IT departments are right to only support certain environments for development. Usually, you stick with one (maybe two) because the ops folks need to be comfortable supporting that environment.

ASP.NET was the flavor of the day when I was in Roanoke. A lot of what makes this environment attractive is the development software (Visual Web Developer) that provides a Dreamweaver-like interface.

The code it renders by default is horrible, and it takes some wrangling to past the Web standards test.

Really good programmers know more than just a handful of languages/technologies.

It’s not unusual for me to get resumes from graphic designers who know PHP.

It’s hard to build a modern web site yourself without some scripting language capability, so designers learn JavaScript.

Doing Flash well requires ActionScript, which is much like JavaScript.

Many, many young programmers and designers come from the open-source, DIY background and often have outside clients, and for them, they provide full service — design, PHP, CSS/DHTML/JavaScript, etc. … and the best are very standards-compliance oriented so they know XML and XHTML pretty well.

This broad range of ability usually doesn’t apply to the .Net/Microsoft-centric types, and I don’t hire those types … never have anywhere I’ve been a hiring manager.

Also, if your resume comes to me and shows only limited knowledge (say, you only do design, or you only do PHP (or even Python/Django), I question your self-motivation, and I only hire self-motivated people. Real geeks are hungry to learn more and have been since a young age. They know a lot and want to learn more, and those are the kinds of people I hire.

We want people who love to learn, because this is a fast moving world and you have to keep up. If you want to be a nimble, innovation company, you need to have nimble, innovative people.

Most newspaper companies pay programmers and designers competitive wages, especially for the best talent, otherwise they risk losing them.

FWIW, We’re a Zope and Drupal shop.

I wanted to use Django at my newspaper, but the IT department won’t support Python. I can use, for whatever reason, Rails.

So, I’m taking to learning PHP and MySQL first, because we do support that, and then later on I’m going to look into Rails.

I wish I could use Django. I wonder how many newsroom are blocked from trying something like Django by the IT department? My IT department just loves ASP. Yuck. I’m not learning that anytime soon.

PHP and MySQL is so 2006! (Kidding)

You should definitely check out Django if you’re familiar with the basics of programming (experience in JavaScript, PHP, etc). It’s a wonderful framework that is really easy to use for a variety of publishing-related tasks.

And it’s got a great following with plenty of documentation.

I am finding it more and more common to see Web designers taking on some of the light-end programming work. Django and Rails will also make it possible for more people to make more complex sites.

I am personally working hard to learn PHP and MySQL. I hope to start looking into Rails later this year (I’d want to do some Ruby work first). But I’ll never be nearly as good of a back end programmer as some of my friends with their fancy Comp Sci degrees.

That job recruitment e-mail you received is ridiculous. I monitor journalism job boards because I think that the amount of openings and the kinds of openings are an important window into the state of journalism. I see plenty of ridiculous job postings all the time. I’m not sure who they get to respond to them.

I really think the problem for many newspapers is that they don’t know what to look for, so they try to find it all in each candidate. This is really an issue of not having the right managers in place to lead Web teams at many newspapers.

You can’t expect one person to do it all, and you’ll never be able to find anything if you don’t know what you are looking for.

I think your premise is correct, though I’m finding it more common to see Web designers with some programming experience thanks largely to frameworks like Django and Ruby on Rails.

But a journalist/Web designer/programmer is a rare find indeed!