Andy Bull

I have an analogy I like to use when working with a group of raw recruits to a
journalism course. It’s that they should think of learning how to write a news
story rather as they would approach following a recipe in a cookbook. Just as
with a recipe by Jamie or Gordon or Nigella, I tell them, the recipe for writing
a news story is pretty straightforward. It’s called the inverted triangle. But I
point out that while the news-writing recipe is simple – a useful template for
any story – what’s hard is deciding how, in each new situation, the various
ingredients to hand should be mixed, blended and added to the dish. What
I’m essentially telling them is that journalism is a craft: the theory is
minimal; it’s practice that enables you to become good at the job.

Finding they are studying a craft rather than an academic pursuit puzzles
some students. It’s often the first they have heard of such a distinction. This
is particularly true of those who have spent three years gaining a media
studies degree and have found, to their consternation, that it is not helping
them to get a job as a journalist. Often, such graduates have discovered too
late that editors – whether in newspapers, magazines, broadcasting or online
– want above all to know that a raw recruit has been trained to do the job to a
basic level of competence. They discover that editors are much less
interested in the class of degree they have received or, often, the institution
that awarded it, than in whether the course was accredited by the National
Council for the Training of Journalists, the Periodical Training Council or
the Broadcast Journalism Training Council. This confusion over the
theoretical study of journalism and the practice really should never have
arisen. The fact that it has, and that a generation of young people has been
confused and misled as a result is – frankly – shameful.

Once this confusion is cleared up, they see why they are having problems.
It often defuses the resentment they have built up against the industry, and
redirects it at their former tutors and the institutions that awarded them
their dud degrees. They start such a conversation convinced they have hit a
brick wall because journalism is a closed shop; that it’s all about who you
know. By the end of the talk they realise their problems stem from the fact
they have been badly prepared for the working world of journalism.

I meet a lot of young people in this position, who find they must embark
on an accredited post-graduate course to pursue their goal of becoming
journalists. These young people are usually bright and keen and, once you
show them they have been taught the wrong things, they realise that getting
into journalism is not actually about who you know but what you know – and that they know the wrong things. At first they look puzzled when told they
need to learn how to write. They’ll say: “But I have a 2:1. I’ve been writing at a
very high level.” So you give them a basic spelling, punctuation and grammar
test and they discover they are actually poor at all these. It’s a revelation – no
one has tested them on such things before. If you then take a piece they have
written and run though it for jargon, cliches, repetition, overblown language
and unnecessary words they quickly realise that they actually don’t know the
essentials of how to write – because no one has bothered to teach them. They
are shocked at first when criticised for filling their news stories with
comment. When you tell them that no one is interested in what they think,
they are baffled because for three years their media studies tutors cared
deeply what they thought. So you have to start from scratch.

The problem degrees

I should say I have absolutely no problem with media studies degrees as
long as it is made clear to those who embark on one that it will probably not
lead to a job as a journalist. I have no problem with media studies, just as I
would have no problem with an alternative course to medicine called medical
studies, in which students learn all about medical history and models of
health provision but don’t actually get to treat patients. Where I would have a
problem is if a graduate of such a course assured me he could take my
appendix out, or set my broken leg in plaster. I also have a problem with
degrees that are labelled “journalism” but which are not vocational, and
which do not equip graduates with a good chance of gaining a job in the trade.
That applies to a large number of so-called journalism courses which are not
accredited by one of the industry bodies.

There are those who will say I am being far too harsh on media studies
degrees – that the best of them turn out graduates who go on to have
sparkling careers in the media. I am sure this is true. Nevertheless, it is my
experience that most editors do not trust such degrees and much prefer
recruiting from industry-accredited courses. The Publishing Skills Group’s
Graduate Apprenticeship Survey 2005 questioned 202 journalist employers
across the newspaper, magazine and broadcasting sectors, and found that, of
the 70 per cent who recruit new entrants into journalism straight from
education, 73 per cent look for industry-accredited qualifications. The
Journalism Training Forum polled 1,238 journalists across all media in 2002
and found that more than half the respondents held a professional journalism
qualification. Of those, 64 per cent were awarded by the NCTJ.

Clearly, graduates from industry-accredited courses are at a huge
advantage when it comes to finding a job. That wouldn’t be a problem if there
were enough journalism jobs for the rest of those who want them, but there
are not. The UK’s official graduate careers website, prospects.ac.uk, which is
the commercial subsidiary of the Higher Education Careers Services Unit,
surveyed media studies students who graduated in 2004. Of 4,505 graduates,
only 14.6 per cent found employment in the media, even when the definition
of media is drawn very widely to include “arts, design, culture, media, sports
professionals”. That contrasted with 16.1 per cent who were in retail,
catering, waiting and bar staff, and 20 per cent in clerical and secretarial. So, if
you want to be a barman or a secretary, take a media studies degree. Or, better
still, avoid the student loan debt and go straight out to work.

Despite this, the number of media studies courses on offer – and the
number of students – is increasing. According to the Higher Education
Statistics Agency (Hesa), the number of students enrolled in media courses
has grown in the past five years from 13,600 to 26,700. It is the same story in
our schools, where 57,500 students sat a media, film or TV studies GCSE last
year. That’s 25.9 per cent more than in 2005 and represents 1 per cent of all
GCSEs taken in 2006. At A-level, 30,964 students sat media, film or TV
studies in 2006. That is 3.8 per cent of all A-levels taken. There has been a 250
per cent increase in the number of people taking media studies at A-level over
the past 10 years. Go to a careers fair and sit on a journalism stall and you will
be inundated by school students with A-level media studies who believe they
are on the first rung of the ladder leading to a job in journalism. They are not.

