MA Print Journalism

Our NCTJ accredited print courses aim to produce top-class reporters who dig out the best stories and turn in crisp, engaging copy against tight deadlines.

We will also prepare you for the increasingly multi-media print environment, by teaching you how to record video and audio to include in your own web pages.

What does the course involve?

You will learn to write stories that punch their weight with every word. Initially you will do this in pressurised workshops in the department's newsroom, then you will be sent to your own "patch" to find stories. You will report from courtrooms and from meetings where local politicians are taking decisions about people´s lives.

We will work hard on your interviewing skills, so you can ask the questions that tease out vital information and get beneath the surface of stories.

As the course progresses, we will introduce you to Adobe Indesign and InCopy, industry standard software packages that enable you to lay out sophisticated pages. You will use your production skills to lay out pages against realistic deadlines, taking responsibility for the sub-editing, headline writing and editorial decision-making.

You will take part in a team exercise to produce a special course newspaper.

Every day you will work on building your shorthand speed, aiming to hit the NCTJ standard of 100 words per minute.

What do you need to get on the course?

To succeed on our courses you will need to be insatiably curious, passionately interested in news and current affairs, have a wide-ranging intelligence, an appetite for really hard work, and have a focused determination to break into a fiercely competitive industry.

To get on the courses, you will convince us of these qualities. You should have some experience of what it is all about. This could be extensive experience in student journalism. Ideally, you will also have done placements in professional newsrooms and had some of your work published.

If English isn't your first language you'll need an overall IELTS score of at least 7.5, with at least 7.5 in each element of the test.

What job will I get?

When you leave the courses, you have every chance of getting the job your skills deserve.

Our students are now working for local, regional and national newspapers in this country and abroad. Some work for magazines, others for major news agencies like the Press Association, and some choose to move into other areas of the media.