UTS looks to the future of journalism in new postgraduate program

The University of Technology Sydney has launched two new postgraduate journalism courses addressing today's rapidly changing and often disrupted communications and media landscape.

The UTS Advanced Journalism program will equip students with the skills, deep knowledge and adaptive capabilities to build a career in today's media and foster agility and innovation in local, regional and global media communications.

The courses, a Master of Advanced Journalism and Graduate Diploma in Advanced Journalism, will have their first intake in March 2017.

Professor Mark Evans, Head of the UTS School of Communication said, "Our new Advanced Journalism course is technology focused and industry relevant. It is a course for the media sector today and the media professionals of the future.

"UTS is partnering with leading Journalism Schools in Asia, the United States and other parts of the world to ensure our students have truly global opportunities."

What's new about this course is that students will have the opportunity to experience emerging areas of journalistic practice – including drones; virtual reality and computer assisted reporting.

Those undertaking the course will also gain hands-on experience in reporting, editing and related production and design skills in a wide variety of mediums – visual, text and audio.

Head of the Journalism discipline Peter Fray described the new courses as an exciting development for both UTS and the media industry. 

"We want our students to graduate armed with the foundational skills of journalism and the transformational attributes in demand by an industry undergoing rapid change," he said.

"That's why we are building in new areas, such as entrepreneurial journalism, and expecting students to work closely with industry as they develop those skills and attributes.  

"Some of our graduates will start their own businesses, many will work across platforms and alongside software developers, audience and product teams.

"UTS is very mindful of the need to give its students authentic and meaningful experiences and to produce journalism with audiences in mind. That's why we've built a new newsroom and why over recent years first the undergraduate and now postgraduate course has been reformed.

"This is not a time to sit still or hide behind a sandstone facade. This is a time to grasp the nettle of change and deliver the skills required in a highly disrupted media sector."

Professor Fray said he and the other members of the journalism discipline made talking to industry and in many cases, working within industry a matter of priority. 

"These courses have been developed after extensive consultation with industry, both established and new entrants. We all know that journalism is changing. We see it every day. We have an obligation to our students and the industry we serve to change with it.

"But at the same time, we have a duty to ensure that the ethical, values and time-tested practices are implanted in our graduates. Journalism is a service to the public – to many publics – and we at UTS take that service obligation as a core reason for our being.

"That's why, for instance, when we talk about the use of drones in the new subjects we talk about ethics in the same breath. That's why we talk about data and computational journalism as new tools in the ongoing need to shine light in dark corners."

For further information on the UTS Advanced Journalism courses, visit: https://www.uts.edu.au/future-students/communication/study-areas/journalism

Candidates interested in hearing more about these new courses can attend the upcoming Communication Postgraduate Information Evening on Thursday 17^th November at 6pm, details here.