XCity’s exclusive interview with Kelvin MacKenzie appeared today in The Independent.
The article is an original interview for XCity magazine as told by magazine journalism student and XCity picture editor Harriet Thurley. The paper has not credited Harriet or XCity, nor has the website.
The interview is for the 25th anniversary issue of XCity. MacKenzie said there was no need for journalism courses, and he’d shut them all down if he could.
You can read the full article in XCity here and Harriet’s blog about meeting MacKenzie here. We will be posting the full article online later too, as it was being kept back for the magazine.
City’s journalism lecturer Roy Greenslade has written a response to MacKenzie’s piece on the Guardian here.
Read George Brock’s article here.
UPDATE: The website has now credited Harriet and XCity at the bottom of the article.
XCity is a magazine produced by the MA Magazine Journalism students at City University, London and written for alumni of the department.
The 25th anniversary issue is out now. The digital edition will be published on this site this evening.
How come the source article is only available online via the Issuu PDF viewer, not as an actual webpage?
Hi Matt. It’s only on issuu for a variety of reasons – firstly, we were waiting to put the issuu version on the website once the magazine had been received by all the alumni (11 April). The article wasn’t posted on the website because we wanted it kept back as an exclusive to the mag, but unfortunately today’s circumstances have shot that to pieces. We’re currently working to put the original article with accompanying PDF online, but as we’re all on work experience at different offices away from the computers with the original files this has so far proved difficult. We will post it as soon as we can. Thanks, Charlotte
Kelvin MacKenzie should stick to winding up Question Time audiences on TV.
The angry old man’s comments about journalism education remind me of the embarrassing uncle trying to dance at his niece’s wedding: he used to have some moves, but he’s cringingly out of his depth now.
First, cards on the table: I’m a professional media educator, lecturing in journalism at City University London. I worked for Kelvin for many years at The Sun when he was its notorious editor.
I was a big fan of his energy and his iconoclasm. And I’m proud to cite him among my testimonials.
But some of his statements reported by the excellent XCity Magazine and repeated in The Independent (presumably with the mag’s permission) simply show how out of his time he is.
The first giveaway is his reference to “print journalism”. If you want to be an effective journalist on most local papers now, your web output is at least as important as your print content.
“You don’t need a diploma,” he claims. Really?
Try applying to a newspaper owned by Johnston Press or Newsquest without a paper qualification. You won’t get a look-in, even if, like Kelvin and his two journo brothers, you had the good luck to be born to two professional journalists.
Kelvin says: “There’s nothing you can learn in three years studying media at university that you can’t learn in just one month on a local paper.”
Nonsense. Nobody on a local paper has time to show journalists how to shoot and edit video for their website, how to use design applications like Adobe CS, how to avoid defamation and contempt or how to report accurately from courts and councils using readable shorthand.
The very sound paid-for JP weekly in my own area operates without sub-editors, so the reporters have to ensure their copy, photos and videos are accurate and legally safe. Their SEO skills ensure their web content gets found and read.
If Kelvin thinks you can pick these skills up without a decent media education he really should get out more.
He’ll also discover that you no longer need alcohol to be a journalist as he implies.
That notion is as out of date as his advice to wannabe hacks “go to a local paper, then to a regional, and then head out on to nationals or magazines by 21-22”.
Queues of job applications land on the screen of news editors all over the country every day. They have to start sifting them somehow. The news editors I know start by choosing those with degrees and/or recognised journalism “paper” qualifications.
It is misleading of Kelvin to suggest that a talented youngster can “wing it” without this background. One in a million may be lucky, but most won’t be.
UK hacks already in the game don’t have the time or space to bring on the next generation: the skills required are more diverse and complex than ever.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world is churning out thousands of talented graduate hacks. The Sun itself recently hired a talented German sub trained by my own university.
I chuckled at Kelvin’s assertion that media educators are “retired journalists who teach for six months a year”. I wish.
He should stick to his golf – and to giving the good folk of Tunbridge Wells a bit of pretend rough to cheer on the telly.