Volume 35  Number 2  2008

Status and Relevance of Journalism Education in Asia

Journalism Education in Hong Kong

William Lia 60
Journalism Education in India
Sundeep R. Muppidi 67
Journalism Education in Malaysia
Ng Miew Luan & Lim Lai Hoon 84
Journalism Education in the Philippines
Anna Ruby Gapasin, Kate M. Mirandilla, Ma. Rosel S. San Pascual &
Deejay Cromwell V. Sanqui 101
Journalism Education in Vietnam
An Nguyen 110
Summing Up: Identifying Generic Problems and Recommending Solutions
for Improving the Status and Relevance of Journalism Education in Asia
Sundeep R. Muppidi 131
MICA (P) No: 155/06/2008 VOLUME 35  NUMBER 2  2008
ISSN 0129–6612

Media Asia
an Asian Mass Communication Quarterly

Editor-in-Chief
Indrajit Banerjee SPECIAL ISSUE

Associate Editor Status and Relevance of Journalism Education in Asia

Stephen Logan

Guest Editor
Sundeep R. Muppidi ARTICLES
Editorial Advisory Committee Journalism Education in Hong Kong
Alan Knight
Ang Peng Hwa
William Lia ................................................................................................................ 60
Anuradha Rajivan Journalism Education in India
Daya Thussu Sundeep R. Muppidi .............................................................................................. 67
Gaëtan Tremblay
George Thottam Journalism Education in Malaysia
Georgette Wang Ng Miew Luan & Lim Lai Hoon ........................................................................ 84
Hu Zhengrong
Journalism Education in the Philippines
Javed Jabbar
John Lent Anna Ruby Gapasin, Kate M. Mirandilla, Ma. Rosel S. San Pascual &
Srinivas Melkote Deejay Cromwell V. Sanqui ............................................................................... 101
Sundeep R. Muppidi Journalism Education in Vietnam
An Nguyen ............................................................................................................... 110
MEDIA ASIA is published quarterly Summing Up: Identifying Generic Problems and Recommending Solutions
by the Asian Media Information and for Improving the Status and Relevance of Journalism Education in Asia
Communication Centre (AMIC), Sundeep R. Muppidi ............................................................................................ 131
and the Wee Kim Wee School of
Communication and Information,
Nanyang Technological University FEATURES
(WKWSCI–NTU). The opinions
expressed by the authors do not
necessarily reflect the views of Editorial: Conceptualising the Status and Relevance of Journalism
AMIC, WKWSCI–NTU or of the Education in Asia
organisations with which they are Sundeep R. Muppidi & Premila Manvi .......................................................... 58
associated.

For correspondence:
AMIC, Jurong Point PO Box 360 Acknowledgement
Singapore 916412 The material in this special issue was prepared for a project funded by
Tel: (65) 67927570 UNESCO. AMIC is grateful to UNESCO for permission to print the
Fax: (65) 67927129 material in Media Asia.
Subscriptions: angie@amic.org.sg
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Website: www.amic.org.sg

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• Singapore & Malaysia: S$55.00
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• Rest of the world & Japan: US$65.00
 EDITORIAL
Conceptualising the Status and Relevance of
Journalism Education in Asia
J ournalism has now become a glamorous profession.
It’s the “cool” job that many want to pursue and so it is,
in most Asian countries, that an unprecedented media
boom is being witnessed. Being a journalist has its perks.
Firstly, in television journalism, one gets to be on camera,
thereby garnering instant recognition and popularity.
Secondly, one has the power of access and information.
Being a reporter gives one access to the corridors of power
and also the privilege of interacting with who’s who in
every society—something not ordinarily accessible to the
common person. The journalist is also one of the first to
gain access to breaking news, apart from being one of
the few who has the power to decide what stories make
it on the air to keep the world informed.
Globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation policies
and the advances in new media and communication
technologies that have made them portable, affordable
and accessible are fuelling a phenomenal media boom in
Asian countries today. This media boom is in turn fuelling
an increased demand for trained media professionals,
especially for journalists with a good analytical sense
and strong passion for news. Therefore, corresponding
to this demand and the glamour, there is also an increase
in the number of students who are turning towards
mass communication and journalism in particular as
their choice of career. Due to this increasing demand for
journalists and journalism education, a number of public
and private universities and institutes have introduced or
are introducing journalism as a specialised area of study at
the undergraduate and postgraduate levels of education.
A number of colleges that never had any courses in
communication before are now offering between one
to three-year degrees and diplomas in journalism and
communication. With such a proliferation of courses
come concerns about the standard and quality of these
courses, particularly journalism education, in these
countries.
Most of these universities and schools are not
accredited. There is also a shortage of infrastructural
facilities, consistent course curricula and a qualified
faculty. Journalism education in India, for example,
is mostly concentrated on learning the functions of
journalism and its workings with reference to its principles
and objectives. The biggest misconception that most
of the students have here is the thought that only great
writers make good journalists. The emphasis that the
schools give on writing is hence mistaken as the only
requirement for journalism.
58
There is also no training to develop analytical thinking
in the classroom. The students are grilled into writing
the right way but the content is often undisputed. News
stories are discussed and the class is encouraged to
read the newspapers but very few institutes encourage
questioning the points of view as described in the
story. This concept of training by imitation, where the
students are asked to look at stories and identify with
one thought or the other, does not encourage or allow
for independent thinking. Hence, students fall back on
imitating their role models in the profession and their
line of thought is in tune with their role models’. Also,
not many institutions encourage or train their students
in investigative journalism. Some institutions have career
journalists as faculty guest and these guest lectures do
make the course more informative. The direct report
from a person in authority is an instant booster, offering
the students the inside perspective of the newsmaker.
However, the only exposure that the students get to
the actual media world is through internships. Most
of these institutions encourage the students to go for
internships—at least on paper—and some of these
institutions make it a requirement for the students to
intern with a media organisation. This is the actual
exposure that the students get and where they tend to
learn a lot. However, as the following papers illustrate,
there are a number of issues that need to be addressed
even in this aspect.
The quality of the internship experience depends on
which organisation the students choose. Most likely, the
students are drawn to big names in the industry. The
interesting aspect here is the conflict that the students
battle with. The idealistic journalism education that
they are given, inside the classroom, is not often what is
followed in reality in the big “bad” world. The students are
not taught the “realities” of the journalism world but at
the same time are expected to “deliver” when exposed to
the real world. Those who can cope with these disparities
are in a better position to understand this profession.
Hence, the internship period is definitely an enriching
experience that also opens doors for job opportunities.
However, the students are not fully equipped to work
immediately after their undergraduate degrees.
At the graduate level, although the students in some
of the schools are taught to think in a critical manner and
question everything in order to get the right answer, there
is still an element of instructed education. Consciously
and/or unconsciously, these schools train the students to

think in a particular manner. Each institute belongs to a
different school of thinking, having different ideologies
and different standpoints. Mostly, the students turn out to
be the robots of that school, with similar mindsets. These
schools tend to generate a group of people with similar
ideas and ideologies. This is a potentially dangerous threat
because even before they are in the market, the students’
outlook on events is doctored and their ideologies make
their news coverage biased. It is hence important to
ensure that future media and journalism professionals
are trained in the best schools using the best available
methodologies and training methods so that they can
give back to their respective societies as responsible
professionals.
It is also with this intention of understanding the
various dimensions of the status and relevance of
journalism education in various Asian countries that
this study was undertaken. The sheer diversity of each
nation-state in Asia makes it difficult to present one
representative case study and, hence, that is not the
purpose or the intention of this study.
Framework of this study
This multi-country study was conducted to explore the
status and relevance of journalism education in Asia
under the auspices of the Asian Media Information and
Communication Centre (AMIC) in Singapore. Each
researcher was identified by AMIC from the selected
five countries—Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Philippines
and Vietnam—and provided with a broad framework
to explore this issue in their respective countries. All
their final reports are presented as individual papers in
this special issue of Media Asia. Each of the studies are
separated by countries and it needs to be noted that while
there are a lot of commonalities in the issues, there are also
a number of idiosyncratic differences from one country
to another. The broad framework that was developed to
serve as a guideline for individual country report required
each researcher to address the following.
• Concise historical overview of media structure,
statistics and management in the country
• Present state of journalism education in the specific
country
• Present situation/status: Concise historical summary
of journalism in the country
• Brief overview of journalism education
• How relevant is the training in the present times
• The kind of journalism education system
• Curriculum content
• Typical route taken for training for the industry
• Course content and duration
• The kinds of courses
• Specific objectives and goals of journalism
education
EDITORIAL
• Assessment and feedback mechanisms to measure
student performance and progress
• Important alumni placements and profiles
• Selection procedures
• Entrance requirements
• Entering class student profiles
• Teaching and training infrastructure
• Strengths and limitations
• Faculty competencies and qualifications
• Resource surpluses and constraints
• Collaboration with others: How it is built in and what
is expected out of it
• Internship mechanisms
• Partnerships with media industry
• Collaboration/s with other players
In the overall assessment and recommendations, they
were asked to identify specific strengths and problems—
not more than five or six main issues—that could fix
journalism education in the country and to discuss each
one comprehensively. In addition, any other issues that
the authors considered important and not covered in the
earlier sections were also allowed to be included.
In the conclusion, each author was asked to lay out the
future media scenario in the country they were writing
about, especially about where it was heading and what
needed watching out for.
The overall theme was about what works—and what
does not—for journalism education in the country, why,
and what can be done to rectify any problems. The Hong
Kong study was carried out by William Lai and supervised
by Thomas Abraham; Sundeep R. Muppidi did the India
study; Ng Miew Luan and Lim Lai Hoon did the Malaysian
study; Anna Ruby Gapasin, Kate M. Mirandilla, Ma. Rosel
S. San Pascual and Deejay Cromwell V. Sanqui did the
Philippine study under the supervision of Gerardo R.
Josue; and An Nguyen did the Vietnam study.
A final concluding paper follows the individual
country articles. This last paper is a holistic summary and
identifies generic issues and problems that are indicative
of most of the journalism education programmes in these
specific countries and on the Asian continent, in general.
Some possible solutions to the identified problems and
challenges in journalism education are presented at the
end of the paper. It is hoped that this multi-nation study
has succeeded in identifying the major concerns about
the status and relevance of journalism education in Asia
and that the solutions advocated by the researchers in
this project, while relevant to their specific countries,
are also applicable not only to the rest of Asia but also
to the other countries in the world.
Sundeep R. Muppidi
Premila Manvi
59
 Journalism Education in Hong Kong
Historical overview and media management
With its 5,000 years of Chinese history and 155 years of
British colonial influence, Hong Kong today has a diverse
media that cater to both Western and Chinese audiences.
Anyone bilingual in Chinese and English is faced with an
overwhelming selection of media to read, listen, watch
and surf. In particular, the Chinese print media offer
the most choice for readers, with papers of all shades of
political, financial, social and economical leanings.
According to the Hong Kong government, the mass
media comprise 46 daily newspapers, a number of
electronic newspapers, 799 periodicals, two domestic
free television programme service licensees, three
domestic pay television programme service licensees, 13
non-domestic television programme service licensees,
a government-funded public service broadcaster and
two sound broadcasting licensees (Hong Kong SAR
Government Information Centre, 2004).
In terms of registered newspapers, Hong Kong
sells 21 Chinese-language dailies, 13 English-language
dailies, seven bilingual dailies and five Japanese ones.
Realistically, however, if a person walked into a typical
convenience shop or to a street news-stand, the available
choice would be about a dozen Chinese-language dailies
and two English-language newspapers. Even so, with a
population of 6.8 million—96 per cent of the population
being Chinese—Hong Kong has one of the world’s highest
numbers of newspapers per capita.
History
The development of Hong Kong’s media, starting from
the 19th century, has been closely entwined with Hong
Kong’s emergence as an important international trading
region and a strategic political location for entrepreneurs
and forward-thinkers from the Chinese mainland. In
1842, Hong Kong was ceded to Britain following China’s
defeat in the Opium Wars. Since then, Hong Kong
has been an important trading centre with a constant
international outlook for a free flow of trade, commerce
and information.
Hong Kong’s strategic location made it a natural place
of refuge for Chinese reformists and radical-thinkers who
fell foul of Chinese officialdom. One such reformist was
Wang T’ao, who sought refuge in Hong Kong in 1863
and later founded the first Chinese daily newspaper that
was wholly Chinese-owned in 1874. The newspaper was
called Tsun Wan Daily News (meaning Circulation Daily)
and earned Wang T’ao the occasional reference as the
father of Chinese journalism (Lent, 1982).
The first Chinese language daily actually started in
60
William Lia
1858 and was called Chung Ngoi Hsin Pao (Sino-Foreign
Daily News). However, this newspaper was essentially a
translation of the English-language Daily Press and was,
therefore, not taken seriously by the local Chinese until it
assumed editorial independence later in the 19th century,
during China’s reform period. Other English-language
dailies included the Morning Post (today’s South China
Morning Post), established in 1903, and the Hong Kong
Standard, which was started in 1949.
In between the two world wars, a growing number of
Chinese-language newspapers appeared in Hong Kong.
Most notably, the Wah Kiu Yat Po (Overseas Chinese
Daily) and Kung Sheung Daily News were both started in
1925; the Sing Tao Daily News was established in 1938; and
the Sing Pao Daily News started in 1939. Unfortunately,
Kung Sheung Daily News closed in 1984 after being 59
years in print and Wah Kiu Yat Po folded in 1995 after a
run of 70 years.
Today, the leading mass-market Chinese dailies in
Hong Kong are the Apple Daily and the Oriental Daily
News. They emerged as the strongest financially, following
Hong Kong’s first ever newspaper price wars in 1995 and
1999. Before Apple Daily appeared on the scene in 1995,
all Chinese dailies in Hong Kong had a uniform price
point. They were all sold at a fixed price of HK$5—about
US$0.65—prompting concerns of a newspaper cartel.
Subsequently, a price war ensued when Oriental Daily
News slashed its price to HK$2 in a pre-emptive strike
against new competition, i.e. the Apple Daily. This first
price war led to hundreds of job losses in Hong Kong
and the closure of at least five newspapers. Apple Daily
alone suffered losses of HK$600 million in the 1995–1996
price wars but survived due to the deep pockets of its
publisher, the entrepreneur Jimmy Lai Chee-ying.
The newspaper price wars helped to solidify the
positions of the popular papers, forcing Hong Kong’s
Chinese dailies to establish their niches in the market.
Newspapers now are just as diversified and supportive
of independent opinions as in the past. Each newspaper
has its own characteristic stance and steady readership
base, and the quality of journalism reflects the quality
of the media professionals working in Hong Kong.
The leading mass-market English daily in Hong
Kong is the South China Morning Post (SCMP). An
initial perception of the SCMP is that it is a newspaper
for the expatriate community of Hong Kong. However,
demographics show that about three quarters of the
readership are Asians living in Hong Kong—with
approximately 60 per cent being Chinese—and that
the contents of the paper reflect a myriad of views and
interests.

Broadcast media started in 1928 with Hong Kong
government-sanctioned radio broadcasting. A Chinese
radio channel was added six years later. Radio Hong Kong
was officially established in 1948 and its name changed to
Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) in 1976 because of
the growing influence of television broadcasting. There
are also two commercial radio stations in Hong Kong,
Commercial Radio Hong Kong and Metro Broadcast.
Hong Kong’s first television station was Rediffusion
Television, founded in 1957, and later renamed in 1982
as Asia Television Limited (ATV). Hong Kong’s second
television station, Television Broadcast Limited (TVB),
was started in 1967. These two free-to-air broadcasters
in Hong Kong each operate two television channels, one
in Chinese and one predominantly in English. There are
also subscription-based cable television operators that
provide local news coverage, as well as international
media channels such as CNN, BBC, CNBC and CCTV,
among others.
The most recent type of media to establish themselves
in Hong Kong is the Internet or digital media. Since the
Internet boom of the late 1990s, all kinds of Hong Kong
news media websites have appeared on the Internet,
along with electronic versions of Hong Kong’s dailies that
are regularly updated. The range and number of such
new media websites reflects the freedom of expression
in Hong Kong that is enjoyed equally by the public and
the press.
Media management
The management of the media in Hong Kong is
decidedly self-regulatory. For instance, the Hong Kong
government has been clearly warned off interfering
with market forces. During the first newspaper price
war from December 1995 to June 1996, the Hong Kong
government raised concerns that newspaper quality
would deteriorate the longer the price war dragged
on. Newspaper executives and media publishers were
quick to respond, making clear that they all opposed
government intervention. Eventually, the newspaper
price war resolved itself without any intervention and
the surviving Chinese-language dailies licked their own
wounds and re-established their readership.
The media are regulated and monitored by Hong
Kong’s statutory laws. There are over 30 ordinances
that are directly related to governing the mass media, of
which six are the most important. These six ordinances
are the Books Registration Ordinance; the Broadcasting
Authority Ordinance; the Broadcasting Ordinance; the
Control of Obscene and Indecent Articles Ordinance;
the Registration of Local Newspapers Ordinance; and
the Telecommunications Ordinance.
Freedom of the press in Hong Kong has habitually
been brought into focus, particularly in the run-up to
the 1997 handover, and thereafter during proposed
legislative reforms. In 1999, after a spate of scandalous and
sensationalist reporting that intruded on the personal lives
of Hong Kong celebrities, the Law Reform Commission
published two reports titled Civil Liability for Invasion
Journalism Education in Hong Kong
of Privacy and the Regulation of Media Intrusion. These
reports raised concerns about how far the “freedom of the
press” should be allowed before intruding on someone’s
privacy. Clearly, there was a need for the media to regulate
themselves and to uphold certain ethical standards. As a
result, the Hong Kong Press Council was formed in 2000.
This is an independent body formed with the objectives
of promoting the professional and ethical standards of
the newspaper industry; defending press freedom; and
handling public complaints against local newspapers.
In addition to the Press Council, the media in Hong
Kong have their own professional organisations that
look after their interests. These organisations are the
Hong Kong Chinese Press Association, the Hong Kong
Journalists’ Association, the Hong Kong News Executives’
Association and the Hong Kong Press Photographers’
Association. Other regulatory authorities in the media are
the Broadcasting Authority that regulates broadcasters
in Hong Kong and the Television and Entertainment
Licensing Authority that monitors television and radio
broadcasting.
Although press freedom is strongly defended and
upheld in Hong Kong, the media also have a tendency to
practise self-censorship. This is intervention from within,
such as where there is inherent pressure at the editorial or
management level. For instance, in order to minimise any
restrictions or unfair treatment given to their reporters,
some newspapers may be sympathetic or may choose
to be non-confrontational to the central government in
Beijing. Another example of self-censorship is the use of
the term “June 4 incident” instead of “June 4 massacre”
when the media want to refer to the events of 4 June
1989 at Tiananmen Square without annoying the central
government.
Thus, Hong Kong enjoys press freedom from
government intervention but, at the same time, practises
self-censorship and supports self-regulation of the media.
People in Hong Kong are free to criticise the government
should they so wish to, safe in the knowledge that the
government cannot censor the news in spite of the fact that
the media themselves may exercise self-censorship.
In July 1997, Hong Kong became a Special
Administrative Region (SAR) of China following the
expiration of Britain’s 155-year lease of the territory.
Hong Kong as a SAR is governed under the principle of
“one country two systems”. This means China has agreed
to give Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy and to
preserve its economic and social systems for 50 years
starting from 1997. Because of this, the media in Hong
Kong have been assured that their freedom will remain
undisturbed at least until 2047. Therefore, Hong Kong
continues to enjoy press freedom.
According to Reporters Without Borders, Hong Kong
ranked 39th in the 2005 World Press Freedom Index,
close behind South Korea (34th) and Japan (37th) who
ranked the highest among Asian countries and territories.
In contrast, China ranked 159th on the World Press
Freedom Index while North Korea ranked last on the list
at 167th. Comparatively then, Hong Kong enjoys good
press freedom (Reporters Sans Frontiéres, 2005).
61
MEDIA ASIA, VOL 35 NO 2, 2008
Overview of journalism education
In Hong Kong, as in many other places around the world,
there are essentially two methods of developing a career
in journalism. The first method is through formal training
at the undergraduate level in journalism schools. This
method trains and develops journalists academically, and
establishes solid foundations and definitions in journalism
theories, techniques and ethics.
The second method is where individuals start off as
trainees or apprentices to learn their skills “on the job”
with a media organisation. This was the traditional route
for people of any education level who wanted careers in
the media. These trainee journalists may not have been to
university and if they did, they had gained undergraduate
degrees in traditional academic subjects far removed
from journalism.
The introduction of postgraduate degrees is a
relatively recent development in journalism education.
These postgraduate courses are aimed at both fresh
graduates and seasoned media professionals. Fresh
graduates without any journalism experience may
find it easier to enter the media industry armed with a
postgraduate degree. Experienced journalists, having
gained on-the-job training and practical experience,
may take postgraduate courses in journalism to
enhance their skills or to explore new challenges in
the media field.
There is no hard and fast rule in getting a foothold in
Hong Kong’s various media organisations, although these
days having a university degree is a common requirement
in the industry. Some media organisations may prefer to
hire journalism graduates, while others may recruit non-
journalism graduates with a specific view of developing
their media skills within the organisation.
Indeed, there is a view supported by critics—mainly
from experienced and established professionals who
do not have journalism degrees—where they advocate
that new journalists do not necessarily have to have a
qualification in journalism. “A journalism degree helps
but I wouldn’t say it was essential,” says Professor Tim
Hamlett, associate professor in the Department of
Journalism at Hong Kong Baptist University.
Journalism courses in Hong Kong
Out of the seven government-funded universities
in Hong Kong, there are three universities that
provide comprehensive journalism courses for both
undergraduates and postgraduates: the Chinese
University of Hong Kong, the Baptist University of Hong
Kong and the University of Hong Kong. There is also a
journalism degree course offered by the Hong Kong Shue
Yan College, a privately funded liberal arts institution.
Most journalism graduates from Hong Kong’s three
universities and sole private college seek local careers in
the media industry or in related sectors such as advertising
and public relations. Many have assumed high-ranking
positions within the journalism and communication
industries and retained important links with their
journalism schools. In addition, the academic staff at
62
these established journalism schools are experienced
and respected journalists in their own right. They have
a passion to train, nurture and develop Hong Kong’s
future journalists.
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)’s
School of Journalism and Communication is the longest
established journalism school in Hong Kong. Its first
intake of undergraduate journalism students was in
1965. The School of Journalism and Communication
also offers postgraduate journalism degrees, which
were first introduced in 1977. These are in the form of
taught postgraduate programmes, i.e. Master of Arts
in Journalism, as well as research programmes, i.e.
MPhil and PhD. Each year, the school accepts about 80
undergraduates and 160 postgraduate students. There are
currently 240 undergraduates and over 250 postgraduate
students.
The school emphasises bilingualism among its students
because of the nature of the local media environment.
In addition, some courses are taught by local media
professionals, who prefer to use Cantonese as the medium
of instruction. Therefore, an understanding of Cantonese
and the ability to read Chinese is required.
Undergraduate students have to pass seven mandatory
courses: the history of world mass communication,
mass communication theories, critical communication
theories, professional ethics and media criticism, laws
of mass communications, communication research
methods and international communication. They also
have to choose either the Chinese stream, i.e. Chinese
news reporting and Chinese news editing, or the
English stream, i.e. English news reporting and English
news editing. In addition to subjects in journalism and
communication, undergraduates are required to take
some minor courses in other social science disciplines
such as sociology, cultural studies and psychology, as well
as undergo an internship during the summer following
their second year of study.
Postgraduate students in the Master of Arts in
Journalism degree have to complete a total of eight
courses, i.e. 24 units of course work. For graduates with
non-journalism degrees and no journalism working
experience, their compulsory courses are the six in
applied communication research; Chinese news writing
and reporting or English news writing and reporting;
media ethics and law; journalism theories; advanced
Chinese news writing and reporting or advanced
English news writing and reporting; and public affairs
reporting.
Graduates with journalism degrees or those with
journalism working experience have four compulsory
courses in applied communication research, media ethics
and law, journalism theories, advanced Chinese news
writing and reporting or advanced English news writing
and reporting.
Research postgraduates in the School of Journalism
and Communication, in addition to submitting a thesis,
also need to complete a total of eight courses, i.e. 24 units

