Journalism and Media

Undergraduate Journalism and Media courses

What’s it about?

If you like being in the thick of things and keeping up-to-date on current affairs, Journalism is for you. It’s exciting stuff and our courses strike a balance between practical and academic work, providing you with the skills for a career as a modern journalist. You’ll still need a note pad though. Flexibility is key as the industry needs journalists capable of producing documentaries for TV and radio, as well as writing and designing pages for magazines, newspapers and the web. Our courses recognise this and provide training using industry-standard technology and tuition on understanding how journalism works – the law, its history and its cultural contexts. Work placements will help prepare you and ensure you have the employability factor. That’s real-world, sleeves rolled up, on the job training and we have strong industry links to call upon with organisations such as the BBC, ITV and local radio and print media to enable this.

Real-world experience

In your final year you will have the opportunity to work with external organisations. Past students have worked at the BBC, ITV and many commercial radio stations and have produced media packages for companies such as Unilever, Fabergé and the Forget-me-not Trust. What’s great is that we run an annual TV quiz show competition with BBC TV. It’s judged by top BBC executives and the winning team is given the opportunity to work on programmes such as Dragon’s Den, so you’ll need to be on the ball. BBC Radio also takes our students on four-week placements at their studios in Manchester. We also work closely with our technology partners Panasonic, Avid Technology and Oxford Sound and Media to ensure our facilities meet the latest industry standard.

Be in demand

Journalism at the University of Huddersfield had an 95.3% record of graduates finding employment or going on to further study within six months of graduation during 2009/10.

Our journalism students are flexible and multi-skilled. They have to be to cope with the constantly changing world of journalism. They can not only seek out a story and write it up but are also able to shoot and edit digital video and audio, which they can upload to the web. This self-sufficiency means they are well placed for freelance work should they choose that option.

The opportunities that exist within the industry are vast and varied and the transferable skills you will develop on your chosen course will open up a number of doors for you.

Our graduates have found employment in the following areas: feature writer for the Regional Magazine Company; PR work with the Red Cross in Brisbane, Australia; writer for Goal.com; media manager for Hull Rugby League Club; press officer for Huddersfield Town; and media executive with the Rugby Football League in Leeds to name but a few.

Huddersfield alumni include: