Just in cast I was not clear enough the first time around, I’m not even remotely saying that ALL journalists need to become proficient in a programming language. That would clearly be insane. As with any skill, whether it’s scripting or video editing, only those of us with a specific journalistic reason to dabble in code need do so. If you want to work in a newsroom in Miami, you better speak Spanish. If you want to work with data in any newsroom anywhere, you will run into a problem that requires you to start messing around with a scripting language. It’s inevitable.

What I suspect some of the journalist-as-programmer skeptics might be unaware of is the extent to which newsrooms of all sizes are already working with data of all kinds. Like, on a daily basis, as many newspapers have been doing for well over a decade. Programming skills were incredibly valuable to newsroom data specialists well before the rest of the industry started wringing its hands over the “new media landscape,” back when we “merely” cleaned, crunched, queried or otherwise analyzed data for relatively traditional newspaper packages.

Now, of course, the need for us to move our efforts to the web is clear, and there’s real enthusiasm for doing so. This requires a new set of skills. Specifically, a new set of programming skills. Yes, there are many beautiful tools developed by incredibly smart people that help us do so. But many of these platforms still require some, you guessed it, programming knowledge. And never mind your inevitable need to roll your own applications someday.

It would be brilliant if every newsroom could immediately hire two or three or ten proper, professional programmers and web developers, but that simply is not going to happen. In the meantime, it’s up to those of us with the inclination to at least be “good enough” to learn the programming skills that will get us there.

Whew. That’s it for me on this topic. No “Journalists and Programming 3: At World’s End,” I promise. I have a Python book to study, after all.