Journalism
Do you ever wonder at the differences in newspaper front-page stories? Why the Daily Telegraph is fascinated by Jordan the Middle Eastern state, and why the Daily Star is fascinated by Jordan in a nearly-nude state?
Why did the News of the World print a four-page Big Brother supplement every week when the Independent ignored it?
Who chooses what goes in and what is ignored? And is it disparity or variety? Why is a story in the Hatfield Times about plans to widen the A1 crucial to its readership yet makes not one paragraph in the Daily Mail?
The answers to these questions underlie the very basics of journalistic styles and the various markets they have evolved to serve.
But whatever their widely-different subject matter, all professional publications from local newspapers to glossy magazines have a common core, a set of basic skills and knowledge that those who write and produce them share.
This course aims to give those of you who are considering a career in print journalism a thorough grounding in those skills.
Journalism has dozens of definitions. At its simplest it could be described as a means of imparting information.
But it’s not as simple as that. Journalism also has a power in our society to effect change through the presentation of that information.
This course will make you think about the way you communicate, about the way you write, how to get your message across clearly and concisely…and about the different ways other people try to get their message across to you.
It will focus on the production and presentation of news and feature articles from the point of view of a newspaper office. A journalist who can successfully write on a broad spectrum of topics in a wide range of styles for a newspaper has the foundation skills to take them just about anywhere in the industry.
The actual make-up and basic design of newspapers will be analysed and students will learn to source and write their own stories in a variety of styles using the English language effectively.
Students will also examine the legal and ethical obstacles that litter every journalist’s path and how to assess and deal with them.
They will work both in your own time, in group time and, occasionally against the clock and at the end of the first semester will have produced a portfolio of 3,000 words.
