ABSTRACT
Until the early 1970s, there was no formal route into magazine journalism at all. (This may be partly why careers advisers in both schools and universities often assumed that journalism as a career meant newspaper journalism because there was at least some kind of pattern to training for this.) Journalists who wanted to join magazines from newspapers would sometimes find their qualifications helpful but equally could encounter magazine editors who had never heard of the NCTJ. A similar problem arose as the various further education and higher education courses in journalism got under way. They don’t all teach exactly the same things or at least don’t emphasise the same skills. The qualifications are at differing levels (from certificate, through HND to graduate diploma and MA or M.Litt or even M.Sc.) and there is no consistency in the level at which applicants join. Some universities cater only for graduates, some teach undergraduate journalism degrees, some FE colleges cater for school-leavers on block-release courses. You can see why this is confusing already, before we even get to the vexed subject of media studies.
