Journalism

Advantages: can be cheeky to the police
Disadvantages: low pay, long hours

...the minimum to get into journalism (I'm in a cynical mood!). You can guess what this has done to reporting standards - is your local daily as good as it was even five years ago? Trainees will blossom but time is the teacher. But one man's stale bread is another man's slap-up meal - there has never been a better time for newcomers to land a job because there are so many more vacancies. The easiest way is to take a course run by the National Council ...
...courses in newspaper and magazine journalism at colleges up and down the country (Portsmouth and Harlw are two noted centres). There are also 20 week fast-track and postgraduate courses. You need five A-C GCSE passes, including English for pre-entry. Some colleges ask for two A-levels or a degree. If you've previously taken a degree you'll have to stump up the cost of the NCTJ course. There is no figure on the NCTJ website but a guesstimate would ... Read review

Advantages: All the things I've mentioned
Disadvantages: Poorly paid... but then you know that to begin with!

...the best way into sports journalism would be to take English, History, and Biology at A-level and then apply for a Sports Science degree at Bath University. The problem was that I have less interest in Science then I do in seeing Vanessa Feltz naked and covered in mud; the only difference being that Science doesn’t make me feel ill; just a little nauseous. Anyway, I meandered my way through my first year of A-levels doing History instead of ...
...on paper would be a Journalism or Media Studies degree. These are often looked upon with scorn by potential employers, so applying to these courses seemed like the academic equivalent of Oasis’s recent music career (i.e. going downhill fast). Still, fancying the challenge (or, more truthfully, being a lazy b*stard who couldn’t be bothered to do English at uni), I took up an offer to study Media Studies at Loughborough. The course didn’t ... Read review

Advantages: The chance to see places and meet people that most don't, see your name in print
Disadvantages: Low pay, having to speak to people who don't want to talk

...have wanted to go into journalism since I was 17. I knew what a competitive industry it is and had quite a detailed action plan to help me get started. While at university I carried out numerous unpaid work experience placement, on magazines, national and local newspapers, websites and even overseas. These proved invaluable in building up contacts and getting my name into print. I saved everything I wrote to keep in my portfolio. I'm quite sure I ...
...Most people who enter journalism nowadays are graduates, and have done an NCTJ course. There are a few newspaper groups that run their own training course but due to the cost of these, many are being cut back. For instance, Trinity Mirror run a course in Newcastle, but this has not been taking trainees on for some time. I applied for an in house training scheme with Midland News Association (which publishes the Express and Star, Shropshire Star ... Read review

Advantages: Becoming more and more what employers want
Disadvantages: Only about 50% is of practical value

...and most respected routes into journalism is to take a degree in any subject - I did politics - and then take the NCTJ course post-grad. This way you show that you have a wider education than just taking a journalism degree and, as my editor says, all you need to know to be a journalist you can learn in a year, not three. The course usually takes a year although there is a fast track version that takes 18-20 weeks. In the course you take local ...
...what's being said. Newspaper journalism and handout are probably the most useless courses of the whole scheme. They teach you to write in a very stale, boring, 'NCTJ' style - just the facts, ma'am. No-one would read this if you tried to publish it and your editor would kick you round the room if you tried. But get into the formulaic rhythm and you'll pass. The handout is a press release that you have to turn into a news story - the first sentence ... Read review

Advantages: See opinion
Disadvantages: See opinion

...intention of seriously taking up journalism as my main source of income, but to enable me to pursue my writing in a more serious way on a freelance basis, and because writing was always something I loved to do with a passion. I’ve had a bit of success here in Ireland in getting my scribbles into print, and was very lucky last November, when a taxi strike here in Dublin, which lasted for about three or four weeks in all, put me in the unique ...
...a couple of the quality daily newspapers actually bidding for me to write articles for them. I’ve capitalised on that happy situation since, and now do fairly regular work for a number of publications, writing car reviews in the main and the odd feature article. ~ ~ About the same time, early December to be precise, I discovered online opinion sites, first of all Epinions in the States, and then Ciao and dooyoo here in Europe. These were ... Read review