journalism: any good?

Ronan C

Hi all,

I'm suffering away with the old Leaving Cert at the moment, thinking of doing journalism in DCU next year. Would anyone be able to tell me if the course is any good and if they know anyone who got a decent job out of it 'cause I hear plenty of stories about people being stuck in freelance with no money for 20 years!

thanks

segadreamcast

I presume you went to the open day yesterday first of all?

Considering doing journalism myself...

Flamingfud

I have a similar request myself. I did manage to get into the open day and get to four of the lectures, but due to time constraints, I didn't manage to get to the BSc in Multimedia's lecture. Can anyone who's doing this course PM me. I'm very interested but I need to know more about the actual content of the course, as I'm considering putting it before Communications on my CAO. Any help/information would be much appreciated.

james_d_23

well i'm not in the course or anythin but i was there for the lecture but the view i got was that although multimedia has similarities to the communications degree it is alot more practical based unlike communications which is mainly theoretical. the best way to get an idea about it,aside from asking ppl doin the couse is compare

http://www.dcu.ie/prospective/deginfo.php?classname=CS&mode=full

and

http://www.dcu.ie/prospective/deginfo.php?classname=MMA&mode=full

also click on the link on those pages that says "View the subjects taught on this course"

The lecture didnt have much more info than those pages an i guess if u wanted any more info u could always email the contact person

James

Ronan C

yeah, i was at the open day. I tied between doing the economics law and politics course or the journalism course. Dont wrooy flamingfud, the multimedia lecture was brutal, told me nothing worth knowing about the course aside from what time of year the exams are on, how many hours a week you have to work. It didnt tell you what the course involved.

Flamingfud

Yeah, Ronan C, that's exactly what I was told. And I did look at the prospectus but there's nothing like hearing the experiences of someone who's actually done the course, and hearing their own comparison of the two courses.


On a different note, wasn't the E-P-L lecture damn good? Made me seriously consider doing it. Maybe going down second on the CAO

Ronan C

It was breif, but the guy knew his stuff. I was at the 3.45 one, he dragged some poor guy from Monaghen up to give a testimonial. The journalism lecture was by far and away the best though. I figure journalism is more fun but EPL would provide ****loads of cash in later life... so i have some serious CAO thinking to do! What other lectures did you see?

Flamingfud

I managed to pop into the Business Studies lecture (definitely not for me), Communications, Common Science, and thought about hitting the Comp. Apps (everyone needs a backup) and Multimedia, but time intervened. Net result- didn't get to see all the lectures, missed the rugby match, and ended up just ,making it home in time for a pressing engagement. What a day.

Ronan C

Ahwell, ye cant win 'em all

segadreamcast

I was at the 3.45 lecture Ronan C ! I saw you at some point!

...We were down the back - where were you?

I was at journalism and comm too - you weren't in the group of people that we bumped into in Journalism and E-P-L were ya?

Ronan C

dont thinks so. You might remember me though, I had the big messy hair, black shirt, and tie with little yellow snails on it (my dress sense is slighty eccentric).

segadreamcast

Nope, sorry, don't think so - I'll ask the othersthat were with me - I wasn't really focussing on the other people at it (even though there weren't many!).

The Sweeper

Lemme drag this out of the basket of history and respond to it...

I'm a DCU Journalism graduate, would have graduated six years ago but I took a sabbatical in the middle of my degree so offically I got the piece of paper about four years ago. When I did the degree I found, personally, that it was still very much in a formative state - they were trying new things, making an effort to see what worked and what didn't, so on and so forth...

I've barely used the specialism, but naturally got some mileage out of having a degree. Now I'm in the process of becoming a network implementation project manager, which has precisely nothing at all to do with my degree. Ah well!!

In terms of graduates with me who got jobs, one is, I believe, the health correspondent for Ireland on Sunday at last glance... another used to be a property correspondent for the Sunday Times... a third was the information coordinator person for the nua.ie net stats. Two have written books, one's a publisher in Germany. I'm not certain what the rest are doing, some are probably lurking in RTE, more may be in foreign countries - ooo! one's the PR for the coastguard in some place in the northeast of Australia...

All in all, I think the degree was a mistake for me. But then, I never wanted to be a journalist, I just had good english and good writing ability, so I got herded into it by my close-minded career guidance teacher.

One thing I will say about it though, and please note; this is my opinion and not a statement of fact, but I found that most of the lecturers were ex-journalists and as such, couldn't put aside their long term views on what was correct and what was not to be able to lecture open-mindedly. I felt, at the time, that the whole faculty was a study in media objectivity...

...but then again, I've always been a difficult child.