Essential Journalism The NCTJ Guide for Trainee Journalists

This book is a practical guide to all aspects of modern journalism for anyone seeking to study for the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) Diploma in Journalism and become a qualified journalist in the UK.

Written in collaboration with the NCTJ, Essential Journalism outlines everything you need to know about the journalism industry today, from its ethical framework to its practice across print, television, radio, online and social media. It looks at the core principles and the skills that are required of journalists across all platforms, helping students develop an overall understanding of the business and examining the application and adaptation of traditional best practice to the demands of the digital age. This is a unique one-stop shop for anyone who wants to understand the nature and purpose of journalism, and how it is changing and evolving in today?s digital newsrooms.

This book is a core resource for journalism trainees and undergraduates, as well as for seasoned practitioners and lecturers.

FOREWORD

By Alex Crawford, Patron of the National Council for the Training of Journalists.

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PART ONE: JOURNALISM AND JOURNALISTS

1 The journalism landscape

2 The nature of journalism: The nature of news

3: You, the reporter

4 Ethics

5 Regulation

PART TWO: STORYFINDING AND STORYTELLING

6 Storyfinding: The general reporter

7 Storyfinding: Sources

8 Storyfinding: Interviewing

9 Storytelling: Anatomy of a news story

10 Storytelling: Writing a news story

11 Storytelling: Language and style

12 Storytelling: Reporting numbers and statistics

PART THREE: MULTI-PLATFORM JOURNALISM

13 The digital journalist: the digital scene and writing for the website

14 The digital journalist: social media and online research

15 The radio journalist: the radio scene and writing for radio

16 The radio journalist: news summaries and radio reporting

17 The television journalist: the television scene and picture gathering

18 The television journalist: continuous news and television reporting

19 The print journalist

20 The mobile journalist: The freelance journalist

PART FOUR: SPECIALIST PRACTICE

21 The feature writer

22 The court reporter

23 The political reporter

24 The specialist reporter

This book summarised in two pages

Further reading

Index

Jonathan Baker is an award-winning journalist and journalism teacher. His first foray into journalism was during a gap year spent on the Ashbourne News Telegraph in Derbyshire. He joined the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo as a graduate trainee and passed his NCTJ Proficiency Test there before joining BBC Radio in London. He held senior positions in BBC radio, television and multimedia newsgathering. He was variously Executive Editor of the Radio Newsroom, Executive Editor of Radio 5 Live News Programmes, Editor BBC of the One o’Clock and Six o’Clock Television News, Editor of the BBC Ten o’Clock News, and World News Editor. For four years he was Head of the College of Journalism, responsible for the training of the BBC’s 8,000 journalists. His last role at the BBC was Head of Newsgathering. He was appointed Founding Professor of Journalism at the University of Essex, where he devised and delivered an NCTJ-accredited undergraduate course in multimedia journalism. He is a winner of the NCTJ Chairman’s Award for outstanding contribution to high standards of journalism training.