Editors and trainers say they are “shocked” by the lack of public affairs knowledge displayed by some journalism students.
Education and industry chiefs gathered to discuss the future of journalism training at the NCTJ’s Journalism Skills Conference this morning.
The issue of how public affairs and local democracy reporting is taught was discussed by one group in a break-out session during the conference, held at Harlow College.
In the session, chaired by South Wales Argus editor Nicole Garnon and Cardiff University MA news journalism course director Mike Hill, delegates were asked on how they felt about the current state of public affairs teaching on journalism courses and whether it should remain a compulsory part of NCTJ news journalism courses.
Harlow College, where the conference is being held
Richard Lindfield, who teaches the subject at Brighton Journalist Works, said: “I’m shocked by how little people know, even people coming in as graduates.
“This is the basics of how our system works and government works. They have to have that as a journalist.”
Rotherham Advertiser editor Andrew Mosley added: “If you stop teaching that, and papers start employing people who haven’t learnt that, that’s when you lose reader engagement.
“A lot of papers have gone down that route and I think they have lost a lot of respect for that.”
In a further discussion, the group also agreed that health authorities failing to respond to requests from journalists had become an issue which needs to be examined.
Presenting the group’s findings to the conference, Mike said: “Health seems to be a real problem. People in health aren’t very good at giving information to anybody, whether students or the professional press.”
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It all starts at the top – NHS England are hopeless at dealing positively with the media and this mindset trickles down through all the NHS Trust managements; whose first reaction to enquiries is usually denial and obstruction or downright lying..
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I don’t love council press officers, but they will tell you how shocked they are at the lack of basic knowledge many fledgling reporters have of how councils work. But then the days of reporters spending two or three nights a week at council meetings are long gone, if my sterile local rag full of unedited press releases is anything to go by.
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People should be more shocked over the number of aspiring journalists who don’t read newspapers
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As I teach my PA students at UCLan, being able to fillet agenda papers for stories pre-meeting is the key to being a journalistic rainmaker and a thus a very worthy hire. It’s part of the NCTJ syllabus, so presumably accredited courses are teaching it? And it’s such fun – one of my faves while editing was the council’s proposal to train residents to provide out-of-hours burial services to meet various faith requirements. The front page splash headline? “Dig your own graves!” Then there was a two line planning notice which hadn’t even reached the agenda papers and yielded a P1 splasheroo: “Sex shop empire HQ for town?” And when a councillor stood up in Full Council and demanded that senior officers declare whether or not they were Freemasons, you can guess what question our team was putting to all 60 elected members in the following days…..*Dabs eye with tissue*
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Reporters today reading council agendas? Sorry, Kevin Duffy – if it’s not in a tweet or a Facebook post they can cut and paste they are mostly not interested.
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I’m shocked that anyone in the business is shocked.
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Some have gumption and some, not. I remember interviewing dozens of would-be trainees (and some trying to move from another paper) for years for a local paper and one stock question I’d ask was: “Have you seen and read our paper and done a bit of research about this district?” There were some who said they had not! Some said that if they got the job they’d read the paper then. They had applied weeks earlier, sent in their CVs, travelled to my office from miles away, sat in reception nervously waiting to be called – but had not bothered to look at the paper. None of the “haven’t bothered” twits were taken on.
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this might sound olde worlde but i recall when the chief reporter went round the office throwing various council agendas at reporters and said “find me some human interest from these”. You could always do that if you looked hard enough. Sometimes you did not even need to attend the meeting, if you had good contacts!
Council coverage is so tame now on many papers. even the quotes look like they have been lifted off e mails or social media.
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Some of the most switched on,clued up business minded reporters I know of are those ex regional press staffers working in then independent local community publishing sector.
All have formed good local contacts based on knowledge of their patch, and majority are local to the area and know the people, the business owners and the background to local events and issues, something which only comes with hands on experience and not given time to develop in the big publishing groups where social media scraping and FB story leads are the main sources of news.
You can train skills but you can’t train common sense or general nous and awareness.
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Another good point, Phillip – it’s all about making proper contacts, not just following anonymous tweeters and Facebook posters and pasting press statements.
I spent years as a reporter attending district and parish council meetings, even when there wasn’t much on the agenda, just because it was always a chance to have a gossip and a chat with councillors, council officers – and the kind of connected and informed members of the public who also turned up to such gatherings. They therefore knew me and took me seriously because I took the trouble to do so.
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