Our new executive editor and I discussed the idea that maybe we should give employees bonuses if they go through new media training.

The idea is that we don’t want to mandate (at least not yet) that people learn new media skills. Instead, we want to encourage people. Basically, it would work something like this:

1. You go through a day or two of new media training in our Washington office where you will learn how to handle a digital camera properly (white balance, ISO, shutter speed, aperture, etc), work a real audio recorder like a Marantz with external mics, experiment with voice overs, see how audio editing works and then be taught Soundslides.
2. You work with the Web staff to cover an event but from a new media angle like by making an audio audio slideshow.
3. You do the capturing and editing yourself, but you can always ask a Web person for help.
4. You get paid a bonus if your multimedia journalism is worth publishing. You only get a bonus if your content is good.

I’m sure there are a lot of journalists who would jump at the chance to earn an extra $500 or so to take part in a little bit of training that produces some quality journalism. And then when other employees see the cool stuff that their colleagues are producing they’ll want to sign up for the new media training too.

It’s just an idea right now, but it might be a viral way to get our staff trained.