Does the need for fundamental reporting skill go without saying when folks in future-of-newspaper circles talk about the tools that journalism students need to have? Because, if it does go without saying, it absolutely should not.

While we should not stop preaching the value of multimedia and programming skills, we absolutely MUST stop devaluing reporting skills by failing to mention them at all when advising the next generation of reporters and editors. Yes, you should study up on audio, video and, if you’re so inclined, a bit of code, while you’re at it. But please don’t think those skills replace more traditional knowledge, such as where and how to get a copy of a story subject’s mortgage documents, the case law and attorney general opinions regarding what does and does not fall under the “extensive use” provision of Florida’s public records law, or how to confirm whether someone who claims to be a military veteran truly is.

I just read and watched a couple of interviews over at the Innovation in College Media blog in which wise folks have advised students not to come a-knockin’ on newsroom doors unless they have some multimedia game. I agree with much of what they’re saying, and I, too, have said that students with nothing more than ink-stained hearts need not apply. But I’m frustrated that comments like this, from Regina McCombs, make no mention whatsoever of solid reporting skill:

“My feeling is that we will no longer hire people without multimedia skills, since we’re learning it’s cheaper to hire those skills at the beginning than have to train people in them after the fact.”

And I’ve read and heard plenty of people say things along the lines of, “We already have people with reporting and writing skills who can produce investigative or enterprise work.”

No doubt about that. My question: Are they immortal? Or will most of them be retiring, bought out or otherwise gone in the next, oh, week to 10 years? I strongly suspect the latter is the case.

As expensive, or even impossible, as it might be to train existing employees to, for example, capture and edit quality video, it is definitely impossible to train someone to be a great investigative or enterprising reporter. You either have the ability, intelligence and tenacity, or you don’t. Fact. Period.

However, those skills must be cultivated by working under the guidance of experienced practitioners. If we continue to devalue journalism and reporting by leaving it out of the conversation on the future of newspapers, we run the risk of losing one of our great franchises, and the main attribute that, to me, makes the industry worth saving in the first place: Public service reporting that rights wrongs both large and small and makes our communities a better place.

Facing a crisis of our own creation, my fear is that our industry, as I suspect is the case in any field in a similar situation, will overreact to our current challenges and hire and spend out of panic rather than considered urgency. Yes, we need to hire these skills into our newsrooms, but editorial job candidates must also continue to have the very same basic reporting skills that we have always, and rightly so, valued.

I’d be happy to hear that a candidate for a local news positions can install WordPress on a shared host, but I’d still want to know whether they have the inherent ability to mine the documents and human sources necessary to send a corrupt county commissioner to jail on federal charges. (EDIT: Make that TWO county commissioners.) Sure, we have people who can do that today, but they aren’t going to be around forever.

Know SQL? Great. Do you also have the tenacity to conduct, on your own with very little assistance from a lawyer, a 13-month public records battle against more than 50 private companies in order to build the unique database that will allow you to uncover dangerous hiring practices in the state’s chaotically outsourced juvenile justice bureaucracy?

I respect and am excited about the information-conveying possibilities of audio, video and, most of all, interactive, data-powered applications. I’m not above embracing new or complicated techniques for the purpose of pure storytelling; I once spent an entire week tackling kernel density interpolation in CrimeStat for a single graphic, after all.

But basic reporting still matters. Don’t leave that fact unsaid. Reporting still matters.