"With great power comes great responsibility"

With digital technology creating new responsibilities for professional communicators, their education and training has also changed. I graduated with my bachelor's degree in journalism in 2013 and the courses I was required to complete were drastically different than what was required 20 years prior. My course list included broadcast journalism, multimedia journalism, photojournalism, digital publishing and web design, in addition to the traditional reporting courses. And as it turns out, my small, liberal arts college in New Hampshire isn't alone. 

 Kolodzy (2013) wrote that journalists must be willing to use many tools in many different ways and that's true for all communicators. Different jobs require different tools and it's the responsibility of the communicator to determine which tool is best for which job (Kolodzy, 2013). This requires additional training to familiarize employees with new digital tools and on-the-job practice. Employers also need to teach communicators about improper uses of digital and social media and nearly every major company has implemented some type of policy regarding social media in recent years. In fact, Monster.com says it's a necessity for every company these days.

References

Aumente, J. (n.d.) Multimedia Journalism Changes What Universities Teach. Retrieved from https://niemanreports.org/articles/multimedia-journalism-changes-what-universities-teach/.

Kolodzy, J. (2013). Practicing Convergence Journalism: An Introduction to Cross-Media Storytelling. Routledge.