Should journalists care how people learn?

So, I'm finally back blogging after a brief pit stop on the road to what is surely going to be a challenging but exciting trail for me (she types hopefully). Having talked the talk in local TV news for more than a dozen years, written a fair amount online and taught journalism skills to college undergrads, I am going back to school as a teacher and student. Again.

It's been a mere 22 years since I received my master's degree from Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism. Since then, laptops and iPhones have made typewriters and phone booths cultural icons of an era reminiscent of big hair and landfills.

Those fancy little digital devices also have had an unwelcome effect on an industry rooted deep in my own ancestry. Craig's list, eBay and Yahoo have lured readers and advertisers away from the printed page. Not only are newspapers thinner, so are their newsrooms.

Two days ago, I returned from Washington, D.C., where more than 700 people attended the Online News Association's ninth conference. Think about how transformational the last nine years have been for the media.

This year's buzzwords: innovation and mobile. The news industry is finding itself in a spot similar to where it was in 1995, when editors started to slowly realize that the Internet was morphing into an unconstrained and unlimited information factory. Now cellphones threaten to make things even more complicated as the younger demographic prefers to get their news on the go.

I have chosen to pursue my doctorate in educational technology - not because of latent masochism - but because of my desire to understand not only how technology is changing information delivery, but how people learn. We journalists focus on inverted pyramids, catchy leads and A.P. style...but how well has that worked for us? Is the public better informed than it was 22 years ago?

My broadcast brethren may think they are exempt from the digital competition. But when video on demand becomes as common as cellphones, the breaking news alert will turn inward. The old days are over. The audience has digitized and divided.

If our common goal as journalism practitioners and instructors is to inform citizens so they can make intelligent decisions about their lives, we must figure out how to deliver information in the most effective manner. All journalists are teachers, really. So let's start by finding out how people learn and how technology can help us teach them.