of course work. The five courses that are compulsory are
statistics for communication studies, communication
theories, quantitative communication research,
qualitative communication research and multivariate
analysis in communication.
The Baptist University of Hong Kong
The Baptist University of Hong Kong’s Department
of Journalism began offering journalism education in
1968. There are currently about 180 undergraduates
in the Department of Journalism and the department
accepts around 50 students each year. All students must
take mandatory courses in introduction to journalism,
broadcast journalism, media law and ethics and theory
and practice of journalism in China. They must also
complete a summer internship in a media organisation
following their second year of study.
Due to Hong Kong’s bilingual environment, the
Department of Journalism requires undergraduate
students to master two written languages, namely Chinese
and English. Later, students must choose to specialise,
either in Chinese journalism, international (English)
journalism or broadcast journalism.
For the Chinese journalism major, the teaching
emphasis is to train and equip students with skills to work
for the Chinese-language print and broadcast media.
Students who wish to specialise in China reporting can
also choose this major. The compulsory courses are
news writing and reporting, feature writing, copyediting
(Chinese), reporting laboratory (Chinese), advanced
reporting and writing (Chinese), and editing laboratory
(Chinese).
For the international (English) journalism students,
the teaching is geared towards helping local Hong Kong
students to learn journalism in a foreign language. The
compulsory courses are foundations of news and feature
reporting (English), world news media system, theories
and techniques of news and feature reporting, copyediting
(English), reporting laboratory (English), international
news, advanced reporting and writing (English) and
editing laboratory (English).
Students who choose the broadcast journalism major
are taught the foundations of the broadcast media,
from radio news to advanced multimedia levels. The
compulsory courses are radio news reporting, television
news reporting, world news media system, advanced
broadcast journalism, reporting laboratory (broadcast),
long form broadcast journalism and editing laboratory
(broadcast).
In September 2006, the department launched its first
postgraduate course—a taught postgraduate masters
degree in international journalism studies. Postgraduate
students can choose to take this new course as either
a one-year full-time programme based in Beijing and
Hong Kong or as a two-year part-time programme based
entirely in Hong Kong. Postgraduate students will take
subjects in writing and reporting for international news;
the comparative history and practice of journalism; the
history and practice of international news; and journalism
and communication theory and research.
Journalism Education in Hong Kong
The University of Hong Kong
The University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media
Studies Centre (JMSC) is the territory’s newest journalism
school within a university. The Journalism and Media
Studies Centre was established in 1999. The centre
began by offering a taught Masters degree, and now
also offers both undergraduate and postgraduate degree
courses. The postgraduate programmes are taught and
research-based higher degrees on either a full-time or
part-time basis.
There are currently about 45 undergraduates
and 70 postgraduates, with an additional 30 part-
time postgraduates at JMSC. The annual intake of
undergraduates and postgraduates is about 25 and 36
respectively.
The undergraduate journalism programme teaches the
fundamental principles and the practice of journalism,
as well as provide a foundation in basic social sciences.
Core journalism courses in the first year are principles of
journalism and the news media and news reporting and
writing workshop. Other core courses are principles of
statistics, elementary statistical methods or introductory
statistics; introduction to economics; making sense
of politics, fundamentals of public administration or
introduction to social administration; and introduction to
sociology, introduction to anthropology or introduction
to psychology.
The taught Master of Journalism programme focuses
on core values of practical journalism and since its
introduction, has quickly become a popular course for
many media professionals. Postgraduate students are
required to complete between 33 and 36 units, with 20
units coming from compulsory courses. These compulsory
courses are advanced reporting and writing, critical
issues in journalism and global communications, new
media workshop, media law, television and radio writing,
television and video production and a thesis project.
Postgraduate students on the postgraduate diploma
programme are required to complete between 17 and 20
units, with 11 units coming from compulsory courses.
These compulsory courses are advanced reporting
and writing; critical issues in journalism and global
communications; new media workshop; and television
and radio writing.
JMSC has, to date, placed over 200 undergraduate
and graduate students in internships at Chinese, English,
local and international media companies. These include
the offices of CNN, Bloomberg, the Financial Times, the
Far Eastern Economic Review, Cable TV, ATV, TVB,
RTHK, Commercial Radio, Next Magazine, Shanghai
Daily, Yazhou Zhoukan, Apple Daily, Ming Pao and the
Hong Kong Economic Times, South China Morning Post,
Voice of America, The Nation (in Bangkok), Dow Jones
Newswires, Phoenix TV, Newsweek, New York Daily
News, Associated Press, KCTS TV (in Seattle) and Radio
Australia (in Melbourne).
In addition to internship programmes, JMSC conducts
exchange programmes with journalism schools in the
United States and Australia. These journalism schools
are the Missouri School of Journalism at the University
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MEDIA ASIA, VOL 35 NO 2, 2008
of Missouri, the Philip Merrill College of Journalism
at the University of Maryland in the United States and
the School of Journalism and Communication at the
University of Queensland in Australia.
Hong Kong Shue Yan College
Apart from the three government-funded universities,
Hong Kong Shue Yan College is an independent, private
college that also offers journalism education. The college
focuses on liberal arts education and aims to become Hong
Kong’s first private university. The college’s Department
of Journalism and Communication has a four-year
undergraduate degree programme in journalism and
mass communication. There are a total of over 530
students in the department, with between 50 and 80
students who major in journalism in the final two years
of the programme. In 2005, the department’s first batch
of journalism graduates numbered 53.
In the first two years of study, students are taught a
broad subject base in the humanities and social sciences.
Students start to major in journalism during the third and
fourth year of the programme. Compulsory journalism
subjects include media, technology and society; English
writing news reporting and writing in Chinese; mass
communication theories; news editing; news translation;
China reporting; TV news and public affairs reporting;
magazine writing and planning journalism ethics; online
journalism and mass communication; public relations
and media; editorial and commentary writing; mass
communication law; press policy and Law of China; and
history of world journalism. Students must also complete
a summer internship at a media organisation.
Challenges of journalism education
Hong Kong’s undergraduate journalism programmes are
all generally similar in scope. They offer fundamental
training to equip young graduates for their first jobs in
print or broadcast media. The undergraduate journalism
programmes offered at the three universities are three-
year courses while Hong Kong Shue Yan College’s
undergraduate programme spans four years.
With Hong Kong’s postgraduate programmes, the
majority of applicants tend to be mature students who
bring in specific experiences or expertise that may
be helpful to other media professionals and aspiring
journalists enrolled in the course. Postgraduate
journalism degrees vary from one to four years, and can
be taken either on a full-time or part-time basis. Taught
masters degrees are one to two years, whereas research
degrees are two years for a Master in Philosophy degree
and three or four years for a doctorate.
A common element in both undergraduate and
postgraduate programmes in Hong Kong is that they
both offer internship opportunities that capitalise on
the strong links between the teaching staff and the
media industry in Hong Kong, Asia and in other parts
of the world. This is invaluable for students to immerse
themselves in a specific environment and to deal with
the challenges of journalism firsthand.
64
Professor Clement So, director of CUHK’s School
of Journalism and Communication, says journalism
courses “provide both theoretical training and technical
professional training simultaneously”. He adds, “We
want our graduates to be able to express themselves
competently in various media forms and to have
professionalism and high ethical values.”
“The challenges include striking a good balance between
theory and practice, between journalism-related courses and
non-journalism courses, coping with the ever-advancing
technological environment, updating the curriculum to
suit students’ and society’s needs,” says Professor So.
This view encapsulates the objectives and ideals of the
journalism schools in Hong Kong, where the relevance
of a broad and flexible curriculum for training and
development is closely linked with the media industry’s
reliance on knowledgeable and proficient graduates.
Selection procedures
For undergraduate study, the normal application channel
is through Hong Kong’s Joint University Programmes
Admissions System (JUPAS). As part of the selection
process, all candidates are interviewed. Most applicants
are 18 or 19 years old, who have completed their Hong
Kong Advanced Level Examination (HKALE) or an
equivalent qualification. In Hong Kong, the minimum
requirements for university admission are passes in two
Advanced Level (AL) and two Advanced Supplementary
level (AS) subjects (see Table 4.1).
For postgraduate study, application for entry is usually
through the university’s graduate school. Candidates
are expected to have a first degree and/or extensive
experience in the media industry. However, experienced
journalists without degrees may qualify for postgraduate
studies based upon their years of work experience.
Interviews can play an important part of the selection
process, especially if mature candidates do not possess
first degrees. Applicants for these courses range in age
from twenties to forties.
The future media scene
Generally, there are two contrasting views about the
teaching, training and usefulness of journalism education
in Hong Kong.
One view, supported by practitioners like Professor
Clement So of CUHK, is that journalism courses should
continue to expand, aggressively if possible, in terms of
physical size and student intake. “This will allow us to
strengthen the depth in each subject area and train good
journalists for society,” says Professor So.
In contrast, practitioners like Professor Tim Hamlett at
BUHK wonder if there will be a “massive overproduction
of journalism graduates” in Hong Kong in the future. At
present, there are about 200 undergraduates and 200
postgraduates who graduate every year in Hong Kong.
The media industry, and its related sectors, must be able
to support the growing number of qualified journalism
graduates, otherwise there will be a surplus of qualified
journalists who will not be able to practise their journalism

skills and knowledge. Also, would an oversupply of
journalism graduates in Hong Kong be detrimental and/
or affect the output quality of the media?
Professor David Plott, deputy director of HKU’s
Journalism and Media Studies Centre, sums up Hong
Kong’s situation by stating: “Although there are many
journalism graduates in Hong Kong, there is a shortage
of good journalists.” Journalism schools face the challenge
of producing qualified and knowledgeable graduates
in a world where technology has changed the face of
traditional media such as print and broadcast journalism.
Print, broadcast and new media have combined and
transformed the means of newsgathering and news
dissemination, leading to the collapse of traditional
advertising-based media and circulation-driven revenue
models. Where do journalists fit in this brave new media
world? “We have to produce journalists who are more
specialised and who are trained to critically analyse the
news,” says Professor Plott. This is the challenge that
journalism education faces.
Lin Neumann, an experienced Hong Kong editor
and current Editor-in-Residence at HKU’s Journalism
and Media Studies Centre, also believes journalism
education must prepare students for what to expect in
the real, fast-paced, time-constrained world of working
journalists. His initial impressions from working with
Hong Kong journalism graduates from CUHK, BUHK
and HKU are that they are straightforward, have good
basic knowledge and are pretty honest.
However, there are some facets or qualities in journalism
that are not necessarily best taught in journalism courses,
if at all. For example, only with hands-on training can
journalists learn to write to meet deadlines and then see it
through to the editing stage, says Neumann. “Journalism is
also a lot of lateral thinking, so journalism education does
not necessarily prepare them for that,” he says. Perhaps this
is why all the journalism courses in Hong Kong encourage
students to undergo internships in newsrooms and media
organisations. Experience with source relationships is
another quality that fresh journalism graduates are not
expected to have or to prepare for. Only with patience and
consistent doggedness can a journalist nurture reliable
sources, which in many cases may take a number of years
to develop. This is especially important in Hong Kong,
where with its links to the central government in Beijing,
it is not uncommon for reliable but undisclosed sources to
release politically sensitive news. Can journalism courses
prepare graduates to handle sources so that the journalist
can trust them and also ensure that the journalist is not
being used as a pawn?
Neumann believes journalism is a craft first, and only
if you’re good at it, a profession. From his experience,
Neumann is also willing to hire graduates from any
discipline, not just journalism graduates—provided
that they show passion, initiative and a desire to find
and produce stories. These are inherent qualities that
journalism courses cannot create in students; they can
only nurture these in them.
Another industry perspective is that journalism
education to media practitioners is what MBA courses are
Journalism Education in Hong Kong
to business and administrative executives. That is, there
are professional postgraduate courses aimed at people
with extensive working experience who need to upgrade
or sharpen their skills. Just as MBAs are now widely
recognised in the business sector to help middle managers
and top executives become more effective within their
industry, journalism education is beginning to meet the
challenges of sharpening the skills of experienced media
practitioners. This is perhaps proved by the increasing
number of enrolments for postgraduate journalism
courses at CUHK and HKU, as well as BUHK’s newly
introduced postgraduate journalism course.
In conclusion, as in the past, Hong Kong’s strategic
location as a prime gateway for China to the rest of
the world and as a crucial focal point for international
organisations to enter China will continue to play an
important role for the media in the future. Hong Kong’s
journalism courses, particularly Hong Kong’s increasingly
in-tune professional postgraduate courses, are equipping
media professionals with the right blend of English,
Cantonese and Mandarin-versed journalists with savvy
new media skills to handle the modern world of the
media practitioners. This is what works for journalism
education in Hong Kong.
References
Hong Kong SAR Government Information Centre.
(2004). Hong Kong Yearbook 2004. Hong Kong:
HKSAR Government, Communications, the Media
and Information Technology, Information Services
Department. Retrieved from www.info.gov.hk/
yearbook/2004/en/17_02.htm
Lent, J. A. (1982). Newspapers in Asia: Contemporary
trends and problems. Hong Kong: Heinemann Asia.
Reporters Sans Frontiéres. (2005). 2005 World Press
Freedom Index. Retrieved from www.rsf.org/
article.php3?id_article=15334
Useful websites
www.com.cuhk.edu.hk/introduction.htm. School of
Journalism and Communication, The Chinese
University of Hong Kong
www.hkbu.edu.hk/~jour/index.html. Department of
Journalism, Baptist University of Hong Kong
jmsc.hku.hk/. Journalism and Media Studies Centre,
The University of Hong Kong
www.hksyc.edu. Department of Journalims and
Communication, Hong Kong Shue Yan College
www.hkja.org.hk/. Hong Kong Journalists Association
www.com.cuhk.edu.hk/nea/. Hong Kong News
Executives’ Association
www.hkppa.org.hk/Ehome.htm. Hong Kong Press
Photographers’ Association
www.presscouncil.org.hk/. Hong Kong Press Council
www.hkba.org.hk/. Hong Kong Broadcasting Authority
www.info.gov.hk/tela/. Television and Entertainment
Licensing Authority
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Table 2.1
Comparison of Journalism Education Courses in Hong Kong

School of Journalism and Department Journalism and Media Department of

Communication, CUHK of Journalism, Studies Centre, HKU Journalism and
BUHK Communication
HKSYC

Degree level UG PG UG UG PG UG
Annual student 80 160 50 25 36 60
intake
Course length 3 years 1 to 4 years 3 years 3 years 1 to 4 years 4 years
Entrance University A degree and University University A degree and 1 AL and 1 AS
requirement minimum TOEFL score minimum minimum TOEFL score exam
of 550 and of 600 and
above above
Required 64 units (of 24 units 52–58 units 180 33 to 36 units 123 credits
coursework 2 or 3 unit (of 2 to 4 unit credits (of (of 2 to 4 unit
courses) courses) 6 credit courses)
courses)
Internship 2 or 3 — 2 or 3 months 2 or 3 — —
months following months
following completion of
completion 2nd year study
of 2nd year
study

* University minimum requirement is 2 AL passes

66
 Journalism Education in India
T he reach of the press medium in India has increased
to 200 million readers in the last three years (NRS,
2005). There are over 60,000 registered newspapers in
India in various languages (see Appendix 1), and this is
just the reach of the print media—dailies and magazines
combined. If one were to include the phenomenal growth
of the other forms of media in India, especially television
in over 100 million homes, then it becomes evident why
it is important to look at the status and relevance of
journalism education in the country today and whether
it meets the needs of the new scenario.
In this chapter, I will explore the present status and
relevance of journalism education in India based on
primary and secondary data collected through personal
observations and interviews of journalists, journalism
educators and other related experts.1
Historical overview of journalism
The history of journalism in India can be classified
into two main phases: pre-independence and post-
independence. India attained independence from the
British Empire on 15 August 1947 and this is the time
period used in this report to divide journalism history
into pre-independence—before 15 August 1947—and
post-independence—after 15 August 1947—phases.
Pre-independence
The pre-independence phase started with the
acknowledged history of the first newspaper in India in
1776 by William Bolts, even though it wasn’t until 1780
that James Augustus Hicky started the Bengal Gazette, also
known as Hicky’s Gazette (Kumar, 1981). In subsequent
years, this phase was marked by different newspapers with
two distinct ideologies. The first was mostly by Englishmen
who supported the British Empire, while the second was
mostly by educated Indians who promoted nation-building
and, later, the freedom struggle. While the initial set of
newspapers, for example, Times of India, The Statesman
and The Hindu, were mostly in English, there was also
a strong presence of newspapers in Indian vernacular
languages, including Maharatta, Kesari, Sambad Kaumudi,
Harijan and Navjivan. Some of the prominent Indian
journalists during this time included Raja Ram Mohan
Roy, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Mahatma Gandhi.
Post-independence
After independence, the Indian press were initially
focused on nation-building but had, over the years,
Sundeep R. Muppidi
witnessed many changes. Some of the significant
landmarks in this phase include the “national emergency”
declared by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in
1975, during which civil rights were suspended and
restrictions were imposed on free speech. It was a phase
when a lot of journalists put up a spirited struggle against
restrictions imposed by the state on the freedom of the
press; the pre-liberalisation phase that stretched from
post-emergency (1977) to the early 1990s when the
country started on the path to economic liberalisation. It
was during this phase that the Indian press really matured
professionally and diversified as a commercial industry.
In this phase, while a small group of journalists pursued
investigative journalism and tried to justify the press
tag of the “watchdog of society”, most of the industry
instead veered towards the commercialisation path and
focused on making profits. There was a phenomenal
boom in newspapers and magazines and the adoption
of the latest publishing techniques in this phase. From
the early 1990s to the present, the press are in a post-
liberalisation phase, marked by increasing competition
from television. They are also facing increasing threats
from the Internet and have to brace themselves for the
entry of foreign players in the Indian media industry.
Newspapers are also starting Internet editions to reach
out to a larger global diaspora. The reach of the press
is especially growing in the rural areas relative to the
urban areas (NRS, 2005). This phase is also witness to
the newspapers’ increasing focus on supplements and
local editions. Some of the major newspaper groups in
this phase include Bennett Coleman (Times of India, etc.);
Kasturi Group (The Hindu); The Indian Express; Eenadu
group (Ushodaya Publications); Malayala Manorama,
Dainik Jagran, Amrita Bazar Patrika and many others.
Historical overview of journalism education
There is no accurate documentation of the historical
trajectory of journalism education in India. While it is a
good guess that most of the initial education for journalists
occurred on the job, it was only in the late 1950s that
courses in journalism started appearing in the college
curricula. A good way to trace this trajectory is through
what P. Krishnatray terms as generations.
One can speak of history of journalism education in
terms of generations. The first generation schools
were formed in the 1950s, in the flush of independ-
ence. They offered certificate courses in “how-to”
journalism. The faculty was drawn from amongst
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MEDIA ASIA, VOL 35 NO 2, 2008
the practitioners and some, like Hislop College in
Nagpur, had British teachers and earned a reputa-
tion for themselves. Such efforts were, however,
too few and far between to make any difference
(personal communication, March 2006).
B. P. Sanjay, a former director of the Indian Institute of
Mass Communication and a Professor of Communication
at the University of Hyderabad, believes that “journalism
education is well past its diamond jubilee year if one takes
into account the formal attempts to start journalism
education in India at the Punjab University in 1941. Prof.
P. P. Singh took this initiative.” It is also the phase that
Professor Eapen refers to as the time that the first formal
efforts in journalism education were made. He wrote:
In India, the first attempt was made by Mrs. Annie
Besant at the National University at Adyar, Madras.
This did not last long. Efforts made by the Indian
Journalists Association, Calcutta, to sponsor a
training course for journalists also failed. It was
at Aligarh that the first university level instruction
course in journalism was introduced in 1938. This
was abolished in 1940. The Department of Jour-
nalism started by Professor P. P. Singh at Lahore
under the auspices of Punjab University in 1941 is
the oldest institution (1991).
Krishnatray classified the second generation from the
late 1960s, saying:
By the late 1960’s, the college-based certificate
courses were replaced by university-based, sec-
ond generation journalism departments. These
departments offered either one or two-year de-
grees in journalism and mainly attracted urban,
middle class, English-speaking students. They
grew in numbers, mainly in southern part of In-
dia, especially in cities like Mysore, Bangalore and
Hyderabad  (the predominantly Hindi-speaking
North India was soon to get caught in the deeply
contentious English-Hindi row and jettison English
as (the) medium of instruction). The journalism
departments served a growing economy and of-
fered a “one-size-fits-all” programme that included
subjects such as graphic arts, reporting, editing,
history of journalism, etc. In the 1970’s and 80’s,
several of such departments changed their nomen-
clature from “journalism” to “journalism and mass
communication” and incorporated subjects such as
communication, public relations and advertising.
Professor Eapen (1991) added, “There were only
six university departments up to 1961 in India and the
number went up to 25 by 1981. Since then, there has been
a phenomenal expansion with another 25 departments
coming up.” Krishnatray’s analysis classifies the third
generation as coming into being in the early 1990s when
the Indian government started opening up its economy
to the outside world. He observed:
The drive to liberalise the Indian economy in the
1990’s ushered in the third generation of com-
68
munication education. It created opportunities
for new and bold initiatives in communication.
Industry captains, non-resident Indians, and
established colleges were quick to seize the op-
portunity. Mudra Institute of Communications,
Ahmedabad (MICA) was the first private, not-for
profit institute launched by Mudra Communica-
tions. Alive to the growing needs created due to
emerging technologies and the globally integrated
marketing communication business environment,
third generation private institutes developed
strong industry linkages, diversified the syllabi,
sought faculty from allied fields and emphasized
on research. More important, they realized the
value of building brands, creating niche markets,
admitting students from all over the country, and
recruiting faculty with industry experience. None
sought affiliation with the University Grants Com-
mission, a federal agency, and all worked feverishly
towards seeking legitimacy from the marketplace.
They have succeeded (personal communication,
March 2006).
Krishnatray also predicted a newer generation of
journalism (communication) education institutions
would emerge, saying:
The fourth generation of communication education
is in the making. It can be seen in collaborative
efforts and memoranda of understanding being
signed between Indian communication institutes
and foreign universities. It’s a matter of time before
foreign universities themselves set up shop in the
country.
This trend is already noticeable in the increased stress
on “internationalisation” and “study abroad” programmes
and their focus on Asia (specifically India and China)
within universities in the US.
Present state of journalism education
Journalism education in India is offered at different levels
and in over a few hundred public and private institutions
in India. There are different nomenclatures for the
degrees and a number of terms used synonymously. It
is not uncommon to use “journalism”, “communication”,
“mass communication” and “media” individually
or in a combination when referring to the degree
emphasis. Traditionally, journalism courses have been
a postgraduate offering available for students after their
regular (10+2+3)2 Bachelor of Arts, Science or Commerce
degrees; but, even though it is a post-graduate degree, it
is still termed as either a Bachelor’s in Communication
and Journalism (BCJ), Bachelor’s in Science (Journalism
and/or Communication) or Bachelor’s in Journalism
and Mass Communication (BJMC), and a Master’s in
Communication and Journalism (MCJ) or a Master of
Arts (Journalism/Communication) degrees. In addition,
there are a number of postgraduate diplomas and
certificate courses offered by private institutions like
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Asian College of Journalism

