Brand new department open for business

© Rachel O'Neill

After years of “lagging behind”, City’s hi-tech journalism department finally opens its doors. But the facilities have divided opinion among students, writes Lucinda Dunseath

City’s new £14 million journalism department in the College Building, St John Street, finally opened in January after two years of development.

Replacing the old department that had been on the University Building site for more than twenty years, the new facilities include a TV and video programming studio, two print newsrooms, two open access Mac rooms and two TV broadcast newsrooms.

“I’ve visited a lot of journalism schools in the last four years and the new facilities at City really are world class,” said Professor Adrian Monck, head of Journalism and Publishing. “At last we’ve got resources to match the talent and enthusiasm of our students and faculty. But we want to keep on improving and developing those facilities.”

“The university had to do something - compared with most other universities we were lagging behind,”
said Barbara Rowlands, course director of the Magazine Journalism MA. “We needed a new department and our facilities are much better now.”

One of the highlights of the new department is the new broadcasting suite, which can be seen through a window when you walk into the department.

“Finally you can look in and see what people are actually doing, instead of it being in a bunker where nobody actually knows what’s going on,” said Broadcast and TV Current Affairs director Lis Howell.

Postgraduate students were expecting to use the new department when they started their courses in September. When asked why it was late, Howell said: “I think it was ready in November but that would have been too disruptive to move everyone mid-term. I was launch director at GMTV and Living TV and everything was always late.”

Students were generally happy with the new facilities. “It’s brilliant, shame it only came in January. Last week we had Jon Snow in the studio – it’s impressive to show the professionals,” said MA Broadcast Journalism student Amy Pickerill.

Patrick Galey, a student on MA Newspaper Journalism, said: “The multimedia stuff is good, but it’s probably geared more towards the broadcast.”

Magazine Journalism postgraduate Stephen Eddie was concerned that are not enough facilities for the 661-strong student body: “The new department looks good, but there are never enough computers. You have to sneak in. They shouldn’t be able to kick you out when there are classes on when you’ve paid so much to be here.”

The new department coincides with the launch of City University London’s Graduate School of Journalism, which launches later this year. It is hoped that the rebranding will put City on a par with other international journalism schools such as those at Columbia University in New York and Berkeley University in California.