On Tuesday, Andrew Nacin dropped my name as someone who falls on the yes-you-should-learn-programming-end-of-the-spectrum. While I appreciate Nacin’s mentioning me as a “living case study,” I do not think it’s necessary for today’s journalist to learn to program.

Before I explain why, let’s look at reasons you should learn to program. First, as MediaShift alludes to, we don’t really know what the media landscape will look like in 10 years. Is it possible that some level of programming will be folded into the standard responsibilities of the average journalist by that point? Maybe, though I doubt it. Second, it may provide you new career opportunities. Plenty of news organizations are starting to experiment with heaps of data and geo-location and the like, and being able to think journalistically while sifting through gigabytes of information may be your ticket to a cool new gig. And of course, the proverbial “why not?” reasoning. If you want to use your time to learn PHP or Ruby (or the WordPress Loop), be my guest. Just recognize it’s not for everyone.

Those points notwithstanding, programming simply is not a necessary (or useful) skill for today’s average journalist. Notice I did not say that programming is not a useful skill on its own; of course it is. The fact is, however, that programming requires too much time and energy to learn, while not providing an outlet for journalists to regularly use the knowledge. Sure, Brian Boyer and Matt Waite are make their living building awesome news applications. It’s just that not everyone can grow up to be them. The cops beat reporter in any city, USA should be cultivating sources, traversing the city, exposing corruption, and producing front page stories (and multimedia packages, maybe!), and that takes time and effort. For the good of the public and the reporter, these goals should trump those of learning to program.

Sure, that cops reporter could have a great idea for web application that automatically maps a location on a landing page when the local police or fire department tweets about an incident. But rather than having to build it all by him or herself, that’s a project to be tackled in conjunction with a dedicated developer. Those guys with the snarky T-shirts and binary jokes? Give them something to do. No need to steal their jobs. In this era of multitasking and convergence, it seems like people (and especially young journalists) are encouraged to learn how to do everything, and while initiative is good, that’s the wrong sentiment. Writers will produce the best written word, photographers will snap the best pictures, and programmers will build the best apps. That’s not going to change, so don’t give up being awesome at something so you can be insufficient at a lot of things.*

In short, if you want to be a programmer and build things, learn to program. If you want your byline on A1 tomorrow morning, focus on getting better at what it is you really want to do.

*Yes, with layoffs and the like, sometimes you will have to be the reporter and the photographer. But, that only works if you’re good enough to tackle both responsibilities, and you might not be if you spread yourself too thin with extraneous forays into too many sectors of the media industry.

I’m finding it very difficult to eat well on the job, and unfortunately for my body, I’m on the job nearly all the time. I really need to find a way to prepare food ahead of time and bring it in to work, so that I don’t have to order in so much.

Clearly, the paper is the biggest part of my life right now. Still, my health is important to me, and so it’s got to be something that I work on. Anyone in the biz have good tips on eating well while on the job?

Probably not what most old school newspaper execs want to hear, but this piece has some pretty salient points. Among them:

• When will these guys learn that paid content is not the way to go? People have gotten news free of charge on the ‘net for more than 10 years. They aren’t about to stop.
• This one is probably the most difficult one to swallow for many in the biz: “Quality journalism is expensive, and to the extent that it provides a public good, we will find ways to fund it. But top-heavy, poorly run, arrogant-to-the-bitter-end media companies? This is their crisis, not our crisis, and it certainly isn’t about journalism.”

The media landscape is changing (rocket science, I know). I am very confident that in the end, we’ll still get our news – and it’ll be well done. But it’s not going to look like it used to. Whatever newspaper execs used to make, whatever the business model used to look like – they’re not going to make that much and it’s not going to look like that. The sooner the people in charge stop trying to salvage what’s on the way out and just embrace what’s coming, the better they – and we – will be.