and Xavier’s Institute of Communication. Of late, the
trend has been to offer it as an undergraduate elective
(Akhileshwari Ramagoud, State Correspondent, Deccan
Herald, personal communication 2006).
A number of media houses also train some of their
own journalists by selecting potential students with the
necessary skills and putting them through journalism
training workshops and on-the-job training “intern”
programmes. Such media houses believe that it builds
employee loyalty and increases long-term employee
retention rates while also proving to be cost-efficient.
The Times Research Institute and the Eenadu School of
Journalism are two of the institutions that run on-the-
job training programmes, while media organisations like
NDTV and others also come to mind.
All state institutions in India offer degree courses
in journalism and communication and some offer
journalism courses through distance education. Each
state also has a number of private institutions that offer
degree and diploma courses; some states have federal
institutions that also offer these courses. The following
section will present a comprehensive zone-by-zone
summary of selected journalism institutions. As India
is a vast country, this division will present a much
better perspective of the present status of journalism
education in the country compared to a holistic analysis.
Examples of institutions offering various types of degrees
in journalism education in each zone will be presented.
The only criteria for selection here is the aim to present a
diverse and varied picture of the various institutions and
the degrees they offer. It is by no means indicative of the
merit, visibility or any other criteria of each represented
(or unrepresented) institute.
North
In this chapter, the north zone as defined includes all
states and union territories to the north of Madhya
Pradesh and the states of Jammu and Kashmir,
Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh,
Uttaranchal and Uttar Pradesh as well. Some of the
institutions offering journalism courses in these states
include the Indian Institute of Mass Communication
(IIMC), the Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi University, Aligarh
Muslim University, Benaras Hindu University, Punjab
University, Garhwal University, University of Rajasthan,
Maharishi Dayanand University, Indira Gandhi National
Open University, University of Allahabad, University of
Kashmir, Kurukshetra University, Himachal Pradesh
University, University of Jaipur and the Indian Express
Institute of Journalism.
The Press Institute of India
Founded in 1963, the Press Institute of India (PII) is
an independent non-profit trust, established to create
and sustain the high and responsible standards of
journalism required by a developing country committed
to democratic functioning. For many years, the PII was
the nodal agency for sending journalists—reporters,
sub-editors and even photographers—to the Thomson
Foundation, UK, for training. Now PII’s training
Journalism Education in India
workshops for journalists are conducted in-house or in
cities and rural areas of India. There is a strong focus
on rural reporting, development writing and writing
on women’s empowerment through the panchayats.
Over the years, the PII has trained over 4,000 editorial
and management professionals from India, Pakistan, Sri
Lanka, Bangladesh and other parts of Asia.
Indian Institute of Mass Communication
The Indian Institute of Mass Communication is a
good example of a public-funded institution that offers
degrees in journalism education. According to the
publicity brochure of the institute, the Indian Institute of
Mass Communication (IIMC) is an autonomous society
under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting
and was set up with the objective to provide training to
the information and publicity personnel of the central
and state governments, organise training and research
in the use and development of mass communication
and make available facilities for training and research
to meet the information and publicity needs of the
public and private sector industries. The institute
is administered by an autonomous society and its
executive council is constituted by the Government
of India. The institute conducts training programmes
for Group “A” and Group “B” officers of the Indian
Information Service and broadcast journalism course
for personnel of AIR and Doordarshan. Apart from
those, the institute conducts nine-month postgraduate
diploma courses in journalism (English); journalism
(Hindi); advertising and public relations; and radio and
TV journalism in New Delhi. The institute’s branch
at Dhenkanal in Orissa conducts courses in English
journalism and Oriya journalism.
The institute also offers a diploma course in
development journalism. Two such courses are held every
year and are of four-month duration each. In addition
to the above, the institute runs short-term academic
programmes for middle level and senior officers of the
Indian Information Service, personnel of different media
units and other government officers. The following is
a sample of modules for the Postgraduate Diploma in
Journalism (English) course at IIMC.
• Communication – Concepts and process
• Communication and development
• History of press, laws and ethics
• Reporting – Concepts and process
• Reporting – Practicals
• Editing – Concepts and process
• Editing – Practicals
• Audio-visual production and cyber media
• Electronic journalism
• Public relations, advertising and newspaper
management
Similar institutes to the IIMC include the film and
television institutes, the central universities, such as
the University of Hyderabad and the Tezpur University,
and the state universities across the country. All are fully
funded by either the federal or state governments.
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Central
In this chapter, the defined central zone includes the
states in the middle of the country, namely Madhya
Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand and Bihar.
Some institutions offering journalism courses in
these states include Behrampur University, Jabalpur
University, Dr. Hari Singh Gour University, Makhanlal
Chaturvedi National University of Journalism, Guru
Ghasidas University, Mahatma Gandhi Gramodaya
Vishwavidyalaya, Nalanda Open University, Awadesh
Pratap Singh University and Patna University.
South
In this chapter, the south zone encompasses the states
and union territories in the south of the country
including Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu,
Pondicherry, Kerala and Lakshadweep Islands. Some
of the institutions offering journalism courses in
these states include University of Madras, Karnataka
University, Madurai Kamaraj University, Mangalore
University, Sri Padmavathi Vishwavidyalaya, Osmania
University, University of Hyderabad, University of Kerala,
Calicut University, Sree Krishnadevaraya University,
Andhra University, Bangalore University, Mysore
Vishwavidyalaya, Bharathiyar University, the Manorama
School of Communication, Manipal Institute of
Communication and the Asian College of Journalism.
Manipal Institute of Communication
The Manipal Institute of Communication is a part of the
Manipal-based T. A. Pai group of educational institutions.
It is a good example of a privately funded corporate
institution that does not own a media organisation, like
a newspaper or a television channel. This institute offers
a three-year, or six semesters, Bachelor of Arts degree in
journalism and communication studies. The students are
trained in print journalism, radio, television production
and web communication. This course, ideal for future
media professionals, also allows a diversity of studies by
facilitating access to courses in related disciplines like
management, as stated in the publicity materials issued
by the institution.
Students with 12 years (10+2) of school education
from any stream are eligible to enrol into this programme.
The course invites students to understand the dynamics
and structures involved in interpersonal communication,
group communication, mass media production and
mass audiences. Theoretical inputs along with practical
skills training during the course prepare the students to
take up entry-level positions in the media industry. The
programme is suitable both for those who anticipate
building a career in media and those who propose to
opt for higher education in media research, journalism,
broadcasting or public relations or those who intend to
branch out into allied areas of management studies.
This institute also offers a postgraduate Masters in
Communication degree that is spread over two years,
or four semesters, of study. The postgraduate course
is open to graduates from all disciplines. The publicity
70
brochures state that the course is designed to provide
a holistic understanding of communication processes
in the global context. Students acquire competency in
media skills and are trained in print, television, radio and
multimedia. They can specialise in broadcast studies,
communication management or print and new media.
Some of the sample modules offered as part of this
programme include the following.
• English – Prose and poetry
• A cultural history of India
• Human communication
• Presentation skills
• Reporting and writing
• Introduction to computers
• English – Drama and remedial grammar
• Constitution of India
• Editing and design for print
• History of media
• Fundamentals of Internet and new media
• Med 124 – Computer applications
• Foreign Language I – German or French
• Organisational behaviour
• Magazine journalism
• Visual communication
• Media organisation
• Media project
• Foreign language II – German or French
• Introduction to economics
• New media communication
• Media and society
• Introduction to radio
• Introduction to political science
• Fundamentals of media laws and ethics
• Introduction to advertising and public relations
• Information and society
• Introduction to television
• Media project II – Graphics and animation
• International relations
• Media criticism
• Media and development
• Media research techniques
• Media seminar series
• Media project III
Similar institutions include the Indian Institute of
Journalism and New Media in Bangalore and the Bhavan’s
Institute of Communication and Management.
Asian College of Journalism
The Asian College of Journalism (ACJ) is a good example
of a privately funded educational institution that also
enjoys active support from a media organisation. This
institute is based in Chennai and is actively supported
by the Kasturi group of newspapers that publishes
newspapers like The Hindu. S. Vishwanathan (2003),
writing about the 125 years of The Hindu newspaper,
points out in a published interview with the editor-in-
chief, N. Ram,
The ACJ, originally promoted by Indian Express

and operating from Bangalore, has been revamped,
endowed with much larger resources and brought
to Chennai; The Hindu has been investing its
resources and expertise liberally in expanding its
utility; under the lead of Sashi Kumar and N. Ram,
the ACJ has created a rich infrastructure; but then
it is a commercial organisation imparting training
and offering courses for fees that cannot be afforded
by many and the number of seats is limited.
The ACJ offers courses in various streams including
the print, television, radio, and new media streams. As
the publicity materials of the ACJ point out, education
and training in the ACJ’s print media stream is designed
to turn incoming students into capable journalists who, by
the time they graduate, are ready to perform confidently
in any newsroom. “Students begin by learning to read a
newspaper in its entirety (not just those sections in which
they may have a personal interest), paying close attention
to the content, structure, and language of different types
of stories. Through lectures, classroom writing and
outside reporting assignments, they are taught to gather
news and report it in the clear, precise English required
for newspaper readers.”
The course curriculum includes core courses in the
following areas.
• Reporting, writing and editing
• Tools of the modern journalist
• Key issues in journalism
• Media perspectives
• Media law and society
• Covering deprivation
The elective courses include the following.
• Making sense of politics
• Covering gender
• Leading issues in economics
• Photojournalism
• Critical international issues
• Business reporting
• Identities in a plural society
• Covering arts and culture
• Covering ecology and environment
• The world of cinema
• Sports writing
• Science reporting
• Computer-assisted reporting
Similar institutes to the ACJ include the Mudra Institute
of Communication (MICA), the Manorama School of
Communication, the Times Research Foundation, the
Eenadu School of Journalism and other similar institutions
that are all supported by private corporations with some
form of presence in the media industry.
Maulana Azad National Urdu University
The Maulana Azad National Urdu University in
Hyderabad is a good example of a public-funded
institution that promotes journalism education in
vernacular languages. This university offers a Master
Journalism Education in India
of Arts degree programme in Mass Communication
and Journalism. As per the publicity materials of this
university, “the objective of the programme is to produce
professionals in [the] area of mass communication and
journalism who are comfortable [in the use of the] Urdu
language, and are capable of contributing to … society, in
particular the Urdu speaking population of the country.
In the long run, the Department of Mass Communication
and Journalism proposes to produce professional
journalists, intellectually profound and well trained in
print and electronic media, capable of protecting and
promoting the use of [the] Urdu language.”
Admission for the Master of Arts (mass communication
and journalism) course for this university is through an
entrance test. The eligibility criterion comprises 50 per
cent of marks at graduation level from a recognised
university in any discipline. Also, candidates must have
studied Urdu as a subject until at least the tenth standard
level or equivalent and must demonstrate the ability to
read and write in Urdu in the entrance examination.
The programme is of two years duration and the
medium of instruction/examination is in Urdu. The
course is divided into four semesters with four courses
in each semester as follows.
Semester 1
Introduction to communication
History of media
Reporting, writing and editing
Writing for Urdu media
Semester 2
Communication development
Media ethics and law
Production for radio
Communication research
Semester 3
International communication
Public relations
Production for video
Communication skills in media
Semester 4
Media management
New communication media
Animation
Advertising
The School of Mass Communication and Journalism,
in conjunction with the Department of Distance
Education at the university, also proposes to launch a
Postgraduate Diploma course in Mass Communication
and Journalism (in Urdu) for distance and open learners
in the near future.
East and North-East
In this chapter, the east zone includes the states and
Union territories in the East and Northeast of the country,
including West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura,
Mizoram, Nagaland, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim,
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and Andaman & Nicobar Islands. Some of the institutions
offering journalism courses in these states include
Guwahati University, Jadavpur University, Satyajit Ray
Film and Television Institute, St. Anthony’s College, Tezpur
University, University of Calcutta, Dibrugarh University,
Jorhat Agricultural University and Assam University.
Media training institutes in Assam
Any study of India usually is short on the coverage of the
Northeast region. In order to avoid that, the following
section will be a special focus on Northeastern India
using the State of Assam as a case study.3
As Joya points out:
There are very few institutions in [the] northeast
providing training in mass communication and
journalism. The forerunners in this area were the
Journalism Department of Gauhati University,
giving BA and Diploma degrees and the Mass
Communication Department of St. Anthony’s
College, [as well as] Shillong also providing an
undergraduate degree. Recently within the past
5–6 years there has been a surge in the launch
of journalism and mass communication training
institutes—both government and private. The UGC
(University Grants Commission) has also recently
approved the launch of new departments in [a] few
northeast universities (Joya Chakraborty, research
scholar, University of Hyderabad, personal com-
munication, 2006).
The following section on Assam is an almost verbatim
transcript of the research report as written by Joya.
Government/Government-aided
Assam has five universities, of which four are for general
education, two are central universities established under
the Assam Accord and one is an agricultural university.
The names of the universities are as follows.
• Gauhati University, Guwahati (state university)
• Dibrugarh University, Dibrugarh (state university)
• Jorhat Agricultural University, Jorhat (state
university)
• Assam University, Silchar (central university)
• Tezpur University, Tezpur (central university)
Gauhati University, Assam University and Tezpur
University have departments of mass communication
and/or journalism. The departments were established
in the order as listed above.
Gauhati University, being a leader by far, ranks
among the earliest departments to be launched in the
country. However, for a long time, they had offered only
a postgraduate diploma programme and a Bachelor’s
programme. It was only recently that they started a
Master’s Programme in Journalism. The department
does not have any permanent faculty members and is
presently being overlooked by a faculty from the English
department. There are no practical training facilities
available and the department is on the verge of closure
after having made failed attempts to recruit faculty over
72
a long period of time due to administrative apathy and
internal politics.
Assam University, Silchar, launched the department of
Mass Communication in 1996. The department provides
a Master of Mass Communication degree (MMC), a two-
year (four semesters) programme, and has print media
training facilities. It produces a bi-monthly lab journal.
Presently, there are five faculty members (1+1+3).4 The
department lacks video training facilities—it only has
one VHS camera—but is in the process of setting up
a digital television studio. Offered courses include (a)
reporting and editing; (b) introduction to communication
theory; (c) traditional folk media; (d) electronic media;
(e) advertising and public relations; (f ) press law; and (g)
communication research.
The students write one dissertation paper and produce
short fictions and a TV news story during the course,
and are sent for a one-month internship at the end of the
second semester. However, the internship is not a part
of the evaluation/grading process. Students are selected
through a written test and personal interview and the
course intake is about 30 students. Mainly graduates
from all disciplines apply though there are also a few
professionals. The department also offers an MPhil and
a PhD. Applicants for these courses are usually former
students of the department.
Tezpur University launched its department of Mass
Communication and Journalism in 2001 and offers
a two-year MA in MCJ which spans four semesters.
The department does not offer a PhD or MPhil. They
presently have four faculty members (0+1+3) with two
more (0+1+1) in the process of being appointed.
The department has print and electronic media
training facilities, including an 11-terminal computer lab
with the required software, five digital cameras (three
PD150s and two DSR570s), one non-linear editing suite
(equipped with Media 100), one linear editing system, a
studio floor with a portable lighting system and minimal
radio training facilities which is undergoing the process
of upgrading. It is by far the best-endowed media lab for
education in the state.
The department offers courses which include the
following.
• Communication theory
• Communication research
• Development communication
• Media history
• Advertising and public relations
• Media management
• Print
• TV journalism
• New media technology
• Documentary production
• Film studies
• Traditional media
• Political and cultural communication
The students produce a laboratory journal as part
of their print training. At the end of the course, the
students have, to their credit, the experience of producing

one documentary (three documentaries are produced
every year) and one news bulletin (two 30-minute news
bulletins are produced every year); designing one website;
designing and producing a few print advertisements and
at least one TV ad; producing and staging one street play
and one puppet show (two street plays and two puppet
shows on development issues are staged every year); and
writing one dissertation paper.
Media interaction is carried out through guest faculty,
a field trip or media visit to any metro city at the end
of the first semester and also the four-week internship
with any media or corporate organisation which also
forms part of the overall evaluation. The student intake
in this course is 15. Students are selected through a
three-tier admission process comprising a written test,
group discussion and personal interview. Applicants are
graduates from all disciplines.
West
In this chapter, the West zone includes the states and
Union territories in the west of the country, including
Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Daman and Diu and Dadra
and Nagar Haveli. Some of the institutions offering
journalism courses in these states include the University
of Pune, Film and Television Institute of India, the Mudra
Institute of Communication (MICA), Gujarat University,
Marathwada University, M S University of Baroda,
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and Saurasthra University, St.
Xavier’s and Sophiya.
Sophiya Shri B. K. Somani Memorial Polytechnic
This college offers a “Social Communications Media”
course that “trains young women to be media
professionals, providing them with a firm theoretical base
as well as practical hands-on experience. It also aims to
inculcate a sense of social awareness of human issues,
so that media studies and technical skills are linked to
media responsibility and ethics in society.”5 The course is
a one-year postgraduate diploma course after completion
of a Bachelor’s degree in any discipline with a 50 per cent
aggregate. The objective of the college is
… To train women to become media professionals
and also inculcate in them a degree of awareness
about social and human issues, which affect the
development of our country. In particular issues
related to caste and gender bias, communalism,
social discrimination, environment and health. To
this end the students’ key documentary projects
centre around topics such as Women and HIV,
Water, Beach Pollution, The Girl Street Child,
Tuberculosis, and Hospital Waste Management;
and their class magazines deal with issues such as
globalisation and education (Promotional materials
of the college).
To this end, the programme curriculum includes courses
in various theoretical and research fundamentals taught
by eminent guest faculty from the media industry. Similar
institutes to Sophiya include St. Xavier’s, Bharatiya Vidya
Journalism Education in India
Bhavan and others that offer specialised one-year diploma
courses to train students for the media industry.
Relevance of journalism education
After being neglected for a long time, journalism and
mass communication courses in India are witnessing a
big demand from students intent on pursuing careers
in journalism and communication. While the boom
in private television channels in the country fuels this
demand, it is not uniform across all institutions and
the reasons are many. What used to be a postgraduate
degree specialisation is now also being offered in many
institutions as an undergraduate specialisation. In
addition, there are also other questions about the level
of courses and how they tie in to each other, the type and
consistency of training offered, the course curriculum
and duration and the overall quality of the education.
While there are a number of other concerns about
journalism education in India, four major concerns will
be discussed first in this section. These are prioritised
based on personal observations and experiences, and
are supplemented by primary data collected through
interviews of experts in this field (see Appendix 1 for
list of interviewees).
Lack of regulation and oversight
There is tremendous ambiguity in terms of what
constitutes a formal degree in journalism. The range of
degrees offered differs from “pure theoretical analysis” at
one end of the spectrum to “completely hands-on skills
training” at the other end of the spectrum. These degrees
are advertised as preparing the students for careers in
print, radio, television, new media or some form of
combination of more than one of the aforementioned.
However, there is no formal government document
or specific professional oversight body to structure or
regulate these courses, other than what exists for general
higher education in India.
This issue was also “problematised” in my interviews
with the experts. Everyone recognised that there is a
phenomenal demand for journalism courses in India
today. However, most of them also feel that there is no clear
direction or consistency in the various journalism courses
offered around the country. They are also concerned
about the quality of such journalism programmes. As
Buroshiva Dasgupta (2006) points out,
Journalism education in India is undergoing dra-
matic changes with the increasing demand for
workforce in the booming business of television
channels, content/technical writing and corporate
communicators. What [was]—even a decade ago—
a neglected department of certain universities
and educational institutions in India, has become
a much sought-after profession of the younger
generation. Having said that, one must regret
that the educational system of India is not yet
prepared to take [up] this new challenge (personal
communication).
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MEDIA ASIA, VOL 35 NO 2, 2008

