Why I believe Journalism is (more than ever) worth studying

I’m an Undergraduate Journalism tutor at City University in London and I feel pretty optimistic about the future for our graduates – and journalism graduates generally for that matter.  It’s not just a feeling – I can see most of them moving relatively smoothly into jobs or internships. That’s why I think journalism is, more than ever, worth studying and why I think the skills you get from studying it are worth a lot in the jobs marketplace.

People are always asking me ‘Where do your students find work?’ and pointing out that print journalism is contracting before our eyes. That can take a while to answer. I believe it’s the students themselves who are making headway into what is a rapidly developing and shifting industry. Careers Offices, while helpful and supportive, can only try to keep pace with the way the industry is changing. The days are long gone, if they ever existed, when there was a careers path into journalism. Our graduates have to be quick witted and entrepreneurial and make their own luck. They have to do a heck of a lot of work experience and placements as well.

For instance, one of our 2012 graduates launched a lifestyle magazine for men with a team of fellow students. It currently has a circulation of 40, 000 and is distributed nationally. He is not a one-off. We encourage the students to take advantage of the need for content editors, online writers, social media developers, webzine designers and all the other roles springing up in a mercurial online world. And if what they want to do does not present itself within the market, we try and give them the tools and skills to be entrepreneurial and to set it up themselves.

My feeling is that as a journalism graduate you need to see yourself as somewhat different from your fellow students doing more purely academic subjects. If you can think of yourself as a self-starter and try to market what’s unique about you –  the transition between Uni and work needn’t be so tough. All those practical skills of web design, video editing, Photoshop and so on – they become a means to an end. 

I’m genuinely excited by the prospect that recent and not so recent journalism graduates might be a reliable weather vane as to the way the wind is blowing in the journalism and communication-related industries and where the jobs might be. That’s something even the most respected media commentators are having problems predicting.

Barbara Schofield: Senior Journalism lecturer, City University London

Hi Natalie, I was wondering exactly where you got your stats from? I looked on the UCAS stats and I could only make it about a 13% drop. The figures from publishing are a lot more disturbing, where there is a 50-odd% drop in uptake.

It's one of those things where it can come down to personal preference. I was lucky enough that a full-time job became available about 3-4 weeks before I started my A-Level exams at a paper I'd been doing a lot of voluntary work at. I got it, and have been there almost three months - obviously time will tell, but it's great getting stuck in and also saving a lot of money. Being thrust into the thick of it is invaluable, and something that you have to experience to understand. I don't think there's a better way to learn, but, as with everything, you get out what you put in.

I think really it's about proving you can deliver when you get the chance. If you can land a work experience placement somewhere and you show to them you can put together an article/radio package on demand then they aren't going to care if you have a degree or not.

I didn't do a degree in journalism and I'm now working in BBC Asian Network's newsroom. Admittedly it was because of experience I got in a different degree that got me here (I did sound engineering at university with a placement at a commercial station...they needed someone who could operate a mixing desk), but I'm pretty much learning journalism on the job.

Perhaps I'm an exception being on a Broadcast Journalism course, but I imagine it'd be pretty hard breaking into broadcast without it in today's market - it's certainly helped me get work experience placements/projects which  highly doubt I would have got without being a BJ degree student.