South Africa has tried to address a problem that U.S. journalists continually fret about: journalism training. Here, all industry groups are required by law to set aside 1% of their payroll for ongoing training. Then, if a newspaper, for instance, sends someone to a professionally recognized training course, that paper gets a credit against the amount they already have paid. If they don’t send people to training, their 1% levy in essence will be used by those organizations that do send people to be trained further. Training courses also are offered by professional journalism associations.
This sounds like a smart system to me, but I’m told it doesn’t work well in practice because the group that receives the funds from the 1% set-aside, is banking it more than spending it. And there are arguments over whether the money should be used to reimburse papers for hiring interns or for short courses taught by journalism professors or for courses taught by consultants or professional training organizations?
Sadly, there is lot of money available for ongoing training that is not being used. I’m told the banking the insurance industry groups here make much better use of their training money.
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