Foster has been teaching journalism for 19 years and has had a significant influence on students. He is described as blunt, opinionated, and challenging, pushing students to defend their views. While this can be intimidating, students say it is also hugely valuable in preparing them for careers in journalism. Foster models his teaching on simulating the realities of working as a reporter, meeting with students informally and providing honest feedback. Though his methods may seem harsh, former students say their time with Foster was highly useful and memorable.

1. jonathan foster
perverse cynic
or bruised romantic?
Foster has been a member of the journalism department for 19 of its 20 years. There is no one else who has had as big
an influence on as many students. We sat down with him over a pint to hear the ups and downs of his career and find
out how after all these years of being mistaken for a cynic, he is actually a bruised romantic…
O
ne hand clutches a pint of Saltaire Blonde while the other
holds a lit Winston as it gesticulates to emphasise his
speech. He covers topics from the future of journalism to
the dissolution of the monarchy, from boxing being the only sport
where it’s legal to kill a man to what is wrong with university
bureaucracy, and everything in between. He is passionate, opinionat-
ed and occasionally vociferous. If you disagree he will argue the toss
with you and then buy the next round. For five hours in the beer
garden of The Red Deer he entertains, educates and inebriates four
journalism students who were lucky enough to run into him as he
awaits the news that he has become a grandfather for the first time.
the cynical teacher
Foster has been a member of the journalism department for 19 of its
20 years, joining in 1995 after working for more than two decades as
a reporter. Eschewing the usual academic practice of having an
office, he has made his home in the corner of the department
newsroom. He has become a constant and reliable presence to
students, whether he’s nurturing a student one-to-one from behind
his desk, barking instructions at terrified first-years, or prowling the
room looking over students’ shoulders.
He is the type of tutor whose voice remains in your head long
after the lesson is over. In fact, as I write this I can sense him
getting impatient.
“I hate to cut short this compelling narrative but can you get
on with it?”
His presence can be intimidating at first. A man small in stature,
his personality is large. He is blunt and dry, opinionated and sharp.
He will not suffer a fool and will challenge people so they always
have to be on their toes. Many students have fallen victim to his
sharp tongue over the years but there are others who have learned
that he likes to get back what he gives out. To Foster, verbal sparring
and arguments are what amuse and entertain. When one student had
the temerity to smile in his presence he grumpily asked, “Why are
you smiling?”
“Because I’m a happy person,” the student replied.
Foster looked away in disgust, “You won’t be smiling when you get
your mark back.”
While this may seem unnecessarily blunt and sharp these qualities
are what make him a fantastic teacher. He is always straight with his
students and does not try to protect them from the truth. This
honesty and frankness is what stands out for many he has taught. Jill
Warren, who graduated in 2011, remembers when she first heard
him speak.
Words by Sam McCaffrey

2. “Listening to Foster’s talk at the open day, which was as frank
about the potential bleakness of a future in the journalism industry
as you could imagine, was enough to make some people in the
lecture theatre get up and walk out. But something about it really
appealed to me. The harsh reality that to be successful required
ambition, determination and hard grit really confirmed that this was
the right option for me.”
Foster has always modelled his teaching on what would best
prepare students for the realities of life as a journalist. He doesn’t
have an office and avoids making appointments with people. He
prefers them to find him at his desk in the newsroom if they need to
see him, as this more accurately simulates what working life as a
reporter will be like. He says these one-to-one meetings are how he
prefers to teach compared to lectures and seminars as it allows him
to tailor his teaching to individuals.
“I don’t think formal teaching is much use because you can go and
teach people and they learn all you say, and then they walk straight
into court and what do they find? That the court case they’re in
doesn’t lend itself to the structure they were taught in the lecture. In
that case the lecture probably does more harm than good. This is
why one-to-one teaching is so important
because then the student can say, ‘Well I’ve
tried to write it this way but it just doesn’t
work,’ or, ‘Do you think it works?’ and I could
say, ‘No it doesn’t,’ and go over the reasons
and the alternative ways of writing it.