Ammu Joseph (2006) acknowledges that “media more colleges offering specialisations in all media.
schools seem to be the new growth area in private Another development in the past ten years has been
professional education in India, with not only educational a growth of colleges offering UG [undergraduate]
institutions and media houses setting them up, but also courses, at various private institutions, where
business houses and religious institutions” (personal they are being offered as self-financed vocational
communication). H. S. Shubha says that “journalism courses. This has changed the entire orientation
education has just not remained journalism today, of the course towards becoming more of a skills
corporatization seeping into it has diluted the essence” training course, rather than one with a theoreti-
(personal communication). Ammu Joseph also wonders cal base. One major problem with this has been
if this proliferation in journalism courses has more to do the lack of backward integration, where there is
with cashing in on the demand at the expense of offering no continuity or co-relation between the UG and
a good education to students when she says PG [courses], with no upgradation in either the
infrastructure or the course content. This has re-
The recent proliferation of media schools all
sulted in a repetition of the same courses in many
over the country (most of them all-purpose—
cases, with no additional support either from the
covering various media including film and, often,
college authorities or the faculty who do not have
advertising/PR, marketing, et cetera, and not just
inputs to upgrade themselves, as there has been
journalism-focused) makes me wonder if at least
no serious policy in place.
some of them are primarily money-making and/
or influence-generating enterprises. Balaswamy Bandi and Akhileshwari Ramagoud also
bring attention to this “new phenomenon of journalism
Maya Ranganathan shared her sentiment, noting that
courses being introduced at the undergraduate level”
“journalism institutes [are] getting caught in the vicious
(personal communication). Akhileshwari Ramagoud
circle of making money to provide better infrastructure
also points out the popularity of such courses, especially
and providing better infrastructure to attract more students
among female students. She attributes it to “the explosion
to make [more] money. This is especially true of private
of TV in India”. However, she also points out that “there
universities and institutes” (personal communication).
are no teachers and even less lab facilities”. Shubha agrees
She goes on to add, “The issue however does not affect
with Akhileshwari that these courses are more popular
state universities simply because there is no investment
with female students than with male students but feels
whatsoever on equipment”. Others also point to the lack
that there is an increasing need to bring awareness about
of quality of education in unregulated and mostly private
“gender sensitivity” among students and faculty. Usha
institutions and relatively regulated but resource-strapped
Reddy, however, points out that there are other reasons
public institutions. Ranganathan points out that there is a
than just the television media boom in the country,
“total lack of professionalism in the admission of students,
recruitment of faculty, pedagogy, and assessment of Journalism was the last choice for students in
students’ performances and running of institutions. This the past but now has become the first choice as
is not unique to journalism education alone but can be a result of the media boom in the country and of
applied to all education in India.” the rapid growth of not just IT technologies but
Another trend that creates more cause for concern is the the need for human resource[s] with application
introduction of journalism education as an undergraduate skills, with a command over the technology and
specialisation in the last few years. At what level should good analytical and writing skills in any language
a specialisation in journalism be offered? Should it be (personal communication, 2006).
offered at the undergraduate level or should it be retained
Santosh Pandey, a senior television producer at
at the graduate level as in the past? How should they relate
Eenadu Television’s (ETV) Hindi channel, also agrees
to each other? What should students be educated in at
with Akhileshwari’s assessment of the reasons for the
the undergraduate and graduate level courses? Should
boom. He points to “the massive upswing in the launch
there be any oversight? Whose responsibility should it
of (TV) news channels”. He notes,
be? G. Nagamallika points to the “complete incoherence
in the undergraduate and postgraduate courses that are … to meet the growing demand of trained news
offered”. She explains, professionals, it is imperative to have journalism
institutes and journalism courses. However, they
Until recently, mass communication was a post-
must separate print from television. There has to
graduate course open to undergraduates of any
be clear-cut demarcations in terms of print and
discipline at the university level. So, it was found
television curriculum. To make it relevant in [an]
only in state universities, at a nominal cost, but
actual sense, Indian journalism courses must cater
without the required infrastructure. The course
to the actual needs of [the] Indian television news
was designed in such a way that the students were
industry rather than putting tags on [the] individual
introduced to the course and the skills at the PG
to help them get into jobs wherever (personal
[postgraduate] level, but with no specialisations,
communication).
instead, being exposed to all media. However, there
has been a trend towards specialisation now, with His colleague and boss at ETV, Pavan Manvi, also

74

shares this view. Mr. Manvi is the chief producer of ETV
and earlier worked as a producer for Doordarshan and
was also a faculty member at the Sarojini Naidu School
of Performing Arts, Fine Arts and Communication at the
University of Hyderabad, where he trained students in
television production. Manvi faults the Indian academia
and the stagnant academic curriculum in journalism
courses when he says,
I feel the academia is not keeping in pace with the
fast changing media scenario in the country. Most
of the universities have not changed their syllabi for
ages. Whatever changes have been made, are very
cosmetic. It’s unfortunate that with the explosion
of electronic media in India, hardly there are [sic] a
couple of universities that are teaching them. Even
today there is no university in India, which offers a
very comprehensive course in broadcast journal-
ism. No wonder television channels are finding it
tough to get good talent for their news productions.
Radio is still [sic] worse. Recently the government
has opened up the FM channels for private players
in a big way. Most of the cities will have about six
to seven stations! Where are the people to man
them? Again they will be handled by people who
have no formal education in media!
So, why can it not be regulated better? Why does the
individual college management or the country’s UGC not
step in and put things right? Joya Chakraborty feels that
it is a systemic problem when she says, “Humanities and
social sciences are usually neglected in most universities
as far as fund allocation is concerned”. Usha Reddy agrees
and points out that
Educational administrators generally find it difficult
to understand that their journalism departments
ought to be treated in the same way as their engi-
neering schools—pumped in with resources, both
financial and academic, and with quality assurance
mechanisms befitting a professional course. In the
midst of all of this, we find tremendous confusion
and in fact, bedlam. Since these departments are
neither here nor there, neither the UGC, as a
higher education authority, or the AICTE as the
accrediting body for professional courses, nor the
Distance Education Council (DEC) has any say
in how they are run. But, graduates keep getting
jobs; not because of their ability or that of the de-
partments, but because of the huge gap between
demand and supply in this field.
The issue of oversight and regulation is an important
and urgent one to deal with for raising the credibility
of journalism education in India, but then what does it
take? Buroshiva believes that the UGC has to do more
when he says:
It is time that the University Grants Commission—
India’s decision-making body regarding higher
education—takes a hard look at the journalism
education in the country. Its advisory body regard-
Journalism Education in India
ing journalism, unfortunately, is very tentative. No
yardstick or guidelines for evaluation of standards
regarding journalism syllabi is available from the
UGC. It’s a need of the hour, if any quality is ex-
pected out of journalism education.
Pavan Manvi also agrees with Buroshiva but believes
that instead of the UGC taking the first step, the schools
and colleges have to be more proactive. He said:
There is an urgent need for all the journalism
schools to understand this new scenario and
rework their syllabi. Also, these schools have to
prevail upon UGC to allot them money to build
good studios to teach. With the primitive facili-
ties, I don’t think these universities will be able to
impart quality education. If the universities don’t
wake up, I am afraid these journalism schools will
lose their relevance!
All these highlight the second major concern about
journalism education in India, that is the severe handicap
in resources faced by most institutions offering courses
in this area—the unavailability of proper, adequate
and relevant resources and infrastructure to meet the
booming demand in the country.
Lack of resources and infrastructure
Inadequate resources and infrastructure is a major
concern for journalism educators and students in
India. This includes the lack of proper infrastructure,
ill-equipped labs, the lack of relevant learning materials
and a shortage of competent faculty. Balaswamy Bandi
points out, “Many departments are facing infrastructure
problems. [For example], though TV production is being
taught in almost all the departments, many departments
don’t have production facilities.” Buroshiva agrees that
there is a problem with infrastructure. He points out:
In most state universities, the teaching infrastruc-
ture for journalism—computer, sound and video
labs are very inadequate to say the least. As a result,
the students are disillusioned within no time. The
private institutions—which are mushrooming, tak-
ing advantage of the growing needs of the media
industry—promise the sky. But except for a handful
of established institutions which can deliver the goods
with good teachers and lab facilities, admissions to
these mushrooming institutions can be very risky.
Naga Mallika believes that it is also a problem when
the management does not have any idea of the course
requirements and tries to minimise costs by making do with
either poor or no infrastructure at all. She comments:
With all the advantages of having a self financed
course, they do not seem to be accountable to nei-
ther the students nor the government. This could
be the main reason for the boom in colleges, as
management is very happy with the growing inter-
est in the course, where the number of students
enrolling into the course is increasing every year,
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MEDIA ASIA, VOL 35 NO 2, 2008
while simultaneously, the lack of adequate com-
pensation and encouragement, seem to be the main
cause of a dearth of competent professional(s) and
teachers willing to get into academics.
If the management of private colleges has no idea of
the course requirements, then can one expect the state
universities to fare better because they are overseen and
guided by the University Grants Commission? Sadly, even
that is not the case. Usha Reddy feels that both private
and public institutions have their share of problems. She
points out that,
The public funded institutions and their teachers
suffer from lack of funding support and infra-
structure, coupled with academics who have not
been able to update their knowledge and skills
in a rapidly changing field. So that while they
are able to provide basic fundamentals, they still
have a problem with linking the fundamentals to
the changes taking place in the industry and the
global arena. [At the same time] private “trade
schools” suffer from a lack of quality teachers and
sound academics. Thus, what is taught is craft
and not processes or analytical thinking. Trade
schools can produce good editors, but not good
analytical or thinking skills. In the absence of any
quality assurance mechanism, those of us who
have to engage graduates of journalism schools
find we have a problem on our hands. Graduates
from universities want higher-level positions but
lack the hands-on ability. From trade schools, the
graduates lack good minds.
Naga Mallika agrees with Usha Reddy, saying,
The basic problem that one can experience as a
teacher of Mass Comm(unication) is the lack of
infrastructure. As stated above, while the promo-
tion of the UG course has been that of [a] skill[s]
based course, rather than a theory-oriented one,
there is a dearth of colleges that can boast of any
kind of infrastructure. There have been instances
where some colleges even resort to hiring the
required equipment at the time of inspection and
admissions, which are later returned once the
purpose has been served. For a course that is not
relevant unless there is hands-on experience for
the students, the lack of infrastructure especially
in UG colleges stands out. While this is the state
of UG colleges, there are a few colleges offering
the PG course with a minimum of equipment like
a few computers, to be shared with … a group of
forty to fifty, and cameras brought on hire, where
the camera person films the entire work, and with
editing also outsourced, all that the student gets
is a chance to follow him around … so much for
the hands-on experience. These are the colleges
considered “good” when compared to the others,
which don’t even boast of that. So the majority of
the colleges make do with theoretical inputs to the
practical course.
76
Even for the colleges investing money to build resource
infrastructure, there are other issues to deal with. The
major problem with colleges planning and building
infrastructure over a period of time is that they become
outdated by the time they even get to their goals, especially
when it involves building computer labs and television
studios. Maya Ranganathan points out the perennial
problem of dealing with any technology.
Rapid advances in media technology make the
exercise frustrating. In MIC (Manipal Institute of
Communication) now, the plan is to replace the
existing 8-year old computers in phases. We have
now begun replacing the existing computers with
pentium-4 computers, but then I can assure that by
the time all the computers are replaced, pentium-4
would have become outdated! I would think that
it will be the same with TV cameras and other
software used for animation!
This is not an India-specific issue. Technological
advances around the world make catching up with
technology a losing battle, and this is more pronounced
in a resource and cash-strapped society like India. The
prominent issue in India, though, is the lack of relevant
teaching materials that are written for the Indian context.
Maya Ranganathan best illustrates this issue and its
associated problems when she says,
All books on journalism are by foreign authors or
Indians based abroad, and are often irrelevant to the
practices and facilities available in this country. It is
not that there is no one here to write such texts, but
that time for research and writing is not granted to
university teachers, who are bogged down by teach-
ing, marking, examination and other administrative
work. There is no incentive for research and even
UGC is silent on this. Unlike in the West, in India,
university teachers’ promotions [and] increments
are totally de-linked from publications and unless
one is looking for opportunities abroad, there is
no reason for a university teacher to publish. The
quality of the so-called Indian academic publica-
tions will vouch for this.
Maya brings up an important issue—the quality and
competency of available faculty to teach these courses.
Pavan Manvi also agrees that there is a shortage of
qualified faculty. She says,
What is alarming is [the] lack of teachers to teach
both television and radio. The faculty is still very
much skewed towards the print [media], but the
opportunities are opening up in the electronic
media and the universities are still not waking up
to this new reality! I am not sure with this kind of
attitude the journalism schools will attract good
talent. My worry is that mediocre students will
pass out!
There are different dimensions and factors responsible
for this issue—quality, competency, salaries, training, real
world experience and a number of other things. While

there is no reason for it to be that way even in Assam
and the Northeastern part of India, it still is probably
understandable to an extent. Joya Chakraborty points out,
“[there is a] shortage of qualified faculty in both theory and
technical aspects. It is very difficult to get guest faculty
due to geographic isolation of the region, communication
problem[s] and hyped stigma of insurgency”. But, those
are not the only reason because then, how does one
explain the shortage of qualified and competent faculty
in the rest of the country? Ammu Joseph points out:
The old courses offered by various universities are
generally taught by academics—either Eng. Lit.
[English Literature] teachers who’ve wandered into
journalism education (e.g. several colleges affiliated
to Bangalore University offer degrees in “Commu-
nicative English”—which always made me wonder,
what is non-communicative English?—supposed
to be a kind of journalism/communications major)
or media studies folks who have never worked in
the media. Most students and employers seem
dissatisfied with such courses—though some save
themselves by bringing in media professionals as
visiting lecturers.
Balaswamy adds:
There is a contrasting situation of journalism
departments. While few departments, such as
Osmania University, Hyderabad Central University,
IIMC, Jamia Milia, Tezpur University, and Assam
University departments, are full-fledged depart-
ments, many [other] departments are one-man
armies run with the help of guest faculty. At present,
this situation is improving. Slowly the strength of
many departments is increasing. Now, a number of
private journalism centres, particularly, belonging
to various media organisations, are coming up as for
example, the Asian School of Journalism, Eenadu
Journalism School, Vaartha Journalism School and
Andhra Jyothi Journalism School. These are posing
competition to the conventional departments.
Naga Mallika believes that the faculty shortage is one
area that gets “the minimum of importance or attention”
and believes it is largely due to the lack of good salaries
for competent people. She says,
Seldom is the importance of teachers understood
by the management, which has led to a prolifera-
tion of courses, but not of faculty. There are many
colleges that run the entire course with no teacher
or make do with one. Even he/she is hired on a
part-time basis, with no regular pay scales. If at
all they are hired, they are paid a pittance, which
is the primary reason for not attracting talent into
the teaching profession. With the private players in
the market, the attention is only on the fee struc-
ture but not on the resources; whether in terms
of infrastructure or teachers. For instance, a state
university charges an annual fee of below 1500/-,
while for the same course it charges a payment
Journalism Education in India
seat of 5000/-, while private colleges, affiliated to
universities offering PG courses charge anywhere
between 40–60,000/- per annum. The UG colleges
charge around the same (especially) if it is a private
college, while university colleges charge around
6–12,000/- per annum depending on the college
reputation. This [is] almost the same across all
states. Almost all private colleges, which have teach-
ers, employ them on a contract basis for around
ten months. Only the state and central universities
have regular employment. Given that the contract
system is a global phenomenon, the fact that the
pay is almost nil does not put it exactly on par
with any college abroad. Further[more], this has
led to erosion in the quality of teachers, who either
are straight from the colleges where they study,
[or] without the requisite experience or degree.
Although the ideal teachers would be those with
industry experience, rarely does one come across
a person who has done well [that] come[s] back
into academics, simply because the system does
not allow them to study further or earn decently
if they switch their career midway. So, the teachers
are a de-motivated lot, trying to make money in
alternative ways, which does not seem to augur
well for the future of teaching. For instance, one of
our colleagues, who was in the media industry for
a period of six years, gets into the bottom rung in
the university system and unable to sustain, quits
after joining for half his earlier pay. The dispar-
ity in pay is one major factor that does not allow
people working in the industry to try and shift to
teaching, although many would be interested to
shift provided there is a decent pay. The pay in a
college would range anywhere between 4000/- to
12,000/-, which is consolidated and for a period of
ten months. There is no disparity between a PhD
holder and a non-PhD holder in these cases. One
cannot really hope to make a career out of this, as
the prospect of growth is very minimal.
Balaswamy also points to the disparity in salaries in
the English language versus the vernacular press. He says
that “there is also [a] contrasting situation in terms of
salaries. While [a] decent salary is paid in [the] English
press, very low salaries are paid in [the] language press. In
television organisations, there is [also] a lot of insecurity
and the wage is not proportionate to the work burden.
In terms of faculty members, there are only a few people
with both academic and professional backgrounds. In
some cases, good professionals are not functioning as
good academicians, and in some cases good academics
are also lacking good industry experience.”
Maya agrees but believes that there is some room for
optimism. She says:
A change is being made by some of the more
enlightened institutes like [the] Asian College of
Journalism (ACJ) but then, they are prohibitively
expensive and more importantly, outside the uni-
versity system. As for private universities, which
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can be expected to think and act differently, the fact
that they are guided by UGC guidelines makes no
difference. For example, there still is uncertainty
as to how industry experience must be treated
in appointments. An industry professional who
is making anywhere between Rs 25,000–30,000
per month cannot be expected to take up a senior
lecturer post (because his/her qualification only
merits that post according to UGC guidelines) at
a pay of Rs 20,000. When [a] PhD is taken as the
criteria for senior university appointments/promo-
tions, industry practitioners lose out. Next, even
those teachers like me who have industry experi-
ence, run the risk of becoming outdated in terms
of practical knowledge, owing to the phenomenal
advances in technology and owing to [the] lack of
opportunities to update knowledge. For instance,
when I was working in The New Indian Express,
I used Quark Xpress to make pages. Today, the
technology is so changed that I understand the
software is no longer popular. But then I haven’t
stepped into a newspaper editorial since I quit as
a principal correspondent in 2000.
Srinivas Reddy, the City Editor of the Hyderabad
Edition of The Hindu newspaper, agrees with the
contention that most faculties do not have any real-world
experience. He says,
Yes. Most of the journalism teachers were journal-
ists a long time ago. They may claim that they have
work experience, but what they do not realize is
the work of a journalist, be it on reporting side
or on desk, has undergone a tremendous change.
I am the best example. After two decades in the
profession, I am still learning. Let me explain.
There is a paradigm shift in the way reports are
written nowadays. Say in early 80s … we were
informing the reader about a development. NT
Rama Rao said this, four people died in a road ac-
cident, Rajiv Gandhi’s effigy burnt today, et cetra.
That was when we did not have the visual media.
Now anything and everything is telecast almost
live. So the role of a newspaper as an instrument
breaking news to the reader has changed now. Of
course we do write news items in the old style, but
the focus is more on trying to analyse the develop-
ment or informing the reader about the effect of
a particular development. Specialised writing has
become important nowadays.
Another dimension to faculty shortage and
competency that is troubling is the increasing number
of students passing out from journalism programmes
who are then hired by their own departments to teach
students. While these “incestuous” employments can
be used to solve short-term shortages, they are counter
productive in the long run as there is a lot of inbreeding,
thereby leading to stagnation in new intellectual thinking
or scholarship. Srinivas Reddy agrees, saying:
I do not understand how they recruit people as
78
lecturers in journalism departments. Four of five
of my juniors in BCJ, Arts College are lecturers.
Funniest thing is they have not worked in any
newspaper but they try to tell the student about
writing a report, page layout, taking photographs et
cetera. People like me take some time off whenever
invited by these departments to talk to the students
trying to tell them what journalism is all about, how
a journalist should be, how a report should be writ-
ten, how to get information from a reticent source
et cetera. First thing I remind the students is that it
had taken me more than six months to “unlearn”
myself on the field. How my news editor, [an] old
man, Mr. Balan, who … used to literally pull his
hair and also chew his knuckles while shooting a
cold stare at me while going through the reports I
used to file, [had] trained me, [and] so on and so
forth. Such efforts do not bring about any change.
Students will listen patiently and scribble notes
since it is just another guest lecture for them.
Shubha, herself a product of the place where she now
teaches, disagrees with his view. She explains:
We do not have the exposure that others could
bring with them from outside but in my own case,
I did undergo intense training of various sorts in
radio production from experts from UK and South
Africa which I thought was quite useful [and]
which helped a great deal to improve my teach-
ing … and constant interaction with some of the
industry crowd does help keeping in touch with
what’s happening … [Some] feedback I received
on my students—very, very few did actually get
into radio as you are aware of the radio scene in
India—was: “you at j-schools give a lot of impor-
tance to refinement of programmes … industry
does not require it nor does it have the time for
such production.”
She goes further and brings up another related
issue—the motivation and the competency of students
enrolled in these courses.
The glamour of appearing on television or getting
by-lines is the motivating force for most young
people to study journalism, i.e., [the] rewards [are]
more attractive than the work. Many journalism
students today do not want to do the necessary
legwork. They do not want to go through the
necessary hardships to pursue stories. Accessibil-
ity of unlimited information on the Internet (not
questioning the reliability) is an easy source and
alternative to legwork and research. The new gen-
eration is more aggressive, they aim for whatever
they want and climbing up the ladder is not hard
work for them.
Vasuki Belvadi and Stevenson Kohir also agree that
students do not seem as motivated and hardworking as
before. While Stevenson points to the attraction of other
careers draining the pool of good students, Srinivas Reddy

