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Digital Journalism (007P3)

15 credits, Level 7 (Masters)

Autumn teaching

This module equips you with essential knowledge and skills in news research and writing and you will be encouraged to produce news material for a range of platforms. You will also explore key theories surrounding different approaches to news and writing, and the key ethical and legal challenges involved.

The module delivers a foundation in the key principles and techniques of news gathering, news reporting and feature writing. You will proceed from exploring news values, finding story ideas, doing research, identifying and interviewing sources to reporting straight news as well as writing different types of feature stories (e.g. columns, profiles, lifestyle pieces, backgrounders). By the end of the course, you will have gained a solid skill and knowledge base in news and feature writing such as:

- drawing on a range of sources and turning raw information into a publishable news report or feature
- building an effective story structure
- grabbing and maintaining the reader's attention in print and online
- identifying the story angle
- quoting people effectively and accurately, and
- using style and vocabulary appropriate to the genre and context

You will practice all of these via in-class exercises and real-life journalism assignments. You will also obtain a critical understanding of the genres and sub-genres of news and feature and apply this understanding to a critical analysis of existing news products. You will be encouraged and instructed to write publishable content for mainstream news publications.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 150 hours of work. This breaks down into about 39 hours of contact time and about 111 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2024/25. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum.

We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.