Learning Security

Educate and leverage support staff.

Fortunately, the opportunities to meaningfully integrate information-security practices into the core journalism curriculum are rich and varied. As we trained CJS digital media associates (DMAs), for example, who provide technical support to students and staff, they saw great potential for integrating information security into existing classes. We consider the DMAs an important avenue for bringing digital security skills into the school, even though their one-year tenure at the school would make this challenging. Nevertheless, the DMAs were some of our most committed students and were passionate about information security at CJS. Moreover, as they are all recent CJS students, they have a unique breadth and accuracy of insight into how and where these practices can be more integrally applied to the existing curriculum. News organizations might similarly look to target smaller populations of staff for deeper information-security training. Desk editors, for example, who are also in a leadership position, may be uniquely well placed to both share and prioritize these practices.