A whole debate has sprung up on whether or not journalism schools should be teaching Dreamweaver and the basics of Web design.

I’m not going to touch that debate today, but I am going to argue that every journalist should know a little HTML. Every journalist should know how to make a link, whether using the built in link tools in a CMS (or Dreamweaver) or writing out a link tag by hand.

Every journalist should know what this tag is: <a href=”"></a>

That’s not asking much. Every journalist should also know how to bold and italicize words, and understand when and how to use header tags like <h3></h3>

I also believe that every journalist should know how to make unordered and ordered lists. These are basic HTML tags that can make a big difference when posting content on the Web.

And these concepts can be learned in less than a day. HTML is a hell of a lot easier to learn than the English language. So, if you can become a wordsmith, you can learn some HTML.

Many journalists will be transitioning over to the Web to produce content. Journalists will need to know basic HTML, in addition to knowing how to use a CMS. Journalism schools should really be teaching the ins and outs of how to use a (good) CMS.

Many journalists are already being asked to blog. Can you imagine blogging without knowing how to make a proper link?

Another day I’ll tackle the Dreamweaver/WYSIWYG issue. But I think we can all agree it’s not asking much for journalists to know a little HTML.