What should the programmer/journalist (GIS person??) know?

MediaShift, a blog about the new journalism from PBS, has the second in a series of posts from Megan Taylor about the programmer/journalist. The topic: what skill should such a person have? She notes that one of the largest computer aided reporting groups teaches some key skills for understanding and managing data: “ArcView mapping software, Geographic Information Science, SPSS statistical analysis software and social network analysis software.”

She goes on to note the responses she received from various programmer/journalists in the field and then looks at the tech behind some recent journo apps. The responses warm my heart - not because they are all GIS-y - but because they focus on a wide range of tools (many open source) and the fact that one must be ready for whatever great tool comes down the pike. This response sounds very different than the list above:

Brian Boyer, a graduate of Medill’s journalism for programmers master’s track and now News Applications Editor at the Chicago Tribune, responded with this list:

XHTML / CSS / JavaScript / jQuery / Python / Django / xml / regex / Postgres / PostGIS / QGIS

It sounds like neogeo toolbox! Now, journalism may be a specialized field, but it does what many organizations do every day: organize information to help people make decisions. The difference with a newspaper? It aims to communicate to many, many different kinds of people, not just the execs or the techies. We in the geospatial field can learn from those who are choosing the tech and the methods to communicate graphically and “Web 2.0ly” with the planet.