Course summary

This course offers a hands-on curriculum that allows you to develop your core journalistic skills in print, online and social media management. You'll learn to master a broad variety of media formats from writing and reporting to social media and video. Besides writing, the course emphasises contemporary digital skills that will place you in high demand in an ever-changing world of content creation and distribution. These practical skills are underpinned with training in media law, ethics and regulation. Whether your passion is current affairs, arts and culture, investigative features, travel, fashion, sport – or you are still deciding, our aim is to help you to find your first job in journalism. We assist students to get work placements during the course, provide career advice, arrange media networking events and keep in close contact with potential employers. This MA has been accredited by the Broadcast Journalism Training Council (BJTC), which means we provide industry-backed journalism training for online, TV and radio. Our students regularly win BJTC awards, and the course has been awarded the BJTC award for excellence in teaching. Our teaching staff are highly experienced journalism professionals, and our graduates have gone on to work with a variety of leading media organisations including BBC TV and Radio, BBC News Online, CNN, ITN, Russia Today, Al Jazeera, the Financial Times, Rolling Stone, and Cosmopolitan magazine and many other media houses in Britain and around the world. There is a strong emphasis on learning through 'hands-on' practice, in small class groups. Most of your assessed coursework will be 'real' journalism assignments and you will take part in a number of mock news days. As well as regular classes taught by experienced journalists on our staff, we also invite other media professionals as guest speakers or to critique student work. You'll have the chance to air your work on Smoke Radio, the University's multi-award-winning internet radio station, or post items onto the MA's own news site, Westminster World. The course is taught over two semesters, and for the Master’s students is followed by the largely self-directed final project in the summer. Unlike many other journalism MAs, you can undertake an extensive practical Final Project. This could be a TV or radio documentary or a digital project. This MA can be taken as a part-time course (daytime) over two years studying two days a week after initial more intense orientation weeks. Westminster is a leading provider in this academic discipline and is ranked top 15 among UK institutions for Communication and Media Studies in the QS World University Rankings 2022. The University is also ranked 4th in the UK in the Complete University Guide 2022 for Research Quality in Communication and Media Studies.