Simple supply-and-demand economics would suggest that we need fewer
media studies and journalism degree courses, and yet we get more. That’s
because the demand for such courses at universities comes from students, not
the industry. Universities know that if they add “media” or “journalism” to a
course title, applications shoot up. The current Ucas listing contains 677
courses with either media or journalism somewhere in the title. To take a
couple of examples at random, the University of the West of England offers
degrees in Criminology and Journalism, History and Journalism, Journalism
and Philosophy, and Journalism and Spanish. At the University of Chester
you can twin journalism with more than 80 subjects, including management,
criminology and dance. Let’s imagine the response of a news editor to the cub
reporter who comes back to the office and says: “I will now express my story
through mime.”

Such a plethora of courses is bound to sow confusion in the mind of the
aspiring journalist. Once it was clear: media degrees were dominated by
academic theory and journalism degrees were vocational. Certain courses –
particularly vocational post-graduate ones at Cardiff, Sheffield and London’s
City – won editors’ respect because of the calibre of graduate they produced.
Now, editors cannot keep track and have no idea whether a graduate from
most of the hundreds of courses will be any good. So they rely on the one
reliable benchmark – whether the course is accredited – and for newspaper
editors that means by the National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Currently the NCTJ has placed its stamp of approval on around 60 courses,
less than 10 per cent of the UCAS total.

Students are being misled

As I’ve said, I would have no problem with media studies as long as
students weren’t being misled. From my experience, they are being, and in
large numbers. For example, take a look at the website of an organisation
with the awkward acronym of MeCCSA, whose members teach “media,
communication and cultural studies in UK Higher Education”. On its site is
an FAQ section for those considering a media studies degree which contains
this:

“What is the value of doing a practice-based media degree, versus one that concentrates on media theories? …Neither is intrinsically better than the other when getting a job, although acquiring certain skills (such as familiarity with editing software) can occasionally help in some specific jobs. However, employers are much more likely to consider the final level of your degree and your ability to produce high quality research, to analyse sociological trends, to work effectively with people, to organise events, to think creatively and to write well, when deciding whether or not to employ you.”

I suggest the evidence is that this is not so and that editors will judge
graduates overwhelmingly on whether their course is practical, and
accredited. No wonder then that many editors – and commentators – look at
media studies and deride it. Critics are not hard to find. Chris Woodhead,
when still chief schools inspector in 2000, said that it was “vacuous”, “quasi-academic”, and a “one-way ticket to the dole queue”. He went on: “Do [undergraduate media studies courses] equip the student for a job in the media? Many senior figures in the industry think not.” John Humphrys, presenter of Radio 4′s Today programme, said of media studies: “Even more kids are doing it now and it is sillier than it ever was. Where are they going to find jobs? If you decide after a proper degree in English, history or economics
to do a one-year postgraduate course in journalism at a good university, all well and good. But the idea of three years at university doing journalism is barmy.”

A generation ago the newspaper industry had a tight hold on training.
Cub reporters came to their paper generally with no experience and their
training took place in the office, plus day or block release at a further
education college. They were trained to pass their NCTJ exams and then
became senior journalists. Today, most newspaper groups and individual
editors prefer to select from recruits who are already trained to NCTJ-approved
preliminary level. The universities saw the opportunity to offer
journalism and media courses but, failing to understand (or not caring) what
was required by the industry, too many of them created courses that attract
students but don’t deliver the goods. Academia, which is not comfortable
with craft skills, inevitably wanted to intellectualise the study of journalism,
so you get students wondering what the sociology of journalism, politics and
power in the media, or journalism and society have to do with learning to be a
reporter. This clash of cultures is perhaps at its clearest over the issue of
shorthand. For editors and for the NCTJ, shorthand is essential. Universities
have a problem with shorthand because they see it as a purely mechanical
skill. Never mind that it is as hard to master as a foreign language. Many
universities struggle to justify – in their own terms – awarding credits for its
study, which sends the message to many students that it is unimportant.

However, whatever practising journalists may think of it, media studies
are not only here to stay, they are becoming increasingly respectable. In
January last year, Oxford University announced the creation of the Reuters
Institute for the Study of Journalism with the goal of breaking down the
barriers of incomprehension and mistrust between journalism and academia.
Tim Gardam, principal of St Anne’s College, Oxford, and former BBC head of
news and current affairs, is chairman of the steering committee. He says of
the institute: “[It] is part of the department of politics and international
relations. That gives it a place in a clear academic discipline instead of trying
to invent a new one. Media studies have made journalism a profession in
which you need a master’s degree to progress. That is good.”

Is it? Do you really need a masters to be a first-rate reporter, sub-editor or
indeed editor? Or do you actually need the nose for a good story, a journalistic
instinct that can’t be taught but can be channelled through the teaching of
good practical skills, including the recipe for news writing? Clearly, media
studies won’t go away. But here’s a question for its advocates: If it is such a
vital and effective discipline, and media studies specialists are so good at
understanding the media, how come they have such a bad press? Discuss.

Andy Bull is a former online editor of The Times, features editor of the Mail on Sunday, and deputy editor of the Sunday Express. He teaches on the PTC-accredited post-graduate diploma in magazine journalism run by PMA Training in London, is the NCTJ’s qualifications and careers consultant and author of the NCTJ Essential Guide to Careers in Journalism (Sage Publications). It is available from www.nctj.com.