US university Columbia has created a new masters’ degree combining computer science and journalism.
The Columbia programme, which will accept its first 15 students (tops) in the fall of 2011, seeks to attack the barrier between journalists and the increasingly important IT professionals whose web and digital savvy are crucial to any form of newsgathering, reporting and delivery. The problem: users really don’t know what to ask developers for (or how), and developers have no real idea what their software will need to do in the hands of the users.
The cross-disciplinary programme will equip journalists with vital data mining skills, technology to make their work more efficient and ideas for “new storytelling media using 3D photography and other methods”.
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