NCTJ/PTC What do the editors think?

What course should you take?

Which accrediting body is the best: the newspaper-focused National Council for the Training of Journalists, NCTJ, the magazine-focused Periodical Training Council, PTC, or the Broadcast Journalism Training Council,  BJTC?
What length and level of journalism course: undergrad, postgrad, fast track? Which should it be?
In magazines, says Jess McAree, group editorial training manager for haymarket, they favour the PTC, but  “I personally when I’ve recruited people have never really looked at their qualifications… I’ve always wanted people who were mustard keen.”

What course should you do?

If you want to begin your career on local newspapers, what qualifications do you need? The obvious answer is an NCTJ pre-entry course, but industry experts such as Gary Wright, group editor of KoS Media, say that this lacks certain vital areas of expertise.
So if you take the NCTJ's preliminary qualifications as part of a university course - whether its at undergraduate or postgraduate level - make sure you also get a solid grounding in the web, video and audio, in addition to what the NCTJ requires you to know to pass its exams.

How not to get a job in journalism: application and interview errors analysed

A friend of mine has been interviewing applicants for a reporter’s post.

The ideal candidate would have two or three years experience on a newspaper or B2B magazine, but an impressive recent graduate of a practical journalism course would also be in with a good chance.

I’m not going to name the publication or identify any of the applicants. Suffice it to say that many dozens applied, and almost all of them could be rejected out of hand – because they made one of a shortlist of fundamental errors in their application.

So what I’m going to do here is analyse where the unsuccessful candidates went wrong. This is a case study in how not to get a job. Read the full post here: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/971

Stealth writing: A secret source of income for freelances

Stealth writing is a phrase David Howell has invented to cover all the lucrative freelance writing that is not credited.

In the clip he gives the example of Business Link, a site which has thousands of pages of content, with not a byline to be seen. He writes that content.
He says: “It’s me but no one knows it’s me, and there is tons of stuff that sits under the high profile stuff. If you can find that work there’s a ton of it.
To get it, pick some markets, call and ask where they source their information from. It’s often a third party content provider, and if so you need to find out which, and approach them.
Apply the same skills that you would to getting a story to building your business: research, knock on doors: “People ask me what’s the most important skill doing this, it’s research frankly.
“The other key skill is you need to develop a selling gene, that idea that you aren’t selling something if you’re a journalist is rubbish, because you are.
More from David here http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/704

How to get your first job at the BBC

Alex Gerlis, Head of Training, BBC College of Journalism, on what you need to know to get a job at the BBC.
 

“I'm often asked at universities how can I get a job at the BBC, and what is a BBC job interview panel – a board – looking for, so I came up with this acronym: TRICK.

“T stands for truth because you quite want people to tell you the truth, it's a surpise that sometimes people aren’t terribly frank.

“R is for resiliance, which is absolutely critical

“I is for ideas, you want people to come up with ideas, and ideas about how to cover them. I remember doing a whole series of interviews at the time of the last fire-fighters’ strike and you say, on day 23 or whatever, how would you cover it? And after you’ve heard the 22^nd person say well we’d follow a fire-fighter and their family you are looking for someone – because there will be people out there – who have something just a little bit different because they’ve thought about it and they come up with something that’s original because that’s important.

“C is curiosity.

“K is knowledge. Sometimes on BBC boards we do general knowledge questionnaires and its no good having people say…’I think its really unfair to ask who won the recent heavyweight fight because I’m not interested in sport’, it’s having a good knowledge and also a thirst for knowledge.

Alex was speaking at the NCTJ's Journalism Skills Conference: http://www.nctj.com/events/journalism-skills-conference.html

Find out more about careers in journalism at Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide, www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk

How to get your first job in newspapers

Some newspaper groups get multimedia in a really significant way. Many don't.

One that does is KoS Media in Kent. It runs a series of free local newspapers with accompanying websites, plus an online TV channel.

It's completely open to readers to add their own videos, and many do. In short, if you wanted to get your first job at a forward-looking newspaper group that appreciated your multmedia skills, then KoS would probably be on your shortlist.

Gary Wright is KoS Media's group editor, and in the clips and quotes here he gives an insight into the sort of graduate who might get their first job on one of his titles.

http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/968

How to get your first job on magazines: Tip 1, Just Do It!

Demonstrate you are serious about becoming a journalist by publishing yourself online: “People who come to us now and say well I don’t really do anything online, we would definitely think that person’s not going to be any good to us.”

This is one of many tips from Jess McAree, group editorial training manager at Haymarket. You'll find loads more advice from Jess at http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/967

Journalism students: there are plenty of jobs for you. Maybe

Could it possibly be true that there are plenty of journalism jobs to go around?

I’d understand if you dismissed that question out of hand. Having been told just how tough it is to get into journalism – tougher than ever what with the recession and the slump in advertising – how could it be easy to get a job?

Actually, I’m not saying it will be easy. It won’t. But that’s not the same as the doom-mongers’ assertion that there are far too many students studying journalism.

I’ve tried to calculate the number of journalism jobs available each year for new recruits, and the numbers of journalism graduates there are, to see what the supply-demand equation looks like.

It’s by no means straightforward.

• No-one seems to keep figures of how many jobs are available each year.
• Even the numbers studying journalism are contested.
• It’s not even possible to say with complete confidence how many journalists there are in total.

So I’ve done my best. You can see my figures, and how I arrived at them, by reading on here.