Education for a young journalist

That’s a tricky one for me because it was, well, over 20 years since I did my course. I did a Wellington course in journalism specifically, rather than going through the University channels. I went straight from school into journalism, so I’m not probably that au fait with University courses, in fact what’s available. There are media studies Julie I think, aren’t there?

Yeah. I mean there are so many different journalism courses and they’re at Polytechs and at Universities, and all sorts. I think the one down in Canterbury with Jim Tully is an excellent course. We went on the same one didn’t we? We went on the Wellington Polytech course, which is now part of the University. So it’s basically just finding people who’ve been to those courses and finding out what kind of experience they had there, I guess.

But they’re very specific courses. That’s when you know in your heart that you want to be a journalist. If you’re looking for a broad based university system, then I guess if you could have some media studies in there, English is always good, I find history, NZ history, particularly useful. I would say politics would be very useful.

Politics, economics as well.

Economics for sure. I did economics at secondary school. What you really want to bring to journalism is a wide range of ideas and understanding of various things. It’s about life. So the more that you can learn about, at university level, the better I reckon, for you. Keep an open mind, and always study what you enjoy, don’t be forced into doing something you don’t enjoy.

Yeah, I had some really good advice actually which was…it’s ok, a lot of people can write or a lot of people like writing, but you have to have something to write about, so it’s always good to supplement those things like English with other courses that you can sort of find a spec, you know you can find a spec…you can specialise in the topic (laughs).