City St George’s University has ended its Newspaper Journalism MA after 44 years, replacing it with a Journalism MA Course.
The journalism department at the university is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year and the post graduate course in Newspaper Journalism has been running since 1982 (becoming an MA some time after that date).
City George’s, which is part of the University of London, was previously just called City University and continues to also run specialist MA courses in Investigative Journalism, International Journalism, Magazine Journalism, Global Financial Journalism and Broadcast Journalism.
Famous alumni of the City Newspaper Journalism MA include: former Times editor James Harding, former Spectator editor Fraser Nelson, BBC economics editor Faisal Islam, current Times editor Tony Gallagher, journalist and broadcaster Helen Lewis, Sunday Times journalist Decca Aitkenhead and former Telegraph editor Will Lewis.
City said that the new Journalism MA has had triple the number of applications and has 56 students enrolled (compared to 30 on last year’s Newspaper Journalism MA).
Paul Solman, who has run the Newspaper Journalism MA since 2024, told Press Gazette: “The decision reflects the trend in the industry. For many, the word newspaper still has connotations of a paper product. And we know that newspapers are online things these days… We’re very keen in the university to ensure students know what they are getting.”
Solman took over from longstanding course director Jonathan Hewett in 2024 and said the university decided to update the programme approximately 18 months ago.
The new degree’s core syllabus continues to cover newswriting, features, editorial production, media law and journalistic ethics. Changes to core assessments reflect the course’s shift in emphasis: rather than mocking up a newspaper page using Adobe InDesign like last year’s Newspaper Journalism cohort, new students will be judged by their ability to edit a live news page instead.
City’s journalism department introduced a compulsory Career Development module this year, teaching students across its postgraduate courses (broadcast, global financial, international, investigative and magazine) how to get work experience and freelance work.
Journalism MA students can now elect to study a new module entitled “AI, Journalism, and the Future of News”. Students will be assessed by how well they analyse an AI system already used in the industry and turn a raw dataset into a short news video for social media.
Cardiff University changed its Newspaper Journalism course to News Journalism in 2015; Sheffield University dropped “Print” from its course title in 2017 closely followed by Nottingham Trent University in 2019.
Solman suggested City’s reputation had reduced pressure to change: “We’re the biggest journalism school in the country by some distance. We would argue very strongly that in terms of our influence in the industry, it is bigger than anybody else’s, in terms of the people that we’ve trained here. When you’ve got a course that’s successful like that and has that reputation, I think no one is in a hurry to change it.”
Jon Slattery amongst first 13 students in 1976 cohort
City’s first journalism course ran in October 1976: a postgraduate diploma led by Tom Welsh, a former Guardian journalist and later co-editor of McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists. It admitted 13 graduates to that first cohort from 120 applicants. Students studied law, public administration and shorthand (now an optional extracurricular at City), learning to report from courts, council meetings and Parliament.
Cardiff had established its Centre for Journalism Studies in 1970, six years before City. City’s edge was a proximity to Fleet Street which gave its students access to national newspapers and their journalists.
Former Press Gazette news editor and deputy editor Jon Slattery was among those 13 “guinea pigs”.
He told Press Gazette: “I can see why City have made the decision; but I suppose it is an irony celebrating fifty years of the course this way. For me, it is a bit like the last days of Fleet Street. Something was there and then suddenly it disappears. You have just got to accept that in the media.”
He linked City’s discontinuation of the newspaper course to the decline of local newspapers, where he began his career on the Lincolnshire Echo.
He said: “It was a daily paper, but it had someone who covered the council, someone who covered the courts. It had a features editor. It had a sports editor. It had all these people, and it had general news reporters who, if someone rang up with a story, would go out with a photographer and do the story.
“I just don’t think you’ve got the manpower or the number of journalists to cover things in the way they used to,” he added.
Ten of Slattery’s cohort worked in the local press after leaving city, including Terry Dignan who joined Sheffield’s Morning Telegraph and would later edit BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour.
Times editor Tony Gallagher, a 1986 City newspaper journalism diploma graduate, said: “It was a great course and really helped kickstart my career, but times change and I’m sure City University knows what it’s doing by adapting its courses. It turns out exceptionally talented graduates, many of whom have come to work for us.”
Current MA Journalism student Ezra Izer told Press Gazette: “From where I stood, I couldn’t see much difference between that programme and the new one beyond semantics… What mattered to me was the prestige, the connections and the graduate prospects that come with a City degree.
“I’m saddened that newspaper-exclusive courses appear to have gone extinct. But I’d rather see a course evolve than cling to an archaic format out of habit. It reflects a real commitment to preparing students for the industry as it is, and for whatever specialism they choose.”
The City Newspaper Journalism MA last year cost £11,930 (£24,440 for international students), whereas the Journalism MA now costs: £13, 000 (£26,680 for international students).
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