Tim Luckhurst - Facilities and contact times

The Master's course for postgraduate students who want to train as journalists in one year is based in a multimedia newsroom. Every student has an iMac-based workstation at which they can edit film, edit sound, make newspaper and magazine pages, and build websites. They have a television camera, an HD portable camera. They have a stereo sound recording machine for professional radio. They also have, available to them, a multimedia studio, in which they can make television news programs and radio news, so it's a genuine bi-media news studio in which they can make network radio and output HD-quality television news in their own newsroom.

Our students are on a full-time course, and when we say full-time, we mean full-time. They are taught in classes, newsrooms, and studios between 9:30 and 4:00 throughout the week. But that's just the beginning of it. They also have compulsory work experience with the KM Group, our local newspaper and radio partner. Students often ask is there a possibility of an internship, and we have to say, no I'm afraid it's compulsory. You will get work experience. You will work as a reporter. You will work for the KM Group.

So, a typical day on the M.A. multimedia journalism. Our students arrive at 9:30 for editorial conference. We discuss the top stories of the day, how they'll be treated, and which media they will be best represented. We discuss ideas that the students themselves have brought to the table and which they would like to turn into stories, and then we go about turning those ideas into stories in our professional teaching. So, when you turn up for conference at 9:30 you need to have read the newspapers. You need to have listened to the Today program. You need to have thought about the day's news agenda. You need, in other words, to have done what every professional journalist in the country is doing every single day.

The range of teaching is very broad, but the average contact time per week is 25 hours. The average time the students spend in the center is at least 40 hours per week, because they need to use the equipment to practice as well as having the formal sit down classes, newsroom sessions, and seminars.