NCTJ: News employers ask for advanced AI skills from graduates
Critical AI prompting, fact-checking, context awareness, and ethical judgement are the new must-have skills for fresh recruits
– 3 min read
As news organisations press ahead with AI innovation, they expect journalism graduates to have a stronger grasp of AI literacy and ethics, including mitigating bias and hallucinations. This is causing the industry's leading training body to reconsider its AI education.
The NCTJ diploma remains the dominant benchmark for breaking into the news sector. According to its own data, 81 per cent of UK journalists hold a journalism qualification, and of those, a striking 83 per cent have passed through National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) programmes.
The NCTJ has just conducted its own internal research with 14 UK news organisations, publishing an executive summary this month.
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It showed that every news organisation had embraced AI to some extent; some pushing ahead with it across their operations, others taking a more "cautious" approach.
