I did have discussions with the BJTC about accreditation of the MA Online Journalism, but it was clear to both parties that the couurse, being aimed at those who already had media experience, really wasn’t appropriate – there’s little point spending valuable teaching time on things that your students have been doing for years in the professional world when you can instead be building on top of that. At some point I may look at a second MA which is aimed at entry level (those without media experience), and accredited accordingly, and in that case I would look initially to the BJTC whose documentation indicates more flexibility and a more progressive online element (that said, I’m hoping the online element will be updated by then). But I wouldn’t write off the NCTJ or PTC either – it may come down to who has updated their requirements most recently. The key point in all of this is that I don’t believe we should delegate the process of finding out what the industry wants from MA graduates to someone else – we should be out there finding out for ourselves. This is what I did with the MA and will do for future MAs, without any preconception of who the employers are.

The latter in particular was shocking given the poor quality of the sub-editing.

The BJTC accreditation was a draw for me to do the MA Multi-Media Journalism course at Bournemouth. From the sounds of it Paul that might be the course the student you mentioned went to do. I was attracted by the MA aspect of it as well, compared to the diploma offered by courses like Broadcast Journalism at Cardiff and City.

Bloggers and columnists alike often talk about journalism as if it only relates to print, which is a fallacy.

Would you say that the BJTC, whilst obviously a different body to the NCTJ, similarly constricts teaching and offers little other than marketing in return?