Writing (About) Development

This would be interesting for programmers. It's a journalism program through Northwestern's Medill School. Its designed around creating better technical journalists from technically minded people.

I think there is a certain about a of merit to creating a pool of developers who can communicate about technology in and around their particular disciplines. Communication not only helps people understand what is going on in software, but it also helps alleviate fears from new technologies.

One thing that seems to be on the decline is strong science and technology reporting. Things are usually over-reported or over blown. One might wonder if the whole of the Y2K scare was as a result of poor technology reporting.

This same poor understanding and fear of technology inspires such works as Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture^[1]. It's premise is that sources become untrustworthy, as the ability to disseminate information essentially becomes free (via blogs, MySpace, etcetera). This undermines traditional media, which is supposedly superior through editors, publishers, marketing professions - the whole of the industry. He (at least according to critics) widely misses the mark in proving his case.

(I'm not saying that these are now unnecessary. A good editor is certainly a great value. I, for one, would like a little editorial review now and then. It would keep me from saying some of the ridiculously stupid things that happen to fall out on my keyboard - like this aside, for example).

I tend to view the current state of user-driven content (and by these, I mean blogs) as similar to the early days of the printing press. Widely available and affordable print media helped to disseminate new and powerful ideas - the Reformation, for example. The changes that came with print media brought with it an equal set of drivel and highly untrustworthy reporting - political reporting has been a biased and bile-filled subsection of the media from day. The market of readers helped to drive the quality of the publications.

Returning to the Medill program, it could help to further bridge the gap of technology savvy with excellent reporting. Trustworthy sources become so through good journalism.

[1] See this for a response.