This document summarizes the first week of a BA journalism course. It discusses the three units covered - Introduction to Studying Journalism, Editorial Practice 1, and Journalism and Society. For each unit, key concepts and class activities are outlined, such as discussing what qualifies as journalism, interviewing members of the public about current events, and how the development of technology and a modern society have influenced the field of journalism.

1. BA journalism: week
1
WEEK COMMENCING: 10/10/2016 to 13/10/2016

2. My First Post
Hello everyone! This is my first post where I will be discussing what I did this week
and the key concepts and ideas which were discussed in class.
◦ This week was the first week of teaching and consisted of the three units which
we will be doing this term, these are:
◦ Introduction to Studying Journalism
◦ Editorial Practice 1
◦ Journalism and Society

3. Introduction to studying
journalism
◦ In this lesson we went through some of the things that will be part of this unit as a class
with a booklet which had key information of the unit. This was useful as it gave us an
outline of what is expected f us as well as give us an idea of the things we will be
doing in the unit.
◦ The main thing we did in the seminar was watch a trailer of a film based on a true story
and discuss whether it was journalism or not. To do this I made a brainstorm similar to
the one shown on the next slide.

5. Editorial Practice 1
◦ This unit was after the guest lecture we have on Tuesdays. The guest lecturer this week
was Crina Boros who is an investigative journalist. She was very helpful and
inspirational since she gave some useful advice and told her about her experiences
being a migrant and starting off her journalist career. Some advice she gave was:
◦ To find a mentor who you can trust
◦ To be open-minded and courageous
◦ She emphasised to “be different”
◦ To verify what people tell you.
◦
During editorial practice we discussed the guest lecture and teamed up in partners
where we found a topic to discuss and make four questions on the particular topic to ask
to members of the public (four different people). The topic my partner and I chose was
the fall in the pound and the shootings happening in America. We chose two topics and
then overall we picked one which got the best response from members of the public. We
then had to write up our findings.

6. Journalism and society
◦ During the lecture for this unit, the information we got originated from the book ‘What you
really need to know about the internet’. Prior to this lecture we had to read the first chapter
of the book. I found the chapter of the book fascinating since I learned new things, such as
how writing first came about and how Gutenberg was the main man who introduced printing
and invented the movable metal type (1455), oil-based ink and wooden presses.
◦ The seminar after the lecture was more important for me as we discussed how journalism relates
to all this and made a more deeper connection than what was discussed in the lecture.
◦ In the seminar we discussed when journalism first came about which was in the early 1900’s, but
we went on to discuss what is classed as journalism. This is because anything can be called
journalism, when a person retweets something on their twitter they could potentially be a
journalist. One of the first forms of mass media was theatre, however we wouldn’t class that so
much as journalism as only the people who were physically there would be able to see it. On
the other hand, radio was available in many homes and available to many and that was also
one of the first forms on mass media.
◦ During the seminar we went on to discuss the word modern and how we would define it. I
personally believe that the term modern changes as society changes because what we class
as modern today may not be classed as modern a few years from now. We went onto discuss
society and how it has become modern through various ways, and that has sort of brought
about journalism as people started making sense of things on their own and went on to say
that journalism is the product of technology and how it has progressed as society has
modernised.
◦

7. A brainstorm I made in class in relation to
the term ‘modern’ and how it has played a
part in journalism today