What qualifications do you need to become a broadcasting journalist?

[Ibrahim Abdi]

I want to become a broadcasting journalist, but i do not know what qualifications you need. i would like to know what you have to study at a-level to get to do a degree in broadcasting journalism.

i really need to know!!!!!

[Superdog]

If you read Jake Humphrey's blog on the BBC website you will see that he did not study anything relating to broadcast media, yet he has ended up with the best TV job of all.

As far as I know, the ability to talk well (a rare commodity these days) and the ability to describe with insight just what you see will open a lot of doors.

However, all that said, it's sheer bloody luck.

[Jim Mullins]

Real journalists do not study the media! They study (to degree level or beyond usually) Economics, Politics, Science or whatever and then use skills they acquire along the way, or on a postgrad training course to interpret those subjects to the public.

See Evan Davies for example:


Davis grew up in Ashtead, Surrey. He attended Dorking County Grammar School, which in 1976 became The Ashcombe School, Dorking and later studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at St John's College, Oxford from 1981 to 1984, before obtaining an MPA at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. While at Oxford University, Davis edited Cherwell, the student newspaper.
Davis began work as an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and while there he was briefly seconded to help officials work on early development of the Community Charge system of local government taxation (better known as the Poll Tax).[1] In 1988 he moved to the London Business School, writing articles for their publication "Business Strategy Review". He returned to the Institute for Fiscal Studies in 1992, writing a paper on "Britain, Europe and the Square Mile" for the European Policy Forum which argued that British financial prosperity depended on being seen as a bridgehead to the European Union.[2]
In 1993, Davis joined the BBC as an economics correspondent. He worked as economics editor on BBC Two's Newsnight programme from 1997 to 2001. In the mid-1990s he was a member of the Social Market Foundation's Advisory Council;[3] he is a member of the British-American Project for a Successor Generation.[4]