disagrees, pointing to other factors as the reason behind
the situation.
There is no dearth of talent, but when a student
is forced to learn the most unwanted things in a
classroom, it takes some time for them to “unlearn”
themselves [in] the field and get tuned to the field
reality. This adaptation could take some time, and
generally youngsters in India nowadays do not have
patience to learn out of classroom … meanwhile,
if there is an offer from a call centre or from some
company for copy writing, they would jump at
it. He would still be dealing with words, but not
journalism. He will be a much contented person
there because of the office ambience, good pay,
et cetera. The solution to this is that a journalism
student should be exposed to the fact that it’s not
just any other job, but has got some responsibility
with it. The other solution is [that] newspapers …
should pay more.
Reddy highlights another major concern, which is the
lack of a consistent course curriculum.
Lack of consistent course curriculum
In terms of the curriculum of journalism programmes
across the country, there is no clear direction or consistency
in the various journalism courses. Most of the experts
feel that the curriculum in most journalism institutions
is outdated and not relevant to the skills required in the
outside world. Some even point to the short duration of
such training courses and doubt if it serves any purpose.
Ammu Joseph is one such example. She says:
The duration of most courses is one year which in
effect means nine months, and I personally don’t
think this is enough, especially since the majority
of students—even those from elite schools and
colleges—need to develop their language profi-
ciency, not to mention writing ability. Also, since
quite a few of the course[s] are hold-all—with
students doing everything from film to print and
everything in between—many of them end up be-
ing jacks of all trades and masters of none. I don’t
see why it … [should be] assumed that journalism
can be mastered in such a short time while most
post-graduate courses, and certainly all profession-
oriented courses—… not only in the arts and sci-
ences but also business, law, et cetera—are longer.
I think students would be better equipped for the
profession if the courses lasted at least 18 months,
if not two years, with internships of at least three
months in between. That way they would also be
able to specialise if they want to.
Maya Regnant says that one of the major problems in
journalism education in India today “is a total mismatch
between the industry practices and what is taught in
journalism schools”. She adds, “Journalism teachers in
India follow the normal route of post graduate-PhD to
journalism institutes and a majority of them have no
Journalism Education in India
experience in media whatsoever. What they teach is
completely out of (often outdated) textbooks which have
no relevance when students enter the industry”. Srinivas
Reddy agrees. He says,
The syllabus that is taught in India—in most of
the private journalism schools also—is heavily
oriented towards visual journalism, though subjects
like reporting and public relations are common …
instead of having a “straightjacket” syllabus where
the student does not have an option of choosing
his subjects … a student could have interest in
specialising in photojournalism, or visual media,
or print media. He should be allowed to specialise
in that field. What is happening now is a student
is a little bit of this and a little bit of that with an
obvious emphasis on visual medium, for obvious
reasons. I have known quite a few students who
could not get into TV channels … [who become]
reporters trying their hands in newspapers, but they
are at a loss now. In most of the courses run by the
universities, including Omani University, the syllabi
have to be revised, keeping the industry standards in
view. Gone are those days when students are to be
taught how to write a report, how to open a story,
what lead to give, et cetera, in classrooms. The
courses should be more field-oriented. Nowadays,
they cram the student with more theory than with
practicals. The net result is, the student is at a loss
when he is out in the field as a cub reporter or a
junior sub. He wouldn’t know what to do and how
to go about getting information. As a result, most of
the fresh recruits try to write stories which ought
to be handled by specialised writers and when the
copy is rejected, they get disheartened and shift to
other professions like copy editors in websites, copy
monitors, technical writers et cetera.
There is also a complete lack of guidelines in the
proportion of skills versus theoretical content in the
course curriculum. Buroshiva points out:
A healthy balance between theoretical components
with the professional skills, which is sadly lacking
in the present system, needs to be introduced. The
academic institutions, [e]specially the state univer-
sities, still have a journalism syllabus which is heav-
ily loaded with theoretical component[s]. Much of it
is outdated. The private professional schools on the
other hand try to draw up a syllabus which make[s]
the students technically smart—how to handle a
camera, edit a film, make a website. The private
schools charge high because these skills make the
students good technical “fodder” for the growing
number of TV channels and other media houses.
The knowledge of relevant “content” is lacking.
Only a handful of universities or institutions offer
advanced media research facilities and even if they
do, they are mostly too academic to have any value
beyond obtaining a PhD or a seminar paper.
There is also the question of being interdisciplinary.
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MEDIA ASIA, VOL 35 NO 2, 2008
While a number of professional organisations would like
students to have a good background in social sciences
and not just be trained in skills, it is not always the case
in journalism curricula. Naga Mallika points out:
Most of the colleges have communication as one of
the three majors, along with a combination of any
other social sciences subjects. In this way the course
is limited to giving only the practical orientation. A
recent trend observed has been the introduction of
visual communication, which has been attracting
a lot of students at the UG level. Various private
colleges have introduced this, with affiliations to
various universities. The sudden growth of televi-
sion channels has been the cause of this spurt of
interest in visual communication. Moreover, the
students are fed falsely regarding the job market
scene where the glamour associated with television
does not reveal the true state of affairs regarding
the pay packet. However, the students pay through
their nose, with the private institutions charging
heftily for a lowly paid job. Further[more], there has
been no [improvements] in the course content that
is suitable for the constantly changing industry, in
an era of convergence. As mentioned earlier, there
should be a backward integration and also an un-
derstanding regarding the interdisciplinary exposure
for the students doing mass communications. This
has been another disputed area with some faculty
feeling there is a dilution of mass media content
while others who feel it is essential for a holistic
understanding of the course. While I do agree that
there should be an understanding of the core courses,
the emphasis should not shift from the primary
course to that of the ancillary courses, where the
course itself becomes secondary.
Ammu Joseph also emphasised this fact when she says,
The journalism concentrations in the new courses
offered by some of the high profile private insti-
tutions seem to focus primarily on news and on
practical experience in news gathering [of sorts]—
the students seem to be always running around
getting stories. Not as much attention seems to be
paid to critical thinking about the media—ethics,
role in society, et cetera—as to the acquisition of
technical skills, especially in broadcast and new
media. I haven’t seen much emphasis on language
proficiency and writing skills, let alone fine-tuning
style, for print. Hardly any attention seems to be
paid to magazine journalism, feature writing …
like coverage of the arts and culture—[though] the
Asian College of Journalism in Chennai does have
an elective on this—including the art of review-
ing, though sports and business journalism seem
to be popular. I think this is a great pity because
magazine journalism and feature writing are le-
gitimate and important areas of journalism, which
provide opportunities to combine creativity with
communication, and in which quality is paramount
80
in terms of ideas, style, presentation, et cetera.
Some of them do include a course or module on
“covering deprivation”—the ACJ’s signature course
compulsory for all students … I also designed and
taught a course on “covering gender” there during
the first three years—and, more often, an optional
course on what is called “development journalism”.
I teach one at COMMITS here in Bangalore but
I personally don’t think the approach is right. I’m
not in favour of seeing or presenting the coverage
of deprivation, development, gender, [or] other
such issues as a separate specialisation to be taken
up by the do-gooders of the profession.
Shubha agrees: “Though there seems to be an overall
absence of gender sensitivity among students, there exist
a small percentage of students pursuing interest in serious
issues like women, health, development, et cetera. There
is a need to mainstream gender concerns in regular
course curricula, addressing the need to equip students
with information, knowledge and tools to incorporate
gender concerns in the work. Even faculty need to be
trained for being gender sensitive!”
Kinnari Toliya, however, disagrees to an extent:
Journalism in India (and the world) has seen a face
lift—a new face where experience and learning for
the purpose of growth [and] enrichment has some-
how been relegated to the backseat. I belong to this
fast and snappy, no-time-for-entertainment-but-
need-to-make-time generation. This requirement
is what the print and TV walas also believe to be
the need of the audience. This has made the road to
tread on easier, but speak to any veteran journalist
and you will find them “tut-ting” about it. For them,
the finer aspects of journalism, the holistic approach
to journalism does not exist anymore. Without
judging this trend … positive[ly] or negative[ly],
the truth is that what we see in practice today is
obviously being taught. Unfortunately, “acceptable”
in India becomes what the Western media does
… The same applies to education too. How many
Indian textbooks are being referred to? How many
books especially written by Indian journalists …
exist that provide for an indigenous understanding
of journalism and cater to the rural masses?
She goes on to add,
At the same time, there is also a chasm between
what the industry practises and what is learnt in the
classrooms. At the end of it, one needs to unlearn
several things when they step into the industry. I
think a dynamic field like journalism requires …
the academic stream [to] keep in step with it. While
many might question the practicality of the same,
the answer really lies in connecting the industry
with the scholastic.
This leads to the final concern, and that is the lack of
collaboration between the training institutions and the
hiring institutions.

Lack of industry collaboration
Buroshiva sees collaboration between academics and
industry professionals as crucial if journalism education
needs to improve in India. He says,
The distrust between the media professionals and
media academics need[s] to be tackled in right
earnest. It’s a problem everywhere, perhaps that the
academics accuse the professionals of “not know-
ing enough”, while the professionals say that what
the academics learn or teach are not relevant. The
controversy will continue but certainly a point of
compromise may be found at one level for mutual
benefit, and this is important. With the growing
challenges of the information technology, it is
important that the media industry and the media
academic bodies overcome their mutual mistrusts
and draw up a guideline for a quality media educa-
tion which will benefit both and be of great relief
for the aspiring media students.
Joya points out that for students in the North-East
of India, “there are very few media industries or PR
wings in [the] corporate sector where the students can
go [to] for on-hand training/internship in the region.
[They] always have to rely on places like Delhi, Kolkata,
Chennai or Hyderabad, which is at times a costly affair
for students.” Balaswamy points out that “placement is
both optimistic and pessimistic. Those who are doing
these courses in periphery areas like [the] Northeast
are not finding adequate opportunities there. Hence,
they are moving to Delhi and other metropolitan cities
[…] and facing tough competition”. Srinivas Reddy
also says that the present situation is not helpful. He
says,
I think all the [interns] have utterly disappointed
me because (1) When they return to office and
[are] asked to file the report, they are at a loss
to write anything; (2) They attempt very feebly,
but miss out on churning out a copy as a news
item should be, if not perfectly; (3) When asked
to work under deadline, they cannot simply write
anything—it happened every time I deliberately
put a ten-minute deadline for filing a story. Shows
that they are not tuned to work against deadlines;
God knows what will happen if they are asked
to chase an emerging story against a deadline;
(4) Most importantly, they draw a blank in get-
ting information about something happening.
Most of them depend on spoon-feeding at press
conferences, briefings by officials, et cetera. If
only the colleges give them some training in
real time journalism, the students can become
better journalists.
Richard Rego says,
I experience a chasm between JE (journalism
education) and J (journalism) profession. It feels
that there is not much relationship between what
is taught in the classrooms and what is practiced
Journalism Education in India
in the profession. Professionals keep complaining
that “what you learn in the class rooms is useless,
not relevant”. Students keep asking me “why should
we study this, if this is what we are going to prac-
tise in the field?” The reason is, at UG level, the
students end up learning history of various media
systems, and some theory regarding definitions,
meaning, scope, characteristics … of news story,
article, et cetera! University-prescribed [syllabi do]
not require that students do any practicals, like
publishing a journal, handling any camera, writing
a report, et cetera!
Hemalatha agrees, saying,
The practical training part is totally ignored by
the university while prescribing the curriculum.
Though it is specified for namesake, no marks
are allotted. They should have collaborated with
the media organisations to impart such training.
Actually, I could inculcate [a] professional aptitude
for the course by adopting different activities with
study projects, records, seminars, field visits, exhi-
bitions, extension lectures by media professionals,
professors, and so on. The final-year students were
allowed to take up internships and also part-time
jobs, so that they learnt the skills.
Shubha agrees that collaborations and real world
training helps the students but she still worries about
the competency of the students. “The response from
the industry for internships and training programmes
for journalism students has been encouraging, but the
performance of very few students has been recognised
to be at par with the expectation of the industry”, she
says. Srinivas Reddy argues for a strong collaboration
with the industry:
I strongly feel that all journalism schools in India
should have a tie up with newspapers and TV
channels or media houses so that the students
get a hands-on experience in [the] production of
a news clip, in writing a news report, in editing a
news report … or at least they would be exposed
to work culture where decisions are to be taken,
information collected, stories written, photographs
arranged, even as a situation unfolds. That’s the
sort of training one should be exposed [to]. As the
city editor of The Hindu in Hyderabad handling
the city pages every day and three supplements in
a week, I am given the responsibility of training
some students who come to our office for their
four-week internship every year. In fact, more than
ten students come to my bureau every year. I am
totally disappointed with the kind of classroom
teachings the students are exposed to. While in
most of the newspapers such internees are al-
lowed to handle press releases and at the end of
the month, a certificate is given. But I have tried
to involve the internees in day-to-day functioning,
encouraging them to rush with my reporters and
photographers to emerging situations like major
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MEDIA ASIA, VOL 35 NO 2, 2008
law and order problems (we have plenty of them in
Hyderabad), or on stories that are just developing,
or with reporters who are chasing a story with bare
minimum information.
One of the other important issues that will need to
be addressed is the “ideology”, consciously or not, that
each college or degree programme instils into their
media or journalism students. Some have been accused
of promoting a very right wing, dominant “Hindu-ised”
ideology, while some have been very left wing, radical
ideologues.
Conclusion
In the preceding sections, some of the major concerns
about journalism education in India today were
highlighted. While there are a number of other issues
that need to be addressed, these above-mentioned are
major concerns that need to be addressed urgently
if what is being taught in the name of journalism
education in India is to be relevant at all. As Buroshiva
says,
It is difficult to say “what is right” with journalism
education in India today. In fact, nothing is right.
There is today a huge amount of interest in media
courses among the new generation. In fact, many
skip business management and engineering courses
and opt for media and journalism, but are quickly
disillusioned because [of ] the way it is taught at
the conventional colleges or universities. So, the
growing interest is certainly a positive develop-
ment, but we academics have not been able to
live up to the expectations of the new generation
partly because it is hard to change the existing
system, and partly because of our own limitations
in not recognising the need for “convergence of
thoughts”—the different technologies and the
disciplines that are coming together to teach the
media and communication subjects. There [is] a
growing number of research work and projects be-
ing done on media subjects—this is another positive
development—but researchers who strictly do not
have media and communication backgrounds are
still undertaking the more relevant ones like social
sciences, humanities, information technology, and
the rest. Journalism education in India … [has yet]
to attain the “rigour” that can fetch the subject the
status of a front ranking independent discipline
(in many universities not many years ago, it was
a part of other departments like English). This is
unfortunate[ly] because of our own failure—the
journalism professionals and academics who never
agree—and yet the discipline has all the potential
and the market need[ed] to be one of the most
sought-after subjects. The controversy between
the professionals and academics will continue, as
it does in other countries, but they should come
together on the vital issue to raise the quality and
the status of journalism education in India.
82
Notes
1. I wish to acknowledge my research assistants who
helped me in this study: Joya Chakraborty, Padma
Iruvanti, Elvis Mert, Supriya Sakamuri and Premila
Manvi.
2. Ten years of school education, plus two years of
intermediate education and a three-year degree
course.
3. I am especially thankful to my research assistant
Joya Chakraborty for compiling this information on
Assam and the North East.
4, One professor, one reader and three lecturers.
5. As per promotional materials of the college and the
website at www.sophiyacampus.com accessed on
26 September 2006.
References
Eapen, K. E. (July 1991). Journalism education and
textbooks in SAARC countries. Retrieved on 26
September 2006 from www.uta.fi/textbooks/India_
saarc.html.
Kumar, K. (1981). Mass communication in India. India:
Jaico Publishing House.
National Readership Study. (2005). National Readership
Studies Council, Audit Bureau of Circulations,
Mumbai, India. Retrieved from www.auditbureau.org
Viswanathan, S. (30 September 2003). 125 years of
the Hindu. Retrieved on 26 September 2006 from
www.indeconomist.com/300903_media_hindu.
html
List of persons interviewed
K. Srinivas Reddy, City Editor (Hyderabad), The Hindu
(newspaper).
Usha Vyasulu Reddy, retired Professor of Journalism,
Osmania University.
Pavan Kumar Manvi, Chief Producer, Eenadu
Television.
Hemalatha Devi, Head, Department of Journalism
and Mass Communication and Reader (retired),
Government College for Women, Begumpet,
Hyderabad.
Fr Richard Rego SJ, Head, Department of Journalism,
St. Aloysius College, Mangalore.
Buroshiva Dasgupta, Professor and Director, Manipal
Institute of Communication.
H. S. Shubha, Lecturer, Manipal Institute of
Communication.
G. NagaMallika, Assistant Professor, Manipal Institute
of Communication.
Maya Ranganathan, Professor, Manipal Institute of
Communication.
B. P. Sanjay, Professor, Sarojini Naidu School of
Performing Arts, Fine Arts & Communication,
University of Hyderabad and former Director of
 Journalism Education in India

the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New
Delhi.
Ravinder Reddy, Photojournalist, Ravinder Press Photo
Service, Hyderabad (RaviPress.Com).
Stevenson Kohir, Faculty, Journalism Department,
Osmania University.
Balaswamy Bandi, Faculty, Journalism Department,
Osmania University.
Akhileswari Ramagoud, State Correspondent, Deccan
Herald (newspaper).
Sam Samom, Imphal (Manipur) Correspondent, The
Assam Tribune, Manipur
Dhirendra Nath Bezboruah, Consulting Editor, The
Sentinel, Guwahati. Assam.
Ammu Joseph, Freelance Journalist, Media Analyst and
Editorial Consultant, Bangalore, India.
Kinnari Pratap Kumar, Lecturer, Manipal Institute of
Communication.
Pankaj Thakur, Coordinating Editor, The Sentinel,
Assam.
Manish Goswami, Chief Sub-Editor, The Assam
Tribune, Assam.
Sudipta Kar, Tripura Correspondent, Eenadu TV.
S. P. Mandal, News Editor, All India Radio, Agartala,
Tripura
Santosh Pandey, Producer, Eenadu TV, Hindi Channel.
Pradeep Krishnatray, Communication Consultant
& President, Centre for Research and Education
(CREED).
Vijay Kumar, CEO, Breeze Advertising, Hyderabad.
Sridhar Chari, CEO, March Consulting, Hyderabad.
Chandra Siddartha, Film Director.
Supriya Sakamuri, Producer, EMMRC.
P. L. V. Rao, Professor of Journalism and Director,
Educational Multi Media Research Center
(EMMRC).
B. S. D. Raja, Producer, EMMRC.
Kennedy Pilli, Producer, EMMRC.
Padma Iruvanti, Programme Manager, Gemini
Television.
K. Jagadeeswara Rao, freelance television director.
Ramaraju Kamalasana Rao, freelance television
director.
Vasuki Belavadi, Reader, Sarojini Naidu School of
Performing Arts, Fine Arts & Communication,
University of Hyderabad.

Appendix 1

Language/Periodicity-wise Total Number of Registered Newspapers in India (as on 31 Mar 2005)

Language Dailies Ter/Bi- Weeklies Fortnightlies Monthlies Quart- Bimonthlies/ Annuals Total
weeklies erlies Halh-yearly
Assamese 27 3 84 41 73 13 11 1 253
Bengali 116 16 672 618 782 533 221 26 2,584
Bilingual 107 21 835 477 1,697 467 205 53 3,862
English 481 37 1,193 855 3,513 1,491 986 222 8,778
Gujarati 186 15 1,283 263 707 76 56 15 2,550
Hindi 2,912 128 11,434 3,567 4,734 892 280 53 24,000
Kannada 428 6 487 352 863 64 31 4 2,235
Kashmiri 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1
Konkani 1 0 3 1 6 2 0 0 13
Malayalam 242 7 194 177 933 73 42 16 1,684
Maniuri 17 0 7 5 11 7 5 0 52
Marathi 469 22 1,576 285 697 141 56 134 3,380
Multilingual 20 5 142 82 305 76 41 15 686
Nepali 5 2 29 7 14 18 11 0 86
Oriya 93 3 198 110 335 100 24 4 867
Others 58 16 86 33 132 56 18 1 400
Punjabi 110 15 389 110 314 41 20 1 1,000
Sanskrit 4 0 9 6 18 18 6 0 61
Sindhi 13 0 40 11 39 10 2 0 115
Tamil 375 43 434 291 1,267 44 32 10 2,496
Telgu 282 4 327 273 791 39 23 2 1,741
Urdu 583 21 1,391 395 587 80 19 3 3,079
India 6,529 364 20,814 7,959 17,818 4,241 2,089 560 60,374
Source: Rajya Sabha Unstarred Question No. 738, dated 1 August 2005

