City College

Regional publisher Archant has joined forces with City College Norwich to offer a journalism degree which will guarantee newsroom jobs at the end for the top two students.

It's the first time Archant has been involved in the provision of a degree course. The two-year foundation course, which will take its first induction next month, will teach students traditional journalism skills as well as the ability to report from a range of multimedia devices.

The course will also include lessons on how best to deal with user-generated content.

Unlike most other degree courses, this one will also offer jobs on an the Archant editorial team at the end for the two best performing students, who will also get their fees reimbursed by the publisher.

In a report on the course, online regional newspaper EDP 24's senior content editor David Powles says the students will be taught by former senior journalists with more than 50 years experience in the news industry.

The course and the publisher's jobs incentive has been praised by editors of other local newspapers, such as Tim Williams, editor of the Evening News.

"There are few greater jobs out there than that of a journalist and this is a fantastic opportunty to get not only the training needed to enter a newsroom but also potentially a guaranteed job at the end of it," he said in the report.

Peter Waters, editor of the EDP, added that the changing journalism world requires investment in new talent.

"Journalism is changing, becoming more diverse in its delivery and more technologically enriched, and to that end we need new talented people who will help us develop our products to meet the requirements of a rapidly evolving media scene and changing lifestyles. This new degree course has been designed to achieve that."

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