By Cassy van Eeden

David Pembroke, CEO of contentgroup in Australia, was recently involved in discussions that lead to the University of Canberra (UC) starting a journalism degree with a major in content marketing. About 15 months ago he was approached by friends of his, academics in the journalism school at UC. “When they came to talk to me, they had this very clearly defined problem,” says Pembroke. “They were producing lots of graduates, but there were no jobs for them.”

Pembroke’s suggestion was that journalism students need to learn about content marketing as a part of their qualification.

His argument is simple: content marketing needs journalism and journalists; and that journalists need content marketing.

Content marketing needs journalism

First off, the skills journalists are taught at a tertiary level are essential to content marketing. Journalists know what makes a good story, they know how to elicit emotion and they understand audiences and what they want.

The truth of the matter is, traditional marketers are not equipped with these skills. “Those trained in traditional marketing are practiced in the old ways of talking about yourself and how great you are,” he argues. But that kind of hard sell simply does not work anymore. Content marketing is what works. And content is more about creating value and being of service to the audience, Pembroke argues.

“That’s where traditional skills come into it,” he says. “They [journalists] look for that value and they look for that essence before they think about talking about themselves too much.”

Journalists needs content marketing

Traditional journalism jobs are drying up rapidly. Newsrooms get smaller by the day, which means journalism graduates have very little chance of ending up in them. And this has been an issue for years. This is where content marketing changes things.

As Pembroke says, journalism graduates can pretty much walk out of university and into a content marketing job. That’s just how well the two disciplines fit together.

So if content marketing is the most viable next step for journalism graduates, surely they should be trained in content marketing as a part of their studies?

What’s there to learn?

So what exactly are the skills journalism students should learn in order to be prepared to start a career in content marketing?

“There’s a need to understand business planning and business objectives,” says Pembroke. “There’s a need to understand distribution and how to seek an audience that will actually engage with it when they see it.”

Moreover, in order to be effective content marketers, journalism students need to be able to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of a particular piece of content, says Pembroke. “Obviously, a part of what you’re trying to do with that content is achieve business outcomes or business objectives,” he explains.

The University of Canberra is the first university in the world to truly embrace this debate and make it a part of their curriculum. And, hopefully, more higher learning institutions will follow. If they don’t, as Pembroke says, they’re going to miss the opportunity to prepare their graduates for a booming industry.

For more information, visit the contentgroup website. Alternatively, keep up with David Pembroke on Twitter.

*This article is part of a series. Read part 1 here and part 2 here.