83
 Journalism Education in Malaysia
History of the press in Malaysia: A brief
overview
The first newspaper that was published in what is now
called Malaysia was the English language Government
Gazette, later renamed the Prince of Wales Island Gazette
(PWIG). The PWIG started publication on 1 March 1806,
on the island of Penang, which was then a presidency
called Prince of Wales Island under the control of the
British East India Company. Owned by A. B. Bone, an
entrepreneur from Madras, India, who had come to the
island—complete with his printing press—to improve his
fortune, the PWIG was a commercial newspaper targeted
not at the locals, but at the colonialists.
At that point in the early 1800s, there was no existing
law in the Straits Settlements governing the issuing
of newspaper licences. For reasons that had not been
explained, the Governor of Penang issued Bone with
a licence. However, Bone himself requested that each
issue of the PWIG be censored by the government prior
to publication, following the practice of the press during
the period (Hasim, 1996: 40–41).
Thus, this arguably began the link between the state
and the press in Malaysia. Indeed, as Lent (1982) observed,
“All the early newspapers had one thing in common—they
were subsidised. The PWIG received monthly subsidies
in exchange for printing government announcements,
and on a few occasions, was granted government loans
which were to be paid in job printing” (p. 253).
The controls on the press, which had started with
those imposed on the PWIG, were not formalised for
all of the Malay states until after 1874 when Britain
extended its political and administrative control beyond
the Straits Settlements. Subsequently, a variety of press-
related ordinances and enactments were introduced and
formalised by the colonial government from 1886 to
1924, initially for the Straits Settlements, but later for
the Federated Malay States (FMS) as well.
In this phase of the British colonial rule, controls over
publications were amplified. This was firstly due to an
increase in the number of Chinese and Tamil newspapers
in the Straits Settlements and the FMS coinciding with
the increase in the numbers of the Chinese and Indians
residing in British Malaya, many of whom were brought
in by the colonial government to work in the tin mining
and plantation sectors. Secondly, the period also saw the
emergence of Malay newspapers linked to an Islamic
reformist movement among the Malays. In Singapore
during 1906, for instance, four Arab-educated Malay
scholars founded the journal Al-Imam (The Leader),
84
Ng Miew Luan
Lim Lai Hoon
the first Malay newspaper that contained ideas of
social change and politics. The aim of Al-Imam was to
awaken the Malay society to its own backwardness in
order to return to what its founders regarded as the true
teachings of Islam (Ibrahim, 1988). Thirdly, while this
reformist movement was gaining support among young
Malays, events in China, principally the growth of the
anti-Manchu Republican movement in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries, had a similar impact on the Chinese
population in the region. Anti-Manchu newspapers
such as the Chong Shing Yit Pao (1907–1910) emerged
alongside pro-Manchu newspapers, such as the Tien
Nan Shin Pao (1898–1905) in Singapore and the Penang
Sin Poe (1896–1936) in Penang (see Tang, 1988; Yap,
1996). The combination of these events which heralded
a growing press influence led to greater state awareness
and control of the press during the colonial period right
up to the eve of the Japanese Occupation (1942–1945).
Further developments pertaining to the growth of the
vernacular press as well as the British monitoring and
control over the publications concerned ceased with the
interlude of the Japanese Occupation in Malaysia. Right
from the beginning of the three-and-a-half-year period of
Japanese rule, the press was designated as the main tool
of the Propaganda Department of the Japanese military
(Hasim, 1996: 204).
The mass media in independent Malaya and,
subsequently, Malaysia, developed substantially especially
when they were—and continue to be—perceived as vital
agents of social change. In particular, the modernisation
project that was initiated and popularised by certain
development and communications experts and political
scientists in the United States, such as Wilbur Schramm
and Daniel Lerner, propelled the notion that the mass
media were an important instrument to motivate people
in the developing world to change their attitudes and
traditions that were hitherto blamed for having hindered
their very own socio-economic progress. The people
of the developing world were therefore encouraged to
emulate and empathise with the economic ethos and
lifestyle of the industrialised and capitalist countries.
Such was the importance accorded to the mass media
that most leaders of the newly independent countries of
the developing world, including Malaysia, justified their
control of the media in the name of socio-economic
development and political stability. In addition, the
perceived powerful influence of the mass media provided
a justification to the Malaysian political leaders to
exercise a certain degree of control over the media so
that these media, according to the assertion, would not

fall into “the wrong hands” that could destabilise a nation,
especially a multi-ethnic and multicultural one. Controls
are administered in various ways; the common ones
are practised via ownership and control of the media,
security-related laws, annual licensing and the nurtured
culture of fear (of political instability).
The deregulation of the media industry via the
privatisation policy of the Mahathir administration since
the 1980s has been a mechanism that fostered media
growth and also media concentration that eventually
found its way in the hands of the ruling elite and their
economic allies. It was, ironically, a media liberalisation
that ensured a large degree of governmental control.
Over the years, the media industry in Malaysia
has witnessed a growing trend of media ownership
concentration and consolidation. What is also noteworthy
is the fact that the mainstream press outfits are in the
hands of a few who are closely aligned with or friendly
to the ruling coalition. Central to this development is
the state’s use of the Printing Presses and Publications
Act (PPPA). Other laws that also govern the mainstream
media in general and the press in particular are the Official
Secrets Act (OSA), the Sedition Act and the Internal
Security Act (ISA).
A cursory look at the press ownership pattern in
Malaysia would indicate the degree of involvement of
the various component parties of the Barisan Nasional
(BN) and their economic allies.
Media Prima, which is by far the largest media
conglomerate in the country, has a large stake in the
New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd (NSTP). It publishes
the English-language newspapers New Straits Times,
New Sunday Times, Malay Mail and Sunday Mail;
the Malay-language newspapers Berita Harian, Berita
Minggu and the fast growing Harian Metro; and also
owns the Sistem Televisyen Malaysia Bhd (or popularly
known as TV3), the new channel 8TV, Channel 9 and
the recently acquired ntv7. This group, which is said to
be close to the dominant UMNO party, also owns the
radio stations Wa FM and Fly FM (The Edge, 2005).
An investment arm of the BN-component-party
Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), Huaren Holdings
owns the English-language The Star and Sunday Star; the
Chinese-language dailies Nanyang Siang Pau and China
Press; and the radio stations Redi 988 and Red 104.9 (The
Edge, 2005). The acquisition of Nanyang Press Holdings
Bhd (which publishes Nanyang Siang Pau and China
Press) by Huaren Holdings on 28 May 2001 triggered
strong opposition from the ethnic Chinese community
as a whole because this sale was perceived as “the final
nail for press freedom in the country” (Suara Rakyat
Malaysia (SUARAM), 2001: 90).
Utusan Melayu (M) Bhd group, which is closely linked
to UMNO, owns the Malay language newspapers Utusan
Malaysia, Mingguan Malaysia, Utusan Melayu Mingguan
and tabloid Kosmo! Apart from newspapers, the group
also publishes magazines, namely Wanita, Mangga, Saji,
Rias, URTV, Hai, Mastika, Harmoni, Al-Islam, Kawan,
Pemikir and Umph (www.utusangroup.com.my/). The
group’s oldest daily, Utusan Melayu (which has been
Journalism Education in MalaysiA
changed to a weekly, and hence the present title, Utusan
Melayu Mingguan) was the first newspaper in Malaysia
that faced a takeover by the ruling party UMNO in 1961.
Editors, journalists and other newspaper workers, who
were concerned about the daily’s editorial independence,
resisted the state’s intrusion and staged a 93–day strike
but it ended with the triumph of UMNO.
Timber tycoon Tiong Hiew King, who owns Sin
Chew Media Corp Bhd, publishes the popular Sin Chew
Daily and Guang Ming Daily, apart from having other
media interests in Cambodia, Indonesia and Papua New
Guinea. This native Sarawak media magnate, who is well
connected to the Sarawak state’s political elite, reportedly
increased his stake in Nanyang Press Holdings Bhd
(SUARAM, 2004: 72).
Another Sarawak native, timber tycoon Lau Hui Kiang,
was given permission by the then premier Mahathir to
operate the Chinese Oriental Daily as a way of keeping the
growing influence of Tiong in the Chinese community in
check (Gomez, 2004: 482). The daily’s birth was filled with
pangs of pain as its permit was suspended on the very day
it was launched in September 2002 and only reinstated
after three months of negotiations with the Ministry of
Internal Security. The emergence of Oriental Daily had
raised hopes among the Chinese community that it could
provide democratic space for criticisms and dissent soon
after the Nanyang takeover. But these hopes were dashed
as the newspaper increasingly practised self-censorship
and buckled under the pressure of the Internal Security
Ministry, terminating certain columns of critical writers
(SUARAM, 2004: 72–73). Many of the writers who were
eventually axed by Oriental Daily were those who staged
a boycott of the other Chinese language newspapers in
the wake of the Nanyang acquisition in 2001.
Yet another example of close ties between the state
and the press is the media outfit Nexnews Bhd. Former
prime minister Mahathir’s close allies Vincent Tan Chee
Yioun and Tong Kooi Ong jointly control Nexnews Bhd
that owns The Sun, a free paper (that is distributed freely
via selected outlets); business weekly The Edge; and Asia
Inc. Vincent Tan also launched the satellite TV station
MiTV in late 2005 to compete with the satellite TV Astro,
which is owned by another Mahathir associate, Ananda
Krishnan.
Not quite in the same league as the above media
conglomerate in terms of capital and corporate size,
Tamil newspaper Tamil Nesan is published by the wife
(Indrani S. Vellu) of the current president, Samy Vellu,
of the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), a component
party of the ruling BN. Another Tamil daily, Malaysia
Nanban, is also closely allied with the MIC (Ramanathan,
1992: 11). The ties between the papers and the MIC are
unmistakably close.
In Sabah exists the English dailies Borneo Post, Daily
Express and New Sabah Times; and the Chinese language
newspapers Overseas Chinese Daily News, Morning Post,
Asia Times and Merdeka Daily News. In Sarawak, there
is the English daily Sarawak Tribune and the Chinese
language newspapers International Times and United
Daily News.
85
MEDIA ASIA, VOL 35 NO 2, 2008
The growing media ownership concentration and
consolidation has also meant that the media industry
has become increasingly commercialised over the last
decade or so (Loh & Anuar, 1996: 96–131). The major
newspaper organisations have become big businesses,
seeking ways and means to enhance corporate profits
so as to please the shareholders. That is why readership
and circulation ratings have become of great concern to
all the major players in the media industry in the last few
years.
Journalism education in Malaysia: A brief
overview
In a span of 40 years, schools of communication have
mushroomed in many Asian countries. Equally rapid has
been the expansion of short courses aimed at training
media professionals. The curriculum and the format of
journalism education that we have in the country today
are essentially very much based on the Western model and
syllabus. Although there has been a gradual improvement
in journalism education since 1990s, it is mainly confined
to the objective of mass-producing students for the media
industry. There are more journalism courses offered by
institutions of higher learning and the intake of students
has increased, but the quality of journalism education
has not improved proportionately. Thus, there have
emerged certain groups of writers who are less critical
and independent-minded.
Formal journalism training in Malaysia started in 1963
when the International Press Institute, in collaboration
with the Asia Foundation, the Malaysian government
and local newspapers, organised a six-month journalism
course. The course was aimed at training local media
practitioners and government information officers.
After this initial effort, a few of the public universities
started to offer courses in communication in the 1970s.
Journalism was one of the popular options at that time,
apart from broadcasting, public relations, advertising,
development communication, media ethics and system.
Of the seven public universities in Malaysia, the major
universities that offered journalism education in the
1970s included Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in 1971;
MARA Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1972; National
University of Malaysia (UKM) in 1975; University of
Malaya (UM) in 1977; and Universiti Pertanian Malaysia
(UPM) in 1979. These universities offered degree courses,
with the exception of Universiti Teknologi MARA
(UiTM), which offered a diploma programme. Besides
the universities, Han Chiang High School was the first
school that started journalism classes as early as 1978.
As far as journalism programmes were concerned, a
mixture of theory and practical courses was offered in
the 1970s, such as media law and ethics, writing for mass
media, theory and process of communication, humanities,
editing, theory and process of communication. The
courses were designed with the aim of exposing
students to media practicum, with a broad range of mass
communication courses. It should be noted that some of
the academics argued that the curriculum has to be more
86
practical-oriented. Thus, internships were introduced to
integrate theoretical knowledge and skills.
Regarding short-term courses that were offered,
BERNAMA (Malaysian national news agency) and
Malaysian Press Institute (MPI), which was organised in
1966 under the name of Southeast Asian Press Centre,
aimed “to provide training facilities to working journalists
and media practitioners by organising from time to time,
local, national and regional courses” to local journalists
with funds allocated by international agencies such as
UNESCO and ASEAN in the 1970s.
In addition, many of the local news organisations such
as New Straits Times Group, Utusan Melayu Group and
the Sin Chew Daily also provided in-house training to
their journalists, lasting from three to six months. The
programmes focussed on basic journalism, interpersonal
communication and computer software.
Under the privatisation and deregulation policy of
the administration of Dr Mahathir Mohamad in the
1980s and 1990s, there emerged an unprecedented and
accelerated growth of international universities, private
universities, colleges and university colleges that offered
journalism course in the country. Such institutions
include International Islamic University of Malaysia
(UIAM) (1983); Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM)
(1992); Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) (1993);
Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) (1995); New Era College
(1998); Monash University (1998); Kolej Damansara
Utara (KDU) (1999); and Han Chiang College (1999).
Journalism was fast becoming popular for its extensive
links with university partners.
The recent decade saw the proliferation of more
colleges and private universities that offered journalism
programme in consonant with the many print media
organisations as well as broadcasting stations that have
mushroomed under the deregulation policy to compete
globally. Open University of Malaysia (OUM) (2000),
University of Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) (2001) and
University College Sedaya International (2003) were
among others that were established during the decade
(Challenger Concept (M) Sdn Bhd, 2005). Although
the journalism programme is not as popular as other
sequences in communication schools today, it still
manages to attract the younger generation because of
its supposed “glamour”.
Formal journalism and communication education in
tertiary institutions
As in most developing countries especially after attaining
independence, Malaysia’s mainstream mass media in
general, with journalism in particular, had been viewed
as vital vehicles of national development and purveyors
of supposedly important government messages of
development. This dominant perspective of the media,
which was held by political leaders as well as certain
academics in political science and communications,
was also instrumental in advancing the notion of
“development communication” and later “development
journalism”.

It is in this larger social and political context that
journalism training was, and still is, seen as important
to the overall project of nation building, and which
subsequently led to journalism being introduced as part
of the curriculum in certain institutions of higher learning
in Malaysia, particularly in the 1970s.
Below are a sample of the major tertiary institutions
in Malaysia that offer communication and journalism
programmes: Universiti Sains Malaysia, Universiti
Teknologi MARA, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia,
Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Han Chiang College
and Kolej Damansara Utama.
Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM)
Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), established in 1969,
is the second oldest public university in Malaysia. It
is, however, the first institution of higher learning that
offered communication studies in 1970.
According to the Dean of the School of Communication,
USM, Associate Professor Dr Mohammed Zin Nordin, the
objective of the school is to produce media professionals,
researchers and policy makers who are able to contribute
to the development of the communication industry at
the local and global levels.
The school offers a Bachelor Degree of Communication
programme and three graduate programmes, namely,
Master of Communication (Screen Studies), Master of
Communication (Science and Environmental Journalism)
and Master of Arts (Communication).
The undergraduate programme, or Bachelor Degree of
Communication, offers three majors: (a) journalism, (b)
film and broadcasting, and (c) persuasive communication.
It is a three-year course that primarily prepares the
students for the media industry. Under the journalism
programme, the papers offered are as follow:
• Introduction to human communication
• Introduction to mass communication
• Communication and society
• Theory and research in communication I
• Communication for social development
• Theory and research in communication II
• Communication and culture
• Communication, power and conflict
• Communication technology
• Practical training
• Independent study
• Introduction to journalism
• Journalism I
• Journalism II
• Newspaper management and production
• Journalism and visual communication
• Introduction to desktop publishing
• Feature writing
• Seminar on media, science and environment
• Science writing and reporting
(Package Journalism Universiti Sains Malaysia, 2005–
2006; modified from the Courses List for the Academic
year 2005/2006)
Most of the major papers require students to attend
Journalism Education in MalaysiA
a two-hour lecture and one-hour tutorial every week.
According to Mohammed Zin, the courses offered are a
mixture of the practical and the theoretical, envisaged to
equip the students to perform effectively and efficiently,
particularly in the media industry. Journalism students are
also required to publish the laboratory newspaper, Berita
Kampus. He added that the students also learn about the
managing of the newspaper as they not only have to do
reporting and editing but also solicit advertisements and
sell the newspaper. The newspaper primarily focuses on
issues and events pertaining to the campus.
As in any other public university, the application
for admission into the communication programme is
processed by the Central Processing Unit of the Higher
Education Division of the Ministry of Higher Education.
USM will then finalise the selection. As a general admission
requirement, the applicant must be in possession of the
Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) (Malaysian Certificate of
Education) (equivalent to the GCE O’ levels) and has
obtained a credit in Bahasa Malaysia (Malay language).
In addition, the candidate must have passed the Sijil
Tinggi Persekolahan Malaysia (STPM) (Malaysian Higher
School Certificate Examination) (GCE A’ level) and in
one sitting, obtained at least a grade E (Principal level
pass) in one subject and grade R (Subsidiary level pass)
in two other subjects relevant to the various degree
programmes. Diploma holders in relevant disciplines
awarded by local universities/ITM/polytechnics or any
other qualifications recognised by the University’s Senate
may also be considered for admission into the first degree
programme (www.usm.my/pages/kemasukan-keperluan.
asp).
Mohammed Zin stressed that the common problem
faced by public universities in Malaysia is the inadequate
number of academic staff in the university. The
Communication School also suffers from this. However,
it has undertaken the initiative to send five individuals
to further their studies under the university’s Academic
Staff Training Scheme (ASTS). Upon completion of their
studies, they will be absorbed into the programme as
faculty members. Two to three of them are scheduled
to return to USM next year to serve as lecturers. He
admitted that most of the academic staff do not have
industrial experience. Given this situation, he added, the
school allows staff members to be attached to the media
industry during their sabbatical leave, with the purpose of
getting familiarised with the industry. Unfortunately, he
said, many of the lecturers choose to attach themselves
to higher institutions of learning during their sabbatical
leave. If there is any consolation, the dean emphasised that
the strength of the school lies in the fact that it has many
lecturers who are critical and crucial in the moulding of
critical journalists.
In the past, the school had hired media professionals
from the industry on a contract and part-time basis. They
were not permanent staff owing to the university policy,
which requires them to have at least a Master’s degree
before they could be considered permanent staff. It is
unfortunate that many professionals, several of whom
are experienced editors and journalists, do not have these
87
MEDIA ASIA, VOL 35 NO 2, 2008
paper qualifications.
In terms of equipment, the school provides 35 units
of computers in its campus newspaper laboratory and is
planning to add 60 more units in about two years’ time.
The school has seven digital cameras for the students
to make use of for the purpose of reporting. Due to the
high operating costs, the school has done away with
photojournalism as a course offering. Besides, digital
photography has short-circuited the traditional studio
processing of photographs.
In line with the school’s desire to equip students with
practical skills, students are required to do industrial
training for two months during their semester break
in the second year. They are sent to all sorts of media
organisations for industrial training, including alternative
media organisations such as Malaysiakini. However, they
are not allowed to do their training in Harakah (the official
organ of the Islamic party PAS) and Aliran Monthly.
Mohammed Zin claimed that, as a public university, the
school does have some political constraints to sending
students to opposition party newspapers. The students
are allowed to do their industrial training abroad at their
own expense.
The purpose of industrial training is to expose
the students to the working environment of media
organisations. Once there, it is entirely up to individual
students to take their own initiative to learn as much
as possible about the media industry. A number of the
students tend to avoid going to big media organisations
such as New Straits Times and Sin Chew Daily because
they lack confidence.
That said, most of the comments coming from the
industry people on USM journalism students are positive.
Among other things, they said that the students are
able to ask serious questions, work hard, possess good
organisational attitude and accept criticisms positively.
Their general weakness is language competency. Most
of the students are poor in Bahasa Malaysia (Malay
language) and English. There is a need for the students
to brush up their command of the languages.
The graduates from USM Communication School
have no problems with employment. Most of the
journalism students work in fields related to journalism
and comments given to them are positive.
The school also invites people from the industry,
such as Pemikir and other media organisations, to give
talks and hold seminars. Mohammed Zin said that
certain students have been recently invited by a local
daily, The Sun, to write in a column that touches on
campus life.
Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM)
UiTM, previously known as MARA Institute of
Technology, was established in 1972. The Faculty of
Communication and Media Studies was set up in the same
year. It offers courses to those who desire a professionally
biased training before they enter the communication
industry. It encompasses mass communication as well as
technical communications, such as telecommunications
and computer technology.
88
There has not been any significant change to the
papers offered over the last 30 years. Only course titles
have been amended. This is because the papers offered,
such as news reporting, feature writing and newspaper
managing, are still relevant to this day. They are mostly
practical papers that aim to prepare students for the
world of the media industry. Furthermore, consonant
with changes in technology, broadcast journalism papers
will be introduced. The following are the course titles
under the journalism programme.
• Newswriting and reporting I
• Newswriting and reporting II
• Principles of journalism
• Feature writing
• Newspaper management
• Magazine production
• Investigative and interpretative reporting
• Copy editing
• Journalism electives
• Financial and economic reporting
(Editorial Page, Universiti Teknologi MARA, 2006)
Basically, UiTM adopts a semester system, with two
semesters in an academic year. Journalism students have
to produce a bilingual campus paper, Jurnalis, for the
fourth semester.
The requirements for a Bachelor degree programme
are the same as for the other public universities. For those
who apply for a degree programme with only SPM results,
they need to have at least four years’ working experience
in the mass communication field or a field that is closely
related to mass communication. In the past few years,
the number of students who enrol in journalism has
dropped slightly, especially during the time when private
broadcasting stations such as TV3, ntv7 and other radio
stations had emerged. However, the drop in intake is not
significant. Now, the faculty has 180 journalism students
out of the total 900 in the faculty.
The faculty has sufficient staff teaching journalism
courses in the faculty. There are nine lecturers who are
teaching journalism now and a majority of them have
industrial experience—in fact, three of them were from
the industry. Whether the lecturers themselves have
adequate experience or not is not a problem in the faculty
because there are certain practical courses such as news
writing, copy editing and feature writing that are taught
by the industry people, such as senior journalists and
editors. They either work as guest lecturers who will only
teach for a few hours or take up the whole course for the
entire semester. This approach has been used since 1972
when the faculty was first set up.
The faculty takes in those who have good professional
reputations and credibility and who have been in the
industry for more than 30 years, such as Samad Ismail,
who worked as a guest lecturer and part-time lecturer, in
the 1970s. Less emphasis is placed on paper qualifications.
Thus, the faculty has invited people like Zaini Hassan
(Utusan Malaysia’s Senior News Editor) and Dato’
Ahmad Talib (the former NST group editor) as part-time
lecturers.

