My week learning a new language: how to code

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Thibault J.

By Tessa Weinberg

Coding, HTML, CSS and JavaScript are just a few of the words that makes most traditional print journalists cringe. Just right-click and inspect the elements of any webpage and you can get a glimpse into the confusing strings of code that govern the site you’re using. One of the items on my summer bucket list is to grasp the basics of coding, in the hopes of one day building my own website. Over the course of a week I tried out two popular coding sites: Codecademy and Free Code Camp. Below I’ve included what I found to be some of the pros and cons of each as well as a little bit of what I learned along the way.

LIVE BLOG: Crack the Code: WordPress

By Kara Tabor

Hi everyone! We're beginning our latest event "Crack the Code: WordPress." Feel free to follow along on this live blog post or on Twitter at @ONAMizzou.

Our featured speaker is Madi Alexander, a journalism grad student and coding wizard who has interned for the New York Times and ProPublica. She's leading our event and introducing some invaluable hacks for getting started with WordPress.

LIVE BLOG: How to Stand Out From the Crowd

By Maria Davison

We're beginning our event, "How to stand out from the crowd."

This evening we're joined by Andrew Gibson, who works at the Orlando Sentinel, Sally French, from MarketWatch and Jessie Lueck, who's working at Hallmark.

While at Mizzou, Jessie Lueck studied magazine design. She is a now a graphic designer for Hallmark cards in Kansas City.

Sally French graduated with a degree in photojournalism. She's working in San Francisco at MarketWatch.

Andrew Gibson was in convergence journalism and took several computer science courses. He's working in Orlando at the Sun Sentinel working on long-term projects and web development.

3 Tips to Help You Survive Journalism’s Tech Revolution

By A.J. Feather

Via Compass-Strategies.net

There are several skill sets all writers, broadcasters and editors need to have for their day-to-day work - AP Style, the ability to use a specific workflow environment like iNews, an understanding of certain applications like Final Cut Pro and the Adobe Creative Suite, etc.

But no matter how many applications you try and no matter how good your understanding of the English language is, new environments, software and technical issues will come your way.  To help you conquer the learning curve, I have made a list of three things I recommend every journalist do.

Your Unofficial Summer Syllabus

By Kara Tabor

Creative Commons photo from Flickr user samantha celera

Ah, summer--it's the time when journalism students across the country exchange classes for internships, jobs, personal projects and (hopefully) some relaxation. It's also a great opportunity to get caught up on some of the extracurricular learning that tends to take the back burner during the academic year.

Depending on your commitments, summertime may be busy-time. However, even the most tightly scheduled students can squeeze in a few minutes here and there to dig into some new resources.

Resources to learn software and coding

By Ashley Crockett

Photo courtesy of Best PSD to HTML

Are you ready to take the first step in learning software and programming languages? If so, read on to learn how.

Classes

JOURN 4502
Multimedia Planning and Design
Learn to build websites using HTML5, XHTML, CSS3 and jQuery. Secretary Nicole Garner and I just completed this course and loved it. Rob Weir, the director of digital development for the Columbia Missourian, will teach the class in the spring. He starts by teaching the most basic tools, so his students can build beautiful websites by the end of the semester.

JOURN 4430
Computer-Assisted Reporting
Data journalism takes tons of information and breaks it down into bite-size pieces for people to understand. In CAR, students use everyday programs like Microsoft Access and Excel to turn data sets into stories. Students learn how to pull information from databases using Structured Query Language (SQL) as well as how to think critically when analyzing findings. CAR isn't just for investigative reporters: It offers a variety of skills every journalist can use.