“Also, I don’t like set sessions because it’s
not economical. If you’ve got a half hour session with someone to
show you their work sometimes you think, ‘Fuck me, they’re better
than I am already.’ Then the last thing you want to do is talk to them
for fifteen minutes. You’re doing fine, bugger off.”
These individual teaching moments with Foster can be gruelling
for those he is teaching, but for many their time learning from him is
a highlight and some of the most useful time they spend at the
university. Christine Cawthorne, a former student who graduated in
2003, used to be terrified of his sessions.
“I was terrified of the copy clinics with Foster, but always came out
feeling like he was an absolute genius. That feeling of being put
through your paces, then coming out with that adrenaline rush of
surviving the challenge was so useful. As a journalist, you have to be
quite fearless, so the moments at university that seemed quite scary
are those that have stuck with me throughout my career.”
Over the years Foster has become known by students in the
department for his “Fosterisms” – a phrase that encompasses both
memorable sayings he often uses to emphasize his teaching, and also
particularly witty and sharp remarks that people have overheard.
Some of his most memorable phrases include: “If it bleeds it leads”,
“Make your news stories as moist as possible, the more moisture the
better” and “All stories involve bodily fluids such as blood, sweat and
semen and it’s the job of reporters to irrigate arid issues with these
fluids”.
The traits that Foster prizes in reporters and believes that students
need to develop are not always the nicer sides of their character. He
believes that in addition to curiosity it is important to have a sense of
perversity – to be able to hunt out stories, but also to be able to
challenge people’s notions. To find and tell stories that someone
somewhere doesn’t want people to know about. He says cynicism is
important in a reporter, but his view of being a cynic is more
romantic than most.
“I would describe a cynic as a bruised romantic. So I think you
need to have some pretty romantic ideas but be prepared to be
shocked and disappointed by how people behave. That’s another
thing – never ever, ever think that human depravity can’t reach any
lower, because it always will.”
the romantic reporter
Foster’s unique, romantic view of the world
is something that comes out as he talks about
his memorable career as a reporter. He
studied history at undergraduate level at The
University of Sheffield and went to complete
the majority of a PhD in the subject before he
realised it was boring, and that “there wasn’t much of a story in it”.
Leaving history behind, he got a job at The Morning Telegraph and
began training to be a journalist. It was here he first experienced the
visceral thrill of seeing a story he had written appear on page one of
a newspaper, a feeling he still misses today.
The first time it happened he was working a shift that finished at
10pm and the paper began printing at 12am. He went downstairs and
stood in the print room and waited to hear the klaxon sound that
would signify the start of the print run. The klaxon rang out and
then the great print machines began to spin up painfully slowly, but
eventually they built up to a roar and Foster moved to the end of the
line where papers began to churn out. He picked up one of the first
copies, hot to the touch and ink still wet, and saw his first front page
byline.
“After the birth of my son it was one of the great moments. I mean,
it is a bit like giving birth – you’ve given birth to a newspaper. It’s
something that’s there, it’s living, it’s full of life, someone has
invested so much love or commitment into that product and there it
is, you can hold it. And you can fold it up and stick it in your pocket,
you can cut it out and put it in an album or a frame or whatever and
cherish it.”
That feeling of seeing his name on page one would be something
that Foster would get to experience quite often as his career
progressed. After moving on from The Morning Telegraph he worked
for The Sunday Times and then The Observer until 1986 when he left
to help launch The Independent where he worked until he came back
to Sheffield to teach.
In a reporting career that lasted more than 20 years he covered
many memorable stories – seminal moments in history such as the
1984-85 miners’ strike, and the release of Nelson Mandela from
prison. He also broke stories about illegal UK arms sales to Iraq and
covered many huge sporting events from Italia ‘90 to Wimbledon and
the Open Championship.
