Abstract
Journalism's door has not been darkened by recent events, says an academic whose students are eager to compete in this multimedia world
Every few weeks I take a call in my office at the University of Kent from someone I once knew in newspapers or broadcasting, or who claims I knew them. My heart sinks because their question is almost always: “Are there any vacancies in the Centre for Journalism for a veteran journalist with oodles of expertise?” There aren't, and if there were I could fill them many times. Academia no longer offers plentiful career opportunities to refugees from newsrooms. Higher Education faces new challenges of its own and journalism education is not immune.
Applications to undergraduate journalism degrees declined by 18.95% in 2012, that's 11.45% more than the overall fall in applications to British universities. Curious, intelligent young people who crave a career in which they will not be bored are deterred by the state of the news industry. They know how tough it is to get a job. They understand that full-time, salaried positions in journalism are rare and that competition is ferocious.
And yet I start the academic year in excellent spirits. The Centre for Journalism's undergraduate newsroom is full of bright, committed new students, eager to learn the intellectual and practical skills required to practise professional, multimedia journalism in the public interest. A year of hearing journalism maligned at the Leveson Inquiry has not chilled their ardour. They admire reporters such as Alex Crawford of Sky News, the BBC's Stephanie Flanders and their visiting tutor, Kent Messenger's political editor Paul Francis, not failed remnants of tabloid journalism's most sordid era.
Above all they admire their most recent predecessors, the first graduates of Kent's Centre for Journalism who in 2011 and 2012 stepped from our newsroom into salaried jobs with employers including: AOL; Kent Messenger Group; Huffington Post; ITV; BBC Radio; Sky News; Daily Mail; Kent on Sunday; Cambridge News; The Hinckley Times; The Sun and Bedfordshire on Sunday. Our students have a plain truth confirmed to them from the moment they apply to join us – the same truth every wise editor makes clear to their team: Journalism is ruthlessly competitive; you must work hard, think clearly and never accept second best.
I make no apology
One change that cheers me greatly is that good academically-qualified school leavers are beginning to perceive the value of professionally-validated journalism degrees. Many now understand that the handful that are accredited by the National Council for the Training of Journalists can – and often do – combine academic rigour and professional discipline in a manner that produces graduates capable of competing at the very highest level. This awareness has started to challenge the misleading guidance too blithely spouted by school careers advisers that the only secure route into journalism is via a first degree in English literature.
That was never the case. History, politics and philosophy provide at least as secure a foundation for a journalism career. But the challenge of multimedia convergence and the cost of university education have made professionally-accredited undergraduate degrees ever more precious. Let the message be emphatic: excellent journalism degrees are not lightweight alternatives to serious disciplines. The best, amongst which I am proud to include Kent's unique BA in Journalism and the News Industry, combine academic study of history, politics, law and literature with meticulous professional training in journalism for online, radio, TV and print.
They select applicants with impressive A-Level results (ABB or better in serious academic A-Levels) via interviews and written aptitude tests and teach them intensively in small groups. Does this deter applicants who have vague ideas that journalism might be glamorous, but who have not thought about what it is for? Of course it does, and I make no apology.
Journalism has never been for the faint-hearted. Students who have realistic prospects of succeeding in this most demanding of careers are real high-flyers. In return for tuition fees of £9,000 a year, they expect excellent teaching and state-of-the-art facilities. They are entitled to. So, at Kent we teach for 25 hours per week in an environment that replicates as closely as possible the atmosphere of a professional newsroom. Our students begin each day by pitching story ideas at morning editorial conference. Woe betide any who attend without first reading the newspapers, listening to the Today programme and scrutinising the Press Association schedule. Only then do they move on to lectures, seminars and shorthand classes.
Learning to make broadcast quality television news to real deadlines is not an abstract theoretical exercise. You need television studios, autocues and international picture feeds. Radio requires a similar level of investment and, in both broadcast media, the essential attribute is a lively informed mind. Live reporting whether in sound or vision is an intellectual exercise. If you understand your story thoroughly, you can communicate clearly with your audience. If you do not, stammering incoherence is nigh inevitable. Few people get beyond stammering. Good journalism students are fluent and composed in front of the camera before they graduate.
Their academic and newsroom learning is augmented by guaranteed work experience in newspaper, broadcast and online newsrooms. Britain's best journalism students get published in their first year and graduate with impressive portfolios of printed, broadcast and online journalism. Employers tell us that they fit in almost immediately when they start work. And these are not mere news-monkeys, willing to turn press releases into video or audio files and upload them. Our academic teaching ensures that they think critically too.