In terms of facilities, the faculty has enough
photography rooms and software. Out of 120 computers,
40 units are dedicated to journalism students. It has a
newsroom for the students to produce their campus
newspaper. However, there are two constraints that the
faculty encounters: too many students who take up the
writing class and space. Ideally, a writing class should
have between 15 to 20 students but usually there are
30 of them. So, the big class has to be divided into two.
Although the faculty has two lecture theatres, they are not
enough to accommodate the given number of students.
It still has to look for a bigger classroom.
Industrial training for students was introduced in 1971.
At that time, Semester 4 and Semester 6 students were
sent for industrial training for two months. Today, only
Semester 5 students are sent for industrial training for
four months. They are sent to all the media organisations,
public information departments and local councils. The
faculty even allows their students to do their internship
overseas such as Europe, New Zealand and Turkey, in
which they are sponsored.
The Faculty also exposes students to alternative media,
which includes Utusan Konsumer (Consumer Association
of Penang) and formerly Harakah. However, it is
noteworthy that owing to a drastic change in the political
environment, the Faculty now does not allow students
to do their internship at Harakah. This stems from 1998
when former deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim was
unceremoniously dismissed and the government of the
day experienced a crisis of political hegemony.
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM)
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia’s School of Media and
Communication Studies is under the Faculty of Social
Science and Humanities. The school, previously known
as the Department of Communication, was started in
1976. The current name was adopted in 2002, following
the restructuring of three faculties, including the Faculty
of Social Sciences and Humanities.
Currently, three programmes are being offered under
the School of Media and Communication Studies,
namely, the Media and Communication Programme;
Communication and Public Policy Programme; and
Communication and Information Management
Programme. Journalism courses are placed under the
Media and Communication Programme.
Papers offered under the Media and Communication
Programme are as follows:
• Media process and effect
• Semantic of media language
• Audience studies
• Global media
• Media discourse
• Media organisation management
• Industrial training
• Paper project
• Broadcast and documentary magazine
• Script writing
• Broadcast journalism
Journalism Education in MalaysiA
• Screen and appreciation writing
• Aesthetic presentation management
• Media writing
• Digital journalism
• Opinion and comment writing
Basically, the school has struck a balance between
theory and practice. That said, there are more theoretical
papers than practical ones because the university is not a
vocational school or college. Thus, the school puts heavy
emphasis on academic input (60 per cent) as compared
to practical skills (40%). The theory part is important as
it provides the pertinent knowledge for the students so
that they can put it in a proper context when they enter
the industry.
All journalism students are required to get involved
in the laboratory paper, Nadi Bangi, for the whole three
years. In the first year, they have to sell and distribute
newspapers. In the second year, the students learn how to
gather information for news writing, whereas in the third
year, they learn to write, edit and publish the news.
UKM adopts the semester system (14 weeks per
semester for long semesters). In one academic session,
there are two semesters. Most courses carry three unit
credits each, comprising a two-hour lecture and one-
hour tutorial per week. Journalism courses carry the
same weight.
There are four journalism lecturers in the school, the
number of which is more than enough because journalism
is not offered as a major by itself. Out of four lecturers,
three of them have at least five years’ industrial experience.
Although the school plans to send inexperienced lecturers
to the industry for practical training, it has not been
carried out yet. In terms of English competency, the
school makes it a policy that all of the academic staff
has to obtain one of their higher degrees (either Masters
or PhD) overseas. This is to ensure that competency in
English among academic staff is not a problem.
When the school started in 1976, the department
offered a four-year degree programme. Second- and
third-year students were sent out for industrial training in
addition to practical training provided by the department
in the campus through the publication of Nadi Bangi.
From the industry feedback received, second-year
students were not sufficiently prepared for the training.
So, the school stopped sending out the second year
students and only did so for the third-year students.
When the degree programme was changed to three
years, the third-year students only went for their industry
training after they had completed their studies. The
training lasted for eight weeks.
The evaluation for the industrial training students
was good. Some students even continued working in the
organisations where they did their industrial training. It is
not difficult for journalism students to find employment
in the country as the comments given by the industrial
people are mostly positive.
The school encourages and allows journalism
students to go to alternative media organisations such
as Malaysiakini, SUARAM and Harakah, if they want to
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since they are given liberty by the school to choose any
organisation that they want. The school does not prohibit
them from doing so. In fact, currently, there are four to
five students who are doing research on Harakah and
Malaysiakini.
The school does not employ part-time lecturers from
the industry but do employ some of them for two- or
three-hour session talks. The school invited Tan Sri
Mazlan Nordin, a columnist in The Sun, Mingguan
Malaysia and a few foreign newspapers who has more
than 50 years of journalism experience, as the resident
writer in the school for two years. He also taught a few
hours in certain courses.
As for resources, the school has cameras, computers
and other basic facilities but not as much as one would
want. The school has to depend on the faculty to provide
the facilities. It has had seminars and colloquiums, where
lecturers from other higher institutions were invited to
attend.
Since two years ago, the students can choose the
programmes when they fill up the Bahagian Pengurusan
Kemasukan Pelajar IPT (BPKP IPT) form. Previously, the
students were allowed to choose the programme only
after they enter the university. Hence, the school now
has the opportunity to choose better students.
Like any other public university, the standard
requirements for the Bachelor degree programmes are
the following:
• A pass in the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM)
examination with a credit in Bahasa Melayu
• For Sijil Tinggi Pelajaran Malaysia (STPM) holders,
a score of at least a Grade C in General Paper and
at least a Grade C in any two other subjects and an
attempt at the Malaysian University English Test
(MUET)
• A diploma or its equivalent from IPTA
Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR)
Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) has been
offering a three-year Bachelor of Communication
(Honours) Journalism programme since its establishment
in 2001. The programme aims to produce professional
media personnel, in particular, those who are at the
forefront of professional and technical developments
in their area of specialisation (www.utar.edu.my). This
is a three-year programme where students develop a
foundation in communication, research and analytical
skills. Students are also exposed to cultural issues and
public policies within the Malaysian environment and
a global context. The papers offered in this programme
are as follows:
• Introduction to electronic publishing
• Introduction to mass communication
• Journalism I
• Introduction to advertising
• Mass media and society
• Interpersonal communication
• English for mass communication
• Communication research methods
90
• Communication theories
• Journalism II
• Industrial training
• Feature writing
• Newspaper management
• Culture and communication
• Media ethics
• Communication law
• Politics and the media
• Communication technology
• Online journalism
(Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR), 2003–2006)
For the three-credit hour paper, the students need
to attend a two-hour lecture and a one-and-a-half hour
tutorial every week. For the four-credit hour paper, the
lecture is three hours and the tutorial is one-and-a-half
hours. A lecturer in UTAR claimed that the time allocated
is sufficient as on top of that, each lecturer is expected to
spend around six hours per week for student consultation.
As mentioned above, there are theoretical and practical
papers as well.
The university welcomes applicants who possess any
one of the following qualifications or their equivalent:
STPM, Unified Examination Certificate (UEC), A-Levels,
South Australian Matriculation (SAM) or Canadian
Pre-University (CPU). Students with SPM/Sijil Pelajaran
Vokasional (SPMV) qualification may also apply. A
successful applicant will be required to undertake a
Certificate of Pre-University Studies (CPS) offered by
Tunku Abdul Rahman College. The applicant requires a
credit or pass or relevant score in the English Language in
one of the following examinations: SPM/SPMV English
Language, International English Language Testing System
(IELTS), Test of English as Foreign Language (TOEFL),
English 119/O-Level, or Malaysia University English Test
(MUET).
The university has a few journalism lecturers who
are former journalists but there are also a few lecturers
who lack industrial exposure, claimed Tan Huey Pyng,
one of UTAR’s journalism lecturers. She said, in the past,
the university did invite guest lecturers and speakers
from the industry such as The Star, The Sun and The
Edge. In terms of teaching facilities, UTAR has sufficient
computers and software. In the pipeline is the setting up
of a newsroom for journalism students to use.
The journalism students are also sent off for internships
to newspapers, magazines and TV stations that produce
in various languages during the third semester of their
second year. The three-month internship is said to be
sufficient for industrial exposure. The media industry is
impressed by the students’ performance so much so that
some of the students were absorbed into the industry
after their graduation based on their good performance
during their internship. Basically, the students have good
command of English, are willing to learn and have basic
journalism knowledge and theories. The downside is
that a number of them have poor news sense and lack
general knowledge.
When it comes to employment, UTAR graduates have

no problem. The university has a good relationship with
the local press such as The Star and The Sun. Although
the students have a fair understanding of alternative
media, none of them have done their internship in any
alternative media organisations so far. According Tan
Huey Pyng, the students could be as critical as their peers
in other higher learning institutions.
Han Chiang College (HCC)
Prior to the setting up of Han Chiang College (HCC)
in July 1999, the Han Chiang High School, which was
established in 1978, had already gained a reputation for
its journalism education in the region. Now, seven years
after its establishment, HCC is known for its journalism
education, offered through a two-and-half-year diploma
programme in communication in which journalism is
one of the options (Challenger Concept (M) Sdn Bhd,
2005).
In HCC, the School of Communication offers three
options (the equivalent of majors in most of the tertiary
institutions), which are journalism, broadcasting and
public relations and advertising.
The following are the papers offered to journalism
students in HCC.
• Introduction to mass communication
• Human communication
• Visual communication
• Sociology
• Communication studies
• World affairs
• Mass media and society
• Mass media law and policy in Malaysia
• Communication research methods
• Media technology and development
• Microeconomics
• Communicative English/basic writing and study
skills
• Spoken English I/II
• Computer application software
• Bahasa Malaysia A/B
• Malaysian studies
• Moral education/Islamic studies
• Basic writing and study skills/English for mass
communication
• Advanced Chinese/advanced writing skills
• Spoken English I/elective
• Industrial training
• Graphic design
• Basic news reporting and writing
• Advanced news reporting and writing
• News editing and production
• Desktop publishing
• Photojournalism
• Public affairs reporting
• News translation
• Feature writing
• Electronic news
According to the school’s coordinator, students are
provided training in writing skills such as basic news
Journalism Education in MalaysiA
writing and reporting and advanced news writing
and reporting and news editing, so as to ensure that
they receive a good foundation before they go into the
industry.
Each paper takes up four hours per week and there
are 14 weeks in a semester. There is an experimental
newspaper called On-campus produced by journalism
students that covers only on-campus news. The
immersion period starts from Year 2 Semester 1 (Semester
4) until Year 3 Semester 1 (Semester 7).
The school has four lecturers who teach journalism
papers and it is more than enough, given the student
numbers. The lecturers are generally competent in spoken
and written English. The lack of journalistic experience on
the part of the lecturers is compensated by the presence
of a few senior journalists—from Nanyang Siang Pau and
Sin Chew Daily—who teach some journalism papers on
a part-time basis in HCC.
The school sends journalism students for a 10-week
internship in Semester 6 to almost all of the mainstream
media organisations, including RTM, TV3, ntv7, 8tv and
some other media organisations that are suggested by the
students, with the exclusion of alternative media such as
Harakah and Malaysiakini.
Generally, the comments given by the industrial
people towards the trainees and graduates from HCC
are positive. The students are willing to learn but lack
initiative in covering news stories. There is a 100 per
cent employment rate for journalism students in the
school.
As for collaborations with the industry, the school
occasionally invites journalists from the industry such
as The Star and Bernama to give talks. It also organises
a journalism camp every year in which the school invites
journalists from Kwang Wah Jit Poh to participate.
Currently, the School of Communication is also
offering a new, two-and-a-half-year Diploma in Broadcast
Journalism with the objective of fulfilling the current
needs of the industry. The students will learn the skills of
newsgathering, writing, reporting, filming and editing to
produce radio and television news and other non-fiction
broadcasts such as magazines and documentaries.
In terms of facilities, the School of Communication is
well equipped with broadcasting facilities and equipment
such as television video (HCTV), audio studio, editing
suites, cameras and lighting.
The entry requirement for the diploma programme
from the college is at least three credits in any subjects
in SPM.
Kolej Damansara Utama (KDU College)
Kolej Damansara Utama, or popularly known as KDU
College, is a subsidiary of Paramount Corporation Berhad
Group, a public-listed company with another property
group consisting of Property Development, Property
Investment and Property Construction. Its education
wing is made up of the two KDU college campuses, one
in Petaling Jaya and the other in Penang.
KDU College offers a Diploma in Mass Communication
and a KDU-Murdoch University (2+1) BA in Media
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and Communication. For the Diploma in Mass
Communication, most of the papers offered are
conducted in the form of three- to four-hour lectures and
one-and-a-half-hour tutorials per week. One semester
consists of 16 weeks. According to the Dean of the Mass
Communication Programme, Miss Karen Freeman, the
programme comes under the School of Arts and Social
Sciences.
Miss Freeman said that both diploma and degree
programmes are sufficient to prepare students for
entry-level work in the media industries. The students
learn the principles of journalism and theories through
the courses offered by KDU. The diploma is a two-year
programme consisting of 23 subjects and an industrial
training placement.
Given that the degree programme is a collaborative
programme with Murdoch University in Australia, the
discussion below will therefore be confined to only the
diploma programme in KDU. The papers offered by KDU
College under the diploma programme are as follows:
• Introduction to mass communication
• Media planning
• Public speaking skills
• Introduction to sociology
• Writing and referencing skills
• Introduction to computing and information
technology
• Principles of public relations
• Introduction to film studies
• Critical thinking and reading skills
• Principle of advertising
• News writing and reporting for print media
• Introduction to radio production
• Consumer behaviour
• Media research methods
• Media, culture and society
• Mass media law
• Organisational communication
• Principle of copywriting
• Desktop publishing
• Creative strategy
• News writing for electronic media
• Introduction to photo ethics and colour
photography
• Multimedia and Web design
• Industrial training
Students with SPM, KDU Foundation Studies, STPM,
‘A’ Level, UEC or equivalent qualifications are accepted
for the diploma programme. The college has a sufficient
number of lecturers for their mass communication
programme, claimed Miss Freeman. Most of the staff
members have at least a few years of working experience
in the media industry. The full-time academic positions
require a minimum qualification of a Masters degree.
However, the college prefers employing those with
industrial experience. The school also hires part-time
lecturers; the minimum qualification for them is a
degree.
The school has its own radio studio for broadcast
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journalism students, while the campus enjoys the faster
Internet access link in Klang Valley compared with other
public universities and colleges. The students go for
industrial training ever since the diploma programme
began in the 1990s. Most of the students are sent out
to local TV stations, radio stations, newspaper and
magazine firms, public relations and advertising firms
and event management companies. They learn the basics
of journalism practice from the media industry for two
months. Karen believes that this is enough to prepare
them for the industry.
The comments the school received from the industry
are good. The students are praised for their quick learning,
a good knowledge of their work and independence. Many
of the students are sent to local English newspapers such
as The Star and New Straits Times, while some go to
Malaysiakini and broadcast journalism agencies such
as ASTRO, TV3, ntv7 and others. The students are very
well received by the Malaysian media industry, reiterated
Karen.
In order to expose students to industry practices, the
school also organises talks and seminars, inviting people
from the media industry as speakers or guest lecturers.
The collaboration with the industry was built through
the work and contacts of the academic staff.
New Era College (NEC)
The Media Studies Department of New Era College
(NEC), which was approved by the Education Ministry of
Malaysia on 28 May 1997 and subsequently started to take
in students on 1 March 1998, offers an Associate Degree
in Media Studies and a Pre-University Course in Media
Studies. The Associate Degree in Media Studies covers
subjects in journalism, public relations, broadcasting, TV
and visual production and online journalism. The Pre-
University Course in Media Studies prepares students for
an Associate Degree Programme in Media Studies. The
course includes writing and reading skills in both English
and Chinese (New Era College, n.d.). The discussion here
will focus only on the Associate Degree in Media Studies,
which attracts more students. Students who study for the
Associate Degree in Media Studies need to complete the
following courses in two years.
• Introduction to human communication
• Introduction to mass communication*
• Introduction to journalism
• Photojournalism
• Introduction to political science
• System of mass media and laws in Malaysia*
• Communication theories*
• News writing
• Photojournalism
• Critical communication theory*
• Communication research methodology
• Newspaper publication and production
• Ethics and media watch
• Feminism and media
• Electronic publishing*
• Computer editing and design*

• History of journalism
• Selected reading in communications
• Cultural communication
• International communication*
• Communication technology and information
society*
• In-depth and feature reporting
• Production of online journalism
• Industrial training
* English Medium. The rest of the papers are taught in
Chinese.
(New Era College, n.d.)
This is a bilingual programme that combines the use
of the English and Chinese languages. Most of the papers
consist of a two-hour lecture and one-and-a-half-hour
tutorial. The papers offered in journalism are geared to
prepare students for the media industry.
Students with SPM, STPM and UEC qualifications
are accepted for the programme. English competency
is also part of the requirement. Students who are weak
in English will need to attend English remedial classes
every Saturday for 14 weeks.
According to the Deputy Dean of the Media Studies
Department, Por Heong Hong, the department has enough
academic staff for journalism courses; one of them is a
full-time staff while the rest are part-timers. At the time of
writing, the department planned to hire one more full-time
lecturer to teach online journalism. She said it is easier to
get an English medium lecturer compared with a Chinese
medium lecturer in Klang Valley. Most of their part-time
academic staff has enough industrial experience compared
with the full-time staff; they are basically from the local
and foreign media industry. The Centre for Independent
Journalism, a private journalism-training outfit, is one of
the organisations sourced by the department for teaching
staff on a contract or part-time basis.
In the year 2005, NEC spent a lot of money to establish
their radio studio, which is digitalised, where they have
sophisticated equipment such as digital video cameras
and digital cameras.
Industrial training was a must for all journalism
students in NEC in 2001. However, it was made optional
by the year 2002. Students can choose an elective paper
to replace industrial training. This is partly because
the college found it very difficult to get enough related
organisations to accommodate all their students, as their
student intake has increased over the years. Most of
the media organisations will give priority to university
journalism students compared with college students,
claimed Por Heong Hong.
NEC’s Media Studies Department used to send their
students to ntv7, ASTRO, Malaysiakini, RTM, magazine
firms, production houses and other related media
organisations. The department now plans to send their
students to TV2 and TV3. The internship with the media
organisation is two months and the department thinks it
is enough to expose the students to the real world. The
comments received from the industry revolve around the
good writing skills of the students but the students are
Journalism Education in MalaysiA
found to be passive and lacking in general knowledge.
From 2003 to 2004, more than 40 per cent of the
students had furthered their studies in China, while
the rest have gone to work in the local media industry.
Graduates from NEC have no difficulty finding
employment with the local media organisations.
The department also collaborates with newspaper
and TV firms to run a series of talks, and organises
camps for the students. For example, the department
has been organising an annual Broadcast Camp with the
Oriental Daily since 2004. Some of the students become
Malaysiakini campus stringers. The contacts are built
through the lecturers in the department.
Curriculum
As far as curriculum is concerned, the papers offered
by most of the universities in Malaysia, both public and
private, are highly academic in nature, with the exception
of UiTM. Examples such as media processes and effects,
semantic of media language, audience studies, global
media, human communication, visual communication,
communication theories, world affairs, research methods,
communication and culture, communication, power
and conflict, communication for social development,
communication law, politics and the media, and
communication technology are, among others, papers
that privilege academic input than professional skills.
Most of the academic staff in the tertiary institutions,
including UKM, USM, UiTM, UTAR and HCC, are of
the view that the higher institutions of learning are not
vocational schools. Instead, they are institutions where
journalism students are trained to think critically and
independently.
To balance theory with the practical, many of these
universities produce their experimental on-campus
newspapers such as Nadi Bangi, Berita Kampus
and Jurnalis, to expose journalism students to the
management of newspapers. Journalism papers that are
offered by universities aim to provide the students with
a foundation before they work in the industry.
The higher institutions, both universities and colleges,
adopt the semester system in which there are 14 weeks
per semester. Each paper takes three to five hours per
week. It is believed that this formula is sufficient for
preparing students for the industry.
Most of Malaysia’s pioneer institutions in journalism
such as USM, UKM and UiTM have not made any drastic
changes to their syllabi over the past 30 years. Only the
subject titles have been changed a few times. The writing
papers such as media writing, media laws, feature writing
opinion and comment writing, according to the academic
staff, are still very much relevant to the industry. Thus,
the syllabus does not need to be altered.
Journalism in the higher institutions, especially the
universities, has always been regarded as an “independent
course”, thought to have nothing to do with other
disciplines such as sociology, psychology and political
science. Journalism is closely related to society and it
has complex relationships with many aspects of society
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such as technology, politics, media organisations, Student intake

gatekeepers and readers. This “big picture” has never been
Mass communication is a popular programme among the
incorporated into the curriculum to give the students a
younger generations these days. The number of students
better understanding of the discipline.
enrolled in journalism has rapidly increased compared
The course content was changed during the
to 30 years ago, probably because of the accelerated
administration of Tun Mahathir Mohamed as the fourth
growth in media organisations after independence such
Prime Minister of Malaysia since 1981 when laws such
as The Star, Berita Harian, Guang Ming Daily, Tamil
as the Official Secret Act 1983, the Printing Presses and
Nesan, Metrovision, Mega TV, Astro satellite television
Publication Act 1984 and the most recent Multimedia and
station, RTM, TV3, ntv7, Radio Rediffusion FM and
Communication Act 1998 have been amended. Besides,
Hitz FM. Equally instrumental is the deregulation policy
spawned by the privatisation policy, a number of private
implemented by the Malaysian government.
broadcasting stations have emerged to transform the
Nonetheless, the intake of journalism has dropped
media landscape. Thus, the new syllabus has changed to
slightly in the recent years compared to students taking up
suit the political climate. Papers such as media laws, mass
advertising, PR and broadcasting, as the students perceive
media and society, power, conflict and communication
the courses as giving them the opportunity of being “on-
have so much to discuss about freedom of speech, media
the screen”, which brings them a lot of glamour.
ownership and control in a democratic country.
USM, among others, is very much a critical and
Training of journalism educators
academically based institution, whereas UiTM is an
institution that emphasises much on skills playing a main Many of the academic faculty that teach journalism
role to prepare students for the industry. Colleges under courses in the universities are experienced lecturers.
competition and market constraints mainly offer papers Generally, they have been in the industry for more than
that are more skill-orientated, such as news writing, public four years. For the young lecturers who do not possess
affairs reporting, feature writing, desktop publishing, much industry experience, they can choose to have
creative strategy, news translation, in-depth and feature their sabbatical or spend a semester per academic year
reporting, graphic design and introduction to photo in the media industry. So far, apart from UiTM, which
ethics and colour photography, to enhance students’ is a practical-oriented university, not many academics
employability and competitiveness in the market. They from other universities go to the media industry for
are well equipped with dedicated facilities and ready to internship or sabbaticals. They would rather go to other
invite distinguished and famous guest speakers to attract higher institutions of learning for research.
more students to the college. Most of the universities have a young lecturers’ scheme,
Among the colleges, the journalism programme in such as ASTS (USM), where they are sponsored for their
New Era College is highly academic-based with papers studies, usually abroad, with a contract.
offered mostly in Chinese. Papers such as introduction
to political science, critical communication theory, Internship
ethics and media watch, feminism and media, history of
Industrial training has been offered since the 1970s. The
journalism, selected readings in communication, cultural
purpose of internships is to expose students to the real
communications and international communication,
world of media. Journalism students from the public
which are not offered by other institutions, aim to give the
universities have been sent to all media organisations,
students a better understanding of the media and society
including alternative media such as Malaysiakini and
with the objective to produce critical and independent
Harakah. However, since 1998 when the Anwar Ibrahim
journalists in the country.
crisis erupted, many of the public universities stopped
Most of the tertiary institutions, both private and
sending their students to these critical organisations to
public, remain mostly as institutions which aim to
avoid “getting into trouble”.
produce well-rounded students who, at the same time,
The overall comments given by the industrial people
can be PR officers, copywriters and broadcasters because
have been basically good. The students, they said, were
the syllabus exposes students to a media practicum with
willing to learn and committed to the job. However,
a broad range of mass communication courses such as
students nowadays are not critical enough as there are so
introduction to film studies, introduction to radio station,
much political and economic constraints in the country.
screen and appreciation writing, aesthetic presentation
Additionally, they need to brush up on their command
management, broadcast and documentary magazine and
of both Bahasa Melayu and the English language.
principles of advertising.
Broadcast journalism is the new programme that has
Effects of technological and political change on
been introduced by most of the tertiary institutions in the
journalism training
country to fulfil the current needs as people with both
writing and broadcasting skills are in high demand by Thirty years ago, journalism students learnt
the market. Recently, KDU and New Era College have photojournalism by using analogue cameras. Nowadays,
offered broadcast journalism programmes whereas USM, with the advancement of technology, digital cameras are
UKM, UiTM and Han Chiang College are among others used instead. Most of the universities and colleges offer
that are going to introduce it very soon. photojournalism except for a few that do not do so as

