The three separate bodies accrediting newspaper, magazine and broadcast journalism education have come together to form a new joint multimedia training council.
The National Council for the Training of Journalists, Periodicals Training Council and Broadcast Journalism Training Council will agree on a set of core skills for all accredited courses and will examine how training can be ‘converged to meet the requirements of the news media industries”, the group said.
The launch of the new Joint Journalism Training Council was announced at the Society of Editors conference in Bristol this week. It will be chaired by Sky News online associate editor Simon Bucks, the Society’s outgoing president.
The trio of training bodies said key skills such as news sense, research, interviewing, law and ethics will continue to be the cornerstone of journalism education.
But the group also acknowledged that multi-media newsgathering, writing for the web, search engine optimisation and the use of audio and video were becoming an increasingly important part of the trade.
NCTJ chief executive Joanne Butcher said: ‘We now have a co-ordinated and joint approach to achieving the high journalism standards we are all committed to.”
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