Journalism and PR courses at Salford

Examples of journalism by our students can be seen on the Salford Now website and on our YouTube channel.

Greater Manchester is the UK’s biggest media centre outside London, with major news providers such as BBC, ITV and Reach plc working alongside dozens of independent production companies. Many of these are based at MediaCity, and we are fortunate to share a campus with employers who provide great job opportunities for our graduates. Greater Manchester is also a hub for the sport, entertainment and digital industries that value the skills acquired on a journalism degree course. 

The Broadcast Journalism Training Council (BJTC) is an accreditation body supported by the BBC, ITV, Sky News, Associated Press, Reuters, Global Radio and the National Union of Journalists. The BA (Hons) Journalism Multimedia and BA (Hons) Journalism Broadcast courses at the University of Salford are among more than 50 journalism courses with BJTC accreditation. The BJTC’s accreditation is highly regarded within the industry because it represents a benchmark of best practice against which potential students can judge prospective courses.

Students on accredited courses are able to take advantage of placement opportunities and enter the BJTC awards, at which Salford students have achieved success in recent years. All students who graduate from our courses receive a certificate from the BJTC. 

Our journalism degree courses combine practical work and theory, but most of the assessments are practical assignments. For example, students may be asked to record a radio interview, write a newspaper article or shoot and edit a TV package. In second and third-year modules, students are often asked to write reflective essays alongside their practical assignments, analysing the work that they have done and drawing lessons from their experiences that can be applied to their future journalism work. 
 

We offer a wide range of placement opportunities with industry partners, including BBC North West Tonight, ITN, ITV Granada Reports, ITV 'Tonight', Sky News, Channel 5 News, Global Radio, Hits Radio Manchester Evening News, Bolton News, Lancashire Telegraph, Manchester United, Accrington Stanley, Fleetwood Town and Salford Red Devils. 

Many of our graduates go on to work as Journalists in TV, radio, print and online newsrooms. Many also secure jobs in communications and PR departments of companies, public sector organisations and sports clubs. 

Others have found that the skills they have acquired as journalism students are transferrable to professions such as teaching and the police.

Read Victoria Jane’s story about how she went from studying a Journalism degree at Salford to BBC Radio 1.

Students action their own ideas for workshop tasks and assignments. There is plenty of scope for pursuing your own interests and passions on the course, to write and broadcast stories that interest you. Journalists need to be full of ideas, and we teach students how to find and research their own stories. 

We constantly refresh our course content to keep it fresh and relevant. Many of the lecturers are still active journalists, publishing stories and working shifts in newsrooms alongside their teaching. So we can be working on a story at the weekend which becomes the basis for a classroom exercise the following week. Read Freya Chappell’s story about how she went from education to an Output Producer at Sky News.

Our teaching staff are supported by an experienced and talented team of technical demonstrators. They help students to operate broadcasting studios and galleries and teach technical skills such as camera operations and audio and video editing. 

You don’t have to be an extrovert to be a journalist. While there are opportunities to present programmes and lead editorial teams on the course, nobody is asked to take on any role that they would be uncomfortable with. We want our course to be accessible to everyone and support is provided at a course and university level.

More than 20 of our students stayed up all night to report the results of the 2019 general election. They produced hourly radio and TV bulletins through the night, kept the Salford Now website updated with the latest results, and published a newspaper which was distributed around the university the morning after the election. 

Listen to our third year student Rachael Allison own entertainment podcast and another of our third year students, Oliver Thorpe, reported on 17 competitions across 8 sports in 2019, including the Super League Grand Final and the ICC Cricket World Cup.

A state-of-the-art news set, including three HD cameras with teleprompters.  This studio also can link up to the other two TV studios in the building based on the ground floor, enabling live feeds. With our new industry-standard technology 'LiveU' our students and staff can 'go live' from any location.

Our TV studios are industry-standard, so much so that they are actually used by the industry. The BBC have used them for a variety of broadcasts, such as the Olympics and Christmas music concerts, and they’re equipped with the same audio-visual systems used by the ITV and Sky too.

The studios have green screen facilities as well as basic props so you can design and build sets for a range of projects, from game shows to news broadcasts.

All these studios link to our control rooms and the feeds can either be edited in the control rooms and transmitted live, or saved and edited at a later date.

They contain eight Sony HXC 500 HD broadcast cameras, a Sony DWX wireless microphone system and a ETC ION Lighting Desk with robotic lighting. Not sure what that all means yet? Don’t worry, at this point you just need to know that it’s a similar set up to that used by the BBC, ITV and Sky, so when you secure your first job at a broadcaster, you’ll feel right at home from day one.

Please note, this facility isn’t the norm for our Journalism students to use, as our students use the above TV News Studio.

You’ll use this space as a hub to simulate a full working day in a newsroom, covering breaking stories. Software available includes Adobe Audition, Adobe Premiere, InDesign and Avid Media Composer, all of which is used by the industry. 

Our dedicated editing suites will allow you to learn and excel in all elements of post-production work. They feature 4K monitors and 5.1 surround sound systems (so you can pick out all details of your work as you create your masterpiece) as well as all the software you’ll need and use when you start your career.

This includes Avid Media Composer (used for editing much of the broadcast TV you’ll see), Da Vinci Resolve (used for colour finishing across a range of TV programmes), as well as Adobe Creative Cloud.

Although our Journalism students can access these facilities, our students often edit in the Newsroom facility.

If radio is your area of interest, we can offer you three cutting edge studios which have been used for live contributions to shows on talkSPORT and Capital.

They’re equipped with Studer OnAir 3000 mixing desks and mirror the hardware and software set up in the BBC’s radio studios.

Cameras, lighting kits and mics – they’re all essential to media production. But don’t worry, you won’t need to spend thousands of pounds to get the set-up you need – we have a fully equipped equipment store available for you to use and take out industry-standard kit.

From the Panasonic VariCam (used to film Netflix shows such as Ozark and Orange is the New Black) to the ARRI Alexa (as used on The Mandalorian) and a host of other kit from companies like Canon, AKG and Sennheiser, you’ll be able to shoot and record on location in the high quality you need to bring your vision to life.