The rise of blogs and citizen journalism has made the profession of reporting as accessible to everyone as it has ever been. Combined with YouTube and the increasing popularity of distance learning programs, people wishing to pursue reporting are in search of a ways to learn the trade outside of the confines of a 4-year university.
The Landscape
Currently, only a few resources are available for someone who wishes to study media reporting or journalism online for free. While the News University Web site offers little in the way of multi-class courses, it does have a number of free and low-cost video seminars and some interactive activities in a variety of reporting areas. Cubreporter.org also offers a very basic set of guidelines and beginning considerations for reporters. Free-ed.net also offers a rudimentary set of introductory lessons.
Benefits
The obvious benefits to these courses is that they are free of charge and they can be taken from the convenience of your own home. Reporting is a difficult academic path, and it's good for a student to know what he's getting into before spending money on a journalism education. The online approach to a journalism education also has the benefit of instilling in students a variety of skills and knowledge bases they can take with them into other pursuits, such as Web development and any kind of communications work.
Limitations
Regardless of what can be learned in a classroom or online environment, no reporting education is complete without the experience of actually going out and conducting interviews, pouring through public records and sorting through facts. The current selection of free online media reporting classes offers little to no interactivity with actual reporters and gives no opportunity to do any actual reporting. A journalistic education is far more a matter of practice than an academic pursuit, and the options currently available online fall short of what is required to help someone become a working reporter.
Considerations
When considering taking a free online media reporting course, a student should ask herself whether she is interested in the theory and study of the media, or whether she aspires to one day be a news reporter. There are plenty of free resources for a student who wants to study the history of the media, but there is no substitute for field experience and regular communication and evaluation from people who are or have been reporters.
Other Options
An extremely disciplined student can get a full and valuable journalism education through an online distance learning class if he commits to following a regimen of practicing what he learns on a regular basis. With the prevalence and ease of blogging software, an enterprising student can strike out on his own and start reporting on local issues on a breaking or investigative level.
Community college classes are the best option for those who are unable to attend journalism school or a reporting internship program. These classes will likely be taught by working reporters whose insight and guidance is crucial to developing reporting skills. They also offer instructor feedback and a pragmatic perspective on the array of things you will learn out of a reporting textbook.
Tags: journalism education, media reporting, also offers, distance learning, free online, free online media, offers little
