Look anywhere at media, and there is nothing but disruption.Even the venerable New York Times is offering voluntary buyout packages to newsroom and business department staff in its effort to build a more digitally oriented newsroom and double its digital revenue by 2020. Executive Editor Dean Baquet has said the Times needs to shift toward people with skills in visual journalism and greater diversity while continuing to concentrate on depth reporting.Given the trends in growing news consumption on mobile, it is hardly surprising that a more digital focus is at the heart of the Times' proposed transformation. A research study conducted by Nielsen and commissioned by the Knight Foundation to explore how people use mobile platforms for news has shown that 89% of the 144 million U.S. mobile users access news on mobile, and most of that time is spent on social networks rather than on news sites and apps. The study also found that younger and more diverse audiences are paving new ways to get news, that they take action after accessing news (e.g., liking a story, retweeting, etc.), and that they talk about news offline with other people. They even depend on people in their social circle as news sources as much as or more than they depend on media outlets.To say that we are in an age of disruption is an understatement.In Superpowers: The digital skills media leaders say newsrooms need going forward, news organizations prioritized skills in three areas: coding, audience development and data, and photo/video production. The non-scientific study conducted by Mark Stencel, co-director of the Duke Reporters' Lab, and Kim Perry, a senior editor on the Digital Transition team at the New York Times, showed that almost 60% of organizations ranked visual storytelling/editing among the top five priorities.News organizations did not report the need to hire people with the Foundational Skills essential to newsroom operations-reporting, copyediting-but rather the Transformational Skills. There may be an oversupply of and less demand for people with the Foundational Skills, the report suggested. Transformational Skills include coding, audience development/user data and metrics, visual storytelling/editing, digital design (for web, mobile, apps), social media distribution, and product ownership/development (multimedia content/stories). Other Transformation Skills include social/ engagement reporting, cross-platform storytelling/editing, editorial graphics/animation, user experience, audio production/editing, management (process, people and decision making, budgets), and project management (timelines, coordination, process). The study, published by the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism, noted that organizations with both Foundational and Transformational Skills are Superpowers. But there is not a onesize-fits-all matrix of hiring needs. The study found that markets drive hiring priorities with news organizations in small- to medium-sized media markets concentrating on the visual storytelling imperative rather than coding, audience development, and product ownership.Clearly, our academic and professional programs need to concentrate on the Transformational Skills every bit as much as the Foundational Skills if we are to equip graduates with the skills they need to be employed-not only in news organizations but also in media tech companies, non-profits, and other environments. …