How to prepare for our Journalism MA courses
Barbara Rowlands, MA Journalism Programme Director, offers the following advice to prospective City Journalism students. The advice applies for all MA Journalism courses
Get work experience on local, regional or national newspapers, magazines or regional broadcast stations. Check a news website every day (not just Twitter). Immerse yourself in current affairs, watch documentaries such as Dispatches and Panorama, listen to Radio 4's Today programme and watch BBC Newsnight. If you say you don't know who the Home Secretary is because you've been too busy doing your finals, you won't get a place. If you let your general knowledge slip while you are trekking round Thailand in the summer, you will suffer. Read the appropriate media, whether that's the Financial Times, New Scientist or Marie Claire - and most importantly, for broadcasters and TV students, watch and listen.
Read books about journalism by top journalists and develop an appetite for brilliantly-written newspaper and magazine features. Take an interest in some of the issues covered and develop your own perspective on them. Develop a professional online presence. Start to read/watch/listen as a journalist (ie. critically), and begin to question why something is news, how and why it is structured as it is and why specific words and images are used. Look at how the story is used across media platforms.