Media industries, embedded within the creative and cultural economy, are undergoing significant transformations along technological, economic, political, social and cultural trajectories - and so are the careers within those industries on which our students are embarking.
Studying media at Newcastle provides many opportunities for undergraduate and postgraduate students to engage in critical, intellectual and creative practice. Through a comprehensive range of activities and opportunities, the programmes of study allow students to create a personalised and individually-tailored experience whereby ones passions and interests may shape the direction of study, help formulate partnerships with external organisations and provide a supportive 'roadmap' to a future career.
If our students are to survive and to thrive they need to develop a critical analytical understanding of the media industries and the ability to identify processes of change and their direction of development in order to accommodate those processes and develop strategies to take advantage of them. They need to be innovative, creative and able to apply a wide range of skills and knowledge of high-level professional practice - and be constantly alert to the need to develop new skills and new fields of knowledge as further changes take place.
One major transformation which the media sector is undergoing from an institutional model towards and entrepreneurial model in which:
To prepare our students for this, we engage with a wide range and variety of media organisations, large and small both formally and informally to:
We engage a wide range of very experienced and highly qualified professional practitioners to teach on our programmes and to deliver master-classes.
We have delivered master classes on Enterprise and entrepreneurialism in Media and we have now developed modules on Enterprise and Entrepreneurialism in the Creative and Cultural Sector which will be running from September, 2012.
Our award-winning MA in International Multi-Media Journalism is delivered with an industry partner, The Press Association, the multi-media national news agency of Britain and Ireland, which has subsidiaries and partnerships in 18 countries.
Our graduates have gone on to work on major international newspapers, such as China Daily and the Times of India as well as those in the UK. They have gone into organisations such as the BBC and Sky News - and set off to work on educational projects in developing countries with Canada-based Reporters for Human Rights. They have taken jobs in leading edge multi-media business-to-business publishers and to cruise ships sailing out of Miami - which have on-board news rooms, newspapers and TV and radio studios They have set up their own media enterprises - and they have taken their skills, knowledge, creativity and expertise into a range of non-media sectors which need people who can research, critically analyse the information and communicate it effectively and engagingly to a range of audiences.