With such a rich and distinguished career it could be difficult to
pick out a proudest moment. But for Foster it comes easy; the Bulger
case and the trial of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson – the
ten-year-old boys accused of abducting and murdering two-year-old
James Bulger.
“I became quite quickly convinced that they were not getting a fair
trial, and a week after the end of the trial I wrote a piece in The
Independent which led to the whole series of judgements culminat-
ing in the European Court’s decision that they didn’t get a fair trial.
So I think I played a small but significant part in making sure that
they didn’t get locked up and the key thrown away as some people
Fosterisms
On reporting
• If it bleeds, it leads.
• Make your news stories as moist as possible. The more moisture
the better.
• All stories involved human fluids such as blood, sweat and semen
and that it’s the job of reporters to irrigate their stories with these
fluids.
On the English language
• While marking work: “No he wasn’t hung you pleb!”
• If you ever say ‘basically’ again I’ll break your legs.
On sport
• I like boxing because it’s the only legal place to kill a man.
To students
• Foster: Why are you smiling?
Student: Because I’m a happy person...
Foster: You won’t be smiling when you get your mark back
• Foster: Have you got 100 words per minute?
Student: No.
Foster: Are you doing a print portfolio?
Student: Probably not.
Foster: Good.
• Student: What happens if you don’t have shorthand?
Foster: You’re fucked.
“Make your stories
as moist as possible.
The more moisture
the better.”

3. would have wanted.”
As well as being one of his proudest moments, covering the trial
also happened to be one of the most enjoyable of his career. It is
perhaps an example of the different sensibilities or priorities of
journalists, but the opportunity to cover stories like the Bulger case
don’t come along often.
“Covering the trial was brilliant,” Foster says. “I stayed in a place
called The Inn at Whitewell, the most glorious country house. It
might sound like a really nasty thing to say but I had a great time.
Never mind how much misery might be going on, how can you not
have a great time if everything you write gets in the paper or on
page one? And to be given the chance
on expenses to come home after each
harrowing day’s account of ghastly
proceedings to a really beautiful place,
it was bliss. I know you’re not
supposed to say that, you’re supposed
to say it’s gruelling or it made me
rethink my attitude – it didn’t. I don’t think you get much better
than covering a story like that.”
It was shortly after the trial that Foster left The Independent to
return to Sheffield and take up a position as a lecturer, in part
because he realised that now the case was over, he was unlikely to
match the highs and excitement he had already experienced in his
career.
In switching careers he says there was a period of adjustment, not
so much in switching from being a reporter to a teacher, but in
dealing with the university bureaucracy and management. Not a man
to keep his opinions to himself, he has long been vocal about his
displeasure at the way the university is run.
“The most difficult part was dealing with the university bureaucra-
cy and the stupidity of the people who run the university and their
painfully slow process of managing the university. It has a vocabu-
lary, a whole turn of phrase, which is typical of an organisation that
is instinctively more interested in concealing then revealing. It’s a
secretive, self-serving and, I think, pretty unpleasant place.”
Despite this, he has no regrets about becoming a teacher. “I regret
working for the university, but I have no regrets about teaching. The
work has been brilliant. It’s stimulating, it’s enjoyable, and I think it’s
quite satisfying.”
But he still misses the highs of
reporting, and he still misses going
from the ridiculous to the sublime
– from spending a boring Saturday on
the sports desk editing football reports
to suddenly jumping in a car and
racing up the M1 to Bradford in a couple of hours to cover a story
about a fire breaking out in a football ground. And in describing what
he misses about reporting, he again sounds like the bruised
romantic.
“I miss the stories. I miss being perverse and challenging people’s
notions. I miss the pure enjoyment of coining a phrase, playing with
words, using different styles of writing to convey a meaning that I
want to convey. Which might make it sound self-indulgent, because
it is, but I think all good writing, fiction or nonfiction, has to have a
truth in which the writer believes.” •
“I think all good writing,
fiction or nonfiction, has
to have a truth in which
the writer believes.”