Web producers should also have a good base of HTML skills and know how to use Dreamweaver because it's a very useful tool. If all they ever use is a CMS, they relinquish a lot of control over their sites.
I never heard of CMS programs until I went to work. I would have liked to have had a clue before I went in, but ultimately, it doesn't take long to learn on the job.

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Permalink Reply by Staci Baird on February 1, 2008 at 10:27pm

Dreamweaver is not something journalists need to know. I agree with Molly that the technology changes too fast to get hung up on any one system. Instead, students need to be able to pick up technical skills/software on their own. I think j-school's need to spend more time teaching journalism and storytelling on multiple platforms.

The ability to get in and understand a variety of CMS is necessary, but leave the DW, CSS and HTML to people who want to be web designers/developers. It takes time and a lot of work to really be able to design and build web sites, it's not something you can learn in a semester. But if a journalism student is interested, then they need to learn those skills somewhere else.

What I do think is important is for j-schools to expose students to a variety of systems and software. There is no need to be scared of technology, and as an aspiring journalist you should be curious enough to want to learn more. :-)

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Permalink Reply by Brea Jones on February 7, 2008 at 9:55pm

Learning how to work with a CMS is crucial to a journalism education, and I think much of that experience should come from a college newspaper Web site. While j-schools may be teaching Dreamweaver, many are also offering courses with a blogging component and every blog platform is a CMS.

I disagree that CSS and HTML should be left to developers and Web designers. Not every journalist may want or need these skills, but there are plenty of us out there that use them every day in newsrooms, and that number is likely to increase as more readers and resources are shifted to the Web.

The one benefit I see in j-schools using Dreamweaver, or any WYSIWYG editor, is getting students to post their resumes and work samples on the Web easily. But this could also be done in WordPress or Drupal.

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Permalink Reply by Staci Baird on April 30, 2008 at 1:21pm

A fine example of why you need to know HTML (and not just Dreamweaver) if you're going to work in online journalism: NYTimes.com hand-codes its HTML.

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Permalink Reply by Tracy DeLatte on July 26, 2008 at 1:40pm

I think it is a little ignorant to say that CSS, HTML and other basic web languages are not needed by web journalists. A trained monkey can get a job publishing stories and video with a CMS. But a true innovative web journalist can make use of coding to do much more.

I think j-schools need to teach all students journalism and storytelling on multiple platforms. But, anyone who graduates with a concentration in web journalism should understand the technical aspects of the web. They don't have to go so far as teaching students things like Javascript or PHP, but enough so that the student can take a linear print or video story and republish it in a non-linear format for a web audience.

When my boss wants something to show off to her colleagues around the country she always wants something that I've used my knowledge of the basic programming languages to create.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Molinet on August 8, 2008 at 3:28am

Dreamweaver is a powerful web design tool, and to think of it as a CMS misses the point. Web 2.0 has made back end systems easy to manage and understand. There's little training necessary -- even for web-challenged journos. Dreamweaver, in the hands of a skilled person, can build a web site from the ground up. That most people only use Dreamweaver for mundane tasks is akin to water skiing behind a 110-foot yacht.

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