One Kent journalism graduate, Kathryn Cain (BA Hons, 2011) offers an excellent example of our approach. Her legal education recently helped her to overturn an invalid court order. Kathryn, a reporter with Bedfordshire on Sunday, attended a trial at Bedford Magistrates’ Court during which the court ruled that journalists must not identify a defendant who reached the age of 18 during court proceedings. She and her news editor realised that such an order, issued under section 39 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, should not remain in force when a defendant reaches adulthood.
Armed with her copy of McNae's Essential Law for Journalists, Kathryn was able to challenge the order and demonstrate that she was entitled to identify the 18-year-old. Upon such diligence, a robust deference-deficit and a thorough grounding in law great careers are built and the public interest is protected. Kathryn and her contemporaries are the national and international news stars of the future. I'm confident of that. I hired more than enough journalists during my career in broadcasting and newspapers to know what it takes to make it in the profession's highest echelons.
Top journalism schools at British universities produce a reliable stream of such people. And who would do it if we did not? Many years have passed since newspapers and broadcasters could afford to recruit scores of untrained graduates and pay them to learn. Higher Education has taken on a task that would not otherwise be performed. In doing so, it makes a vital contribution to diversity. Wealthy students can afford to learn on the job via a sequence of unpaid internships. Good luck to them. But few of the brilliant young people we teach have such deep pockets. I am proud to offer them academic and professional qualifications within just three years of intensive learning – that would otherwise cost them the price and time of a first degree, postgraduate training and work experience.
Admissions criteria
Cynics claim universities are educating aspiring journalists for unemployment. Some plainly are, but those who select students of the right calibre and educate them thoroughly know that what we do works. I took several calls this summer from broadcast and newspaper editors looking for top graduates who have also passed the NCTJ Diploma in Journalism. They do not call out of sentimental loyalty to an old colleague. They ask because in the pressure-cooker environment of modern journalism they need to fill each precious vacancy with a multi-talented graduate accustomed to generating new story ideas every day, turning them into finished pieces of journalism and promoting them via social media.
Kent's Centre for Journalism is not the only academic department doing this work. Britain is fortunate to have several. To find them, consult the National Council for the Training of Journalists, the National Student Survey and university league tables. Take a careful look at the admissions criteria. Good journalists usually have serious academic qualifications. Exceptions are only slightly less rare than unicorn tears.
Finally, and of critical importance, assess the quality of a journalism degree by three additional criteria. First, the reading it requires students to complete. A meagre reading list may attract plentiful applicants, but it probably won't nurture reporters. They need to consume modern history, political and economic texts and fine writing. If you spot on core reading lists names such as: Adam Smith; J.S. Mill; Thomas Paine; Martha Gelhorn; David Marquand; Boyd Hilton; Peter Hennessy; George Orwell; Bob Franklin; Jean Seaton; Michael Schudson; Natalie Fenton; Steven Barnett and Vernon Bogdanor, you may be looking at a serious degree.
Next add the demands of the modern era. Richard Sambrook of Cardiff University puts it elegantly: “[Journalism] used to need hunter-gatherers; in future we'll need farmers.” He means that journalists must nurture and reap the collaborative journalism made possible by the internet. So check the teaching staff's commitment to multimedia skills. Today's reporter needs to be able to gather, organise and deploy information, images and data from primary and secondary sources and to create text and images for publication in print, for broadcast and online.
To these competencies must be added advanced awareness of and familiarity with social networking technologies and editorial ability to exploit them fully. In the 21st century, creating content for and interacting with online audiences and, in particular, with mobile online audiences is an essential editorial skill. It is possible to teach all of these skills in one year to intensely dedicated graduates who are willing to work like Alexey Stakhanov, but commercial training companies that claim to produce journalists in three months are embroidering the truth: they may, just, equip a graduate to work as a raw trainee in a single medium; they are not even trying to create fully-formed, multimedia journalists.
If a degree offers all of the above, an applicant or parent can be confident it will also deliver skilled graduates with educated, critical minds. I know they get jobs because I have taught them. Type these names into your search engine: Alan McGuinness; Rebecca Hughes; Sara Malm; Kathryn Cain; and Lucy Ross-Millar and you will find the work of just five students from Kent's Centre for Journalism who recently began work in national and regional newsrooms shortly after graduating, and in some cases shortly beforehand.
Jobs still exist for excellent young graduates, and ambitious, creative young people still want, desperately, to be journalists. They cherish the opportunities their generation's technology offers to tell stories and hold power to account. Universities that blend academic and professional education to offer these people intellectual nourishment – and the ability to use their minds brilliantly under pressure – are doing sterling work. Applicants and employers should choose wisely. The best professionally-accredited journalism degrees produce graduates who beat all-comers in the competition for jobs and stories.