Then you should have read a sentence further where she says, "Whether in the hallowed halls of higher learning or in the less-hallowed halls of a professional n

Then you should have read a sentence further where she says, "Whether in the hallowed halls of higher learning or in the less-hallowed halls of a professional newsroom, the journalist has been trained as such." She doesn't say that traditional education is the only way. In my profession of software, there are many accomplished programmers who do not have a college degree. If you want to be a programmer, a CS program is a great way to get there. If you don't go to college, you'd better be learning through books, pair programming, or through other avenues. Just because you are writing code does not mean you're a programmer.