Jschool: Journalism Education & Training

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Jschool: Journalism Education & Training is a vocational journalism college (a j-school) in Brisbane, the capital city of Queensland, Australia.

Jschool was founded in 2001 by veteran journalism educator Professor John Henningham to provide an alternative approach to preparing students for careers as journalists. The college emphasises continuous professional practice (students file stories for assessment every day), news media internships, and excursions to news hotspots such as city hall[1], parliament house[2] and law courts[3].

Students are prepared for a nationally accredited Diploma of Journalism qualification through one year's full-time study, with both postgraduate and undergraduate students accepted into the program. As well as teaching basic reporting and news writing, the course includes journalism ethics, law for journalists, research methods, feature writing, editing, and introductory photojournalism, broadcast journalism, multimedia] and online journalism.

The Diploma of Journalism also includes compulsory study of history, literature, politics and philosophy as part of Jschool's attempt to develop well-rounded journalists with a broad education.

Jschool founder John Henningham was the first Australian to be appointed a full professor of journalism at an Australian university and the first to achieve a PhD in the field of journalism. He says he aims to make Jschool one of Australia's leading journalism schools, and points to the high placement rate of J-school graduates into jobs as journalists as evidence of industry satisfaction with the Jschool hands-on approach. (For example, all 2006 graduates had found media work by February 2007.) In 2005 a Jschool graduate was named "Most Outstanding Journalism Student" in the Queensland Media Awards, while Jschool was ranked equal first among Australian journalism schools in national surveys of graduating students' satisfaction levels with their journalism courses.[4]