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Digital DemandsI share my pessimistic perspectivewith other journalists in Latin America,including my El Tiempo colleagueJulio César Guzmán, with whom Ipublished “The State of Online Journalismin Latin America” in 2004. 2 In ourresearch, more than half of the LatinAmerican journalists who respondedto our survey told us that the quality ofavailable journalism schools’ academicprograms were not good enough. Also,77 percent of those surveyed said thatthe biggest need in terms of trainingwas to teach students how to createmultimedia content; 17 percent indicatedthat the second most importantneed was how to write for the Internet.(Those who responded to our surveyincluded journalists responsible forthe Web edition at 43 of the most importantnewspapers in Latin America.)In the 2007 version of our report,which will soon be published on thePoynter Institute’s Web site, journalistsinsist again on the need for additionaltraining for students while they are atschool; these newsroom leaders alsotell us that at least 55 percent of thoseworking in online operations for themajor Latin American newspapers donot have formal training in onlinejournalism.Another frequent approach in thisregion—one to be avoided since itonly reminds the next generation ofhow bonded we are to the old wayof doing things—is the strategy ofusing patches, of adding an electivehere and an elective there. Instead,entire programs must be completelyredesigned. Those who advocate thepatch-here-patch-there approach tendto be the academics in Latin America;these are the same people who arguethat this new direction in journalists’training—whose strongest advocatesare often from the United States—isnot valid here because our context istotally different from that in developedcountries. They contend, for instance,that Latin America has a relative lowrate access to the Internet or that interestin news at all is concentrated inthe smaller realm of the higher socialclasses.As journalists we insist on the importanceof looking at this issue withits globalized context. What is goingon now in more developed countriesis showing us a path that sooner orlater we will have to walk—and toprepare students now is our role andour responsibility.‘We Media’—in SpanishIn February of 2004 the Spanish editionof “We Media: How AudiencesAre Shaping the Future of News andInformation” was posted online. 3 I wasinvolved in its translation, which I feltwas important so that Spanish-speakingjournalists could have access tothe kind of information about onlinejournalism that English-speaking audienceshave been able to absorb. Andthis report offers plenty of evidenceof why and how the Internet poses abig challenge to journalism schoolsin Latin America. But it also is a greatopportunity for those who work atthese schools to increase their level ofunderstanding by gaining this accessto material otherwise unavailable tothem.Commissioned by The Media Centerat the American Press Institute, “We Media”can now serve as a textbook aboutonline journalism at many schoolswhere classes are taught in Spanish. Accordingto its authors, Shayne Bowmanand Chris Willis, the Spanish versionhas been downloaded almost 100,000times since it was posted—more timesthan the English version.The reasons for its online success—dueto it being free and availablein Spanish—speak to yet anotherdifficult circumstance of manyjournalism schools in Latin America:their dependence on expensive andoutdated course books. The reason:Spanish-speaking journalism programsdo not represent an attractive marketfor book publishers who specialize inthese topics, and the few translatedversions there are take too long toreach our students. And this lag timeis especially dramatic when it comesto receiving current information aboutthe Internet, new media, online journalism,or convergence. Though fewacknowledge it, especially at journalismschools, language becomes agreat barrier to accessing availableinformation. The development ofand the most vigorous debate aboutjournalism’s digital challenge is happeningand being documented mostfully in English.To try to repeat the successful experienceof “We Media,” a Spanish versionof the manual “How to Write for theWeb,” a 300-page handbook, will bepublished and will be available forfree at El Tiempo’s Web site, 4 whichis the leading Web site in Colombia.It provides a good balance of theory,research and real-world examples.While these are examples of stepsthat can and are being taken in Colombia,it is important to point outthat the developed world could—andshould—make a greater effort to shareits knowledge about journalism withthose in the developing world and doso in languages that aren’t English.This would be a good start towardprodding our universities and journalismprograms to move out of the 20thcentury and teach our students for thejobs they will find as the 21st centurymarches on. Guillermo Franco, a 2006 NiemanFellow, is content manager of newmedia at Casa Editorial El Tiempoand editor of Eltiempo.com in Colombia.He has been a professor inpostgraduate journalism programsand lecturer on online journalism.2www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=645323www.hypergene.net/wemedia/espanol.php?id=P644www.eltiempo.comNieman Reports / Fall 2007 89