94

the operating costs are too high.
Besides, with the new media technology such as
the Internet that came into existence in the 1970s and
became popular in the 1990s in Malaysia, many of the
institutions of higher learning in the country introduced
new papers such as production of online journalism,
digital journalism, electronic publishing, multimedia and
Web design, and online journalism. They also maintain
online campus newspapers to equip students with the
knowledge and skills of the technology.
Recently, many journalism students have been sent by the
colleges such as HCC and KDU to attend “hands-on” courses
such as The Star Education Fair 2006 with the purpose of
exposing students to the knowledge of covering news by using
new telecommunication technology like 3G handphones.
Broadcast journalism is another new programme that
was recently introduced by many institutions of tertiary
education, such as UiTM, UKM, HCC, KDU and New
Era, to produce journalists for broadcasting stations.
They are trained for journalistic writing as well as the
operation of the broadcasting stations.
In the 1970s when NEP was introduced and the
presses were expected to help in nation building, papers
such as communication for social development were
introduced in many institutions of higher learning. Press
freedom was eroded in the 1980s and the media were
considered as something that threatened the status quo.
Thus, the attention of the media has been shifted to the
multimedia super corridor and other giant projects that
are aimed to make Malaysia well-known in the world.
New papers, during that decade, have been added to the
curriculum, for example, science writing and reporting,
media technology and development. These were aimed
at nurturing journalists who can help to “develop the
nation” as well as to give “full support to public policy”.
The year 1998 witnessed a major political shake-up
in Malaysia when Anwar Ibrahim, the deputy premier in
Malaysia, was sacked from his position and imprisoned.
Many of the dominant media at that time were boycotted
for being unfair and not objective in their reporting.
Malaysiakini, which was established almost the same
time and claimed to be Malaysia’s first independent
alternative media, has gained much support from the
people. Institutions of tertiary education, both public
and private, have stopped sending journalism students
to alternative media such as Malaysiakini since it was
feared that this might put them in jeopardy.
Although there are many tertiary institutions that offer
courses in journalism in the country today, their progress
is primarily quantitative. The curriculum, as well as the
overall political and economical climate in Malaysia, do
not help much in producing critical journalists who are
supposed to play the role of watchdogs for the people in
a democracy like Malaysia.
Feedback from the press industry regarding
journalism graduates
The multi-language media in Malaysia is the product
of the multi-ethnic and multicultural nature of the
Journalism Education in MalaysiA
society. As mentioned above, the English, Malay, and
Chinese language newspapers serve their respective
constituencies in the country.
For the purposes of this research, two of the newspapers
in each language group have been chosen as samples. The
Malay-language news organisations are represented by
the BERNAMA and Utusan Group, the English news
organisations are represented by the New Straits Times
and The Star and the Chinese newspapers we have chosen
are Sin Chew Daily and Kwong Wah Yit Poh. The online
newspaper Malaysiakini.com was selected so as to gauge
the viewpoints of the alternative media in the country.
Bernama
The Malaysian news agency BERNAMA, which was
established in 1967, has been accepting journalism
trainees from local universities and colleges for more than
20 years. According to its Editor-in-Chief, Dato’ Azman
Ujang, all the public universities and several private
colleges regularly send their students to BERNAMA for
practical training ranging from three to four months.
The news agency started accepting trainees in the early
1980s. Azman Ujang observed that the trainees needed to
drastically improve their language skills both for writing
and communication purposes. This is the weakest area
generally among most trainees. To him, this was not
only prevalent in journalism but also across the board
as he saw it as a national problem. That said, he found
the trainees very eager to learn and improve themselves.
He strongly urged all universities and colleges to look
into the issue of language mastery, suggesting for them
to stress or emphasise on the training of language skills,
especially in English, because such skills are essential in
the journalism profession.
He said BERNAMA had no formal collaboration with
the higher institutions. Any form of collaboration, he
added, was essentially on an ad-hoc basis.
Regarding the employment of local journalism
graduates, he said that almost all of the journalists
working in BERNAMA today were from local journalism
schools. BERNAMA looks for people who are genuinely
interested in journalism as a long-term career and not
those who regard journalism as a stepping stone.
The applicants are given some written tests, which
cover mainly both Bahasa Malaysia (Malay language) and
English texts, such as translation into both languages, and
some questions to test their writing skills. Additionally,
they are also tested for their understanding of press
statements that are written in a journalistic form, ready
to be released for public consumption.
Azman stressed that BERNAMA still absorbed
journalists from journalism schools because it believed
that the students were trained for the media industry. He
often reminded the fresh journalists who graduated from
journalism school to first and foremost be committed
to journalism as a profession and not to regard it as any
other job “because it is not”.
“If you don’t love the job and if you are not committed
to it, then it is better you look for other jobs. And under
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whatever circumstances, give your best, be professional
always,” he said.
Utusan Melayu Group
The Utusan Melayu Group, which was established in
1938, is one of the media conglomerates in Malaysia that
publishes the nation’s first national newspaper, Utusan
Melayu. The group has been accepting trainees since
the 1970s from almost all of the institutions of higher
learning in Malaysia, both at undergraduate and diploma
levels. According to senior news editor Zaini Hassan, the
group usually takes in two to three batches of students
for practical training at a time since it cannot afford to
take too many in one go. For example, in 2005, it accepted
trainees only from UiTM and UM. Most of the trainees
were fast learners, he observed. The Utusan Group only
provided them with three months of on-the-job training
and they could work independently.
However, some of the journalism students did have
some problems in terms of discipline and punctuality.
On the other hand, the non-journalism students had
some “ethical problems” in the sense that they did not
know what could and could not be written. Language is
another problem, although it is not a major one.
Zaini pointed out that the students should be exposed
to the real world of journalism more regularly. He felt that
the internship was not enough for them to understand
how the editorial department operated. Furthermore,
the teachers from the tertiary institutions might have
no experience in the media industry and, therefore, they
cannot provide them with sufficient guidance pertaining
to the world of journalism.
It was felt that many of the courses taught in the
tertiary institutions were quite relevant, such as media
and society, media law and media and ethics. Others, such
as media technology, might not be too relevant to the
young journalists. It would be more relevant, said Zaini,
if and when the journalism graduates moved up to the
editorial level where they were expected to learn all the
latest printing and artwork technology. Knowledge in the
latest computer processing technology is very important
since the media industry has very tight deadlines.
The Utusan Group does not have any formal
collaboration with the universities, although the
universities did invite the staff for talks from time to time.
There are, however, some senior journalists and editors
who work as part-time teachers in the local universitiesy,
such as UiTM.
Not all journalists are from the journalism schools.
A quarter of the Utusan Group’s staff are people with
journalism background while others come from other
disciplines such as engineering, law and business. Indeed,
the group takes people from all fields as it feels that
they have a better knowledge on a particular field and
thus they do not need much training in that particular
field. They have to learn journalistic writing skills and
to understand the laws that govern media.
It was felt that journalists from journalism schools
usually know better about media laws and media ethics.
96
Besides the writing skills and communication skills, they
also have to have the knowledge of what they can and
cannot write. The media organisations do not have to
teach them this. For example, when the journalists cover
the controversial issue of Syariah Law or human rights,
they know how to “translate”, interpret the law and write
in a simple way so that the layperson can understand.
But, at the same time, the organisation also needs people
who have good knowledge and skills in certain fields, such
as law and business. Only those people who graduated
from these specialised fields possess this knowledge.
Applicants have to write in to apply. After the selection
procedure, only shortlisted candidates will be called
for interviews. Most of the panel are from the editorial
department. One or two of the panellists are from the
Human Resource Department. Candidates have to sit for
a writing test and then go through an interview. From
the interview, the panel will observe the applicant’s
communication skills.
The interview is centralised. It means all of the
publications under Utusan Group will go through the
same process. Young and fresh journalists usually will be
sent to newspapers like Utusan Malaysia. Those who get
through the training in Utusan Malaysia should not have
any problems when the organisation sends them to other
publications under Utusan Group, such as Kosmo!.
New Straits Times Press (NSTP)
New Straits Times, the oldest English-language newspaper
in the region established on 15 July 1845, accepts students
from almost all of the institutions of higher learning
such as USM, UKM, UiTM, Taylor’s College, Sunway
College, Monash University Malaysia and even overseas
universities. The NST only accepts trainees from the
communication field since journalism is not a major
subject to some institutions.
According to the Chief News Editor of NST, K. P.
Waran, many years ago, the students who came for
internship had a better command of the English language.
The standard of English has dropped over the years and
this is a serious problem. The curriculum in the university
helps in providing the students with the knowledge of
journalism and, hence, the media organisation does not
have to teach them much about journalism. Most of them
are committed to the job. The NST Group provides in-
house training to help them in news writing.
The probation period for a journalist is six months.
When a fresh journalist first joins the NST, she needs
to attend a three-month training course, after which
the journalist will be sent for an assignment and her
performance is observed. Commitment and persistence
are very important. After the probation period, she
will either be confirmed for the job or be sacked. Upon
confirmation, she will be made a cadet journalist.
The new journalists must attend a two-day coaching
session every week for a year. During the coaching session,
their submitted work will be checked and mistakes will
be corrected.
For those with journalism background, the in-house

training will be intense, whereas those without journalism
background will be given a longer training session by the
NST Group to teach them how to write better.
The NST takes people from all fields, such as
accountancy, business, engineering and even law. The
NST practises beat systems, such as court reporting,
environmental reporting so it needs people of different
knowledge and skills. For example, it will send a
journalist with engineering background to cover a story
that concerns the collapse of a bridge; a journalist with
accountancy background to cover an AGM story; and
a lawyer to cover court cases. They are much at home
with these stories since they have sufficient specialised
knowledge to deal with the stories. It was found that
journalists graduating from journalism school knew how
to turn a piece of technical work into a simple story that
the layperson could easily understand.
In the selection procedures, out of 200 applicants, only
50 short-listed candidates will be called for interview. The
panel will have a face-to-face interview with them. Paper
qualification is not too important. The NST would rather
take a SPM holder with good writing skills than a Masters
holder who cannot write. Thus, writing experience is
an advantage. After the interview, the candidate will be
given a topic to write on.
The NST does have an informal agreement with the
universities in terms of collaboration, but eventually
the agreement gets “forgotten”. What this means is that
the verbal “agreement” between the NST and the public
universities to conduct activities such as seminars and
sharing sessions often does not carry much weight. The
organisation welcomes lecturers from the institutions of
higher learning to have their training at the NST since
some of the lecturers in the universities might have been
journalists before; their work experience then might
have been outdated. Besides, they would have a better
understanding about the current world of newspaper
journalism by having training in NST from time to time.
The Star Group
The Star, Malaysia’s most widely read English-language
daily which first published on 9 Sept 1971, has been
accepting industrial trainees from all bona fide registered
institutes of higher learning for the last 12 years.
According to Managing Editor Chua Yew Kay, trainees
need to have a good command of the language, be it
English, Bahasa Malaysia or Chinese as they need to cover
assignments that involve these three main languages, and
sometimes they even have to do translations. Apart from
mastery of the languages, journalists also need to have a
strong sense of curiosity. This is the basic requirement
at The Star.
The Star provides on-the-job training as well. It
has regular courses ranging from basic journalism to
specialised writing courses. The duration ranges from
two days to one week. These include legal knowledge,
photography and subbing, from basic to advanced levels.
The organisation also sends its journalists overseas for
more specialised training.
Journalism Education in MalaysiA
Today, there are more and more local journalism
graduates joining The Star. Most of them have an interest
in the profession. The organisation also absorbs people
with other qualifications. The organisation prefers
someone who has a good command of a language and
a deep interest, though not necessarily someone with
journalism background.
Those who are interested in the job have to write to
the human resource department to seek for an interview.
If called, there will be a written test followed by a face-
to-face interview. If successful, the person will be put on
probation for three months as a cadet reporter.
The most impressive are those who show a deep
interest in the profession and this is proven when they
are put on the job. Someone will not become a journalist
if she has no interest.
As for collaboration, The Star has held seminars,
workshops and career talks to help undergraduates
understand what journalism is all about.
Sin Chew Daily
The largest circulation Chinese daily in Malaysia, Sin
Chew Daily, has been accepting trainees from local
universities and colleges, such as Universiti Sains
Malaysia (USM), University of Malaya (UM), Universiti
Putra Malaysia (UPM), National University of Malaysia
(UKM), UTAR, TAR College, New Era College (NEC),
Southern College, Han Chiang College (HCC) and Han
Xin Academy of Communications. There are trainees
from China and Taiwan universities and colleges too.
Sin Chew Daily editor-in-chief Koo Cheng observed
that what the trainees learnt in the various journalism
education institutions helped them in the practical world,
but again the trainees needed to enhance and improve
their journalistic skills. He said that Sin Chew Daily
required all trainees to have a good working attitude, to
possess good quality writing and communication skills
and to able to respond quickly to news events. “Their
strength lies in their willingness to learn, obey their
superior, and do more work. Their weaknesses are a
lack of real world experiences, of general knowledge,
of analytical ability, of language mastery, and of quality
writing,” he added.
He suggested that the trainees should improve their
language ability, skills of analysing issues, interview
techniques, knowledge of current issues and writing
skills. Occasionally, Sin Chew Daily does collaborate
with the local institutions of higher learning for talks,
seminars and training for journalism students. Currently,
20 per cent to 30 per cent of the company’s journalists
graduated from local journalism schools. The criterion
to select a young fresh journalist includes examining
their writing skills, language mastery, which includes
translation skills, and a good working attitude. Sin Chew
Daily still employs journalists from journalism schools
due to their ability to report effectively and their better
understanding of journalistic work compared to others.
However, the standards of journalism graduates generally
depend on how serious and effective a journalism school
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runs its programme. because they were encouraged by their lecturers to do

The organisation does plan some training for its staff, internships at Malaysiakini.com, claimed Steven Gan,
including sending them for study tours as and when there its chief editor.
are invitations from other organisations. The organisation also accepts trainees from overseas
journalism institutions. Steven Gan felt that the overseas
Kwong Wah Yit Poh trainees were better in terms of their ability to think,
independence and maturity. He added that the problem
Kwong Wah Yit Poh, the oldest Chinese daily in this
with local trainees were a lack of emotional quotient (EQ)
country and region, was established in 1910 by the Chinese
and language command, especially in terms of writing
revolutionist Dr Sun Yat-Sen. The media organisation
in English. The overseas journalism students were more
started to accept trainees from universities in the middle
critical and dared to ask questions. That said, there were
of 1990s. In the past few years, there were trainees from
a few who also had communication problems. With
Han Chiang College, TAR College, New Era College,
regards to that, the local university trainees were much
Limkokwing University College of Creative Technology,
better when compared to the college level trainees.
USM, Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM), UM, UPM,
Stevan Gan did not perceive any problem with
Universiti Sabah Malaysia and UTAR.
Malaysia’s contemporary journalism education system.
For chief reporter Eng Swee Lai, trainees who have
Some universities encourage students to discuss issues
working experience prior to their formal journalism
but, he observed, they have to allow the students to do
education or are exposed to campus journalism activities
more practical work, encourage them to read more and
have the propensity to perform better during their
prepare them for survival in the “practical world”. He
internship. They know how to ask interview questions
attributed the problem of language command to the
and what they had learnt in journalism school was crucial
nature of the entire educational system. Local students
for them, he added. All they lacked was only “real world”
also lack a sense of curiosity towards other people’s
experiences, networking and contacts in the journalistic
culture due to the lack of travelling. He felt that the
community. However, those who were willing to learn
universities and colleges of journalism in Malaysia have
could improve faster. Some of the trainee reports showed
to respond to the changes in the industry. It was felt that
that the knowledge they gained in the lecture hall were
some universities still teach journalism in the traditional
theories, which might not suit wholly the needs of the
fashion. For example, the 5W1H news writing formula
“real world”.
is no longer applicable nowadays. A lot of readers prefer
The trainees’ weaknesses include being poor in the
more interesting and creative ways. Malaysia’s tertiary
English language. Some university students are good in
educational institutions appear a bit slow in responding
the Malay language compared to the English language.
to these changes.
Most of the Chinese medium college students have
Gan said, “Nowadays, we need a convergence in
problems in both Malay and English languages, and
presenting journalism work, such as combination of video,
most of the trainees are not knowledgeable about current
audio and text. Journalists are no longer print journalists
affairs. “They should read more, enhance their general
or TV journalists; they are everything. Our journalism
knowledge, and at the same time strengthen their network
schools need to look in it.” He said that Malaysiakini.
and contacts with the people out there,” Eng Swee Lai said.
com did have training sessions for USM and New Era
Kwong Wah Yit Poh, according to him, has collaboration
College students so as to prepare them for the “real world”.
with journalism institutions in its vicinity, such as Han
It is aimed to enhance the graduates’ communication
Chiang College, to handle journalist camps. Its journalists
skills. The organisation offers three months’ internship
and photographers are involved in seminars or talks.
for journalism students, apart from getting involved
He said half of the journalists in his department now
in talks and seminars organised by other educational
are graduates from journalism institutions. Most of them
institutions.
are university level graduates from places such as USM,
Malaysiakini.com has 10 journalists now—three
Unimas and even universities in China.
of them are from journalism school, two of them are
“Those graduated from journalism institutions are in
university graduates and one of them is from TAR
fact our target and priority group of journalists. We also
College. In employing new journalists, Steven Gan will
examine how well their command of English, Chinese
not consider the applicants’ examination results but rather
and Malay language is, their attitude and communication
talk to them and ask them their hobbies and what kind of
skills, and ability to make decisions.” Kwong Wah Yit Poh
magazines they read. This is because he prefers people
organises in-house training for its journalists, some of
who read a lot, are aware of issues and show interest in
whom are also sent out to learn English at related English
issues around them. In addition, the applicants must also
language centres.
be good communicators, confident and humble. He found
that most of the journalism graduates were more aware
Malaysiakini.Com
of issues of journalism such as media ethics, reporting
Malaysiakini.com is the first Malaysia Internet newspaper, skills, fairness, protection of sources and the need to
established in 1998. The Internet paper received its first publish both sides of a story. Journalism graduates are
batch of journalism trainees in 2001. Most of the trainees better prepared for journalistic work.
were from USM and New Era College. This was probably He commented that the journalism students might

98

know all the skills they need in journalistic work but a
lot of them still lack confidence, possess low EQ and are
not able to think critically. The graduates may know a
lot of theories but are not aware that the world outside
is different.
Conclusion
It is obvious that most of the media organisations, such
as Sin Chew Daily and Kwong Wah Yit Poh, commended
journalism school trainees for their willingness to learn.
However, almost all of the media organisations pointed
out common weaknesses such as poor language mastery
and a lack of common knowledge, real world experience
and communication skills. The command of the English
language was obviously poor and BERNAMA, NST, Sin
Chew Daily, Kwong Wah Yit Poh and Malaysiakini.com
had pointed out this problem. Some of the trainees were
blamed for their disciplinary and punctuality problem.
Generally, most of the media organisations provided
two to three months of internship or industrial training
to journalism school students. The media organisations
do collaborate with most of the journalism schools as
discussed above, in terms of taking part in talks, seminars
or training programmes for journalism students. Some
of the journalists and senior editors were even hired by
the educational institutions concerned as part-time or
contract lecturers. These journalists came from the NST,
BERNAMA, Utusan Group, Sin Chew Daily and Kwong
Wah Yit Poh.
Almost all of the media organisations that were
interviewed claimed that the courses offered by most
of the journalism schools in the local institutions were
relevant in terms of producing students who were
suited to the media industry needs. The Utusan Group,
Malaysiakini.com and NST especially mentioned this
point during the interview. The media organisations
did agree that journalism students developed better
journalism skills after joining the industry. Most of the
time, the graduates would need to sit for a writing test
and personal interview when they apply for a job as a
journalist. Some of the media organisations, such as NST
and Malaysiakini.com, will assess the applicants based on
their interests, general knowledge and communication
skills, rather than their paper qualifications.
The English and Malay medium newspapers, such as
the NST, The Star and Utusan Group choose applicants
from other fields of studies as well. This has become
a trend for both Malay and English language media
nowadays compared to the Chinese medium newspapers
in this country. Nonetheless, Sin Chew Daily and Kwong
Wah Yit Poh do have journalists from other disciplines
but the number is rather small. Most of the media
organisations interviewed do provide in-house training
for their journalists.
Assessment and recommendations
The tremendous growth in journalism education in most
institutions of higher learning in the country in recent
decades has been phenomenal. However, in terms of
Journalism Education in MalaysiA
qualitative changes in the syllabus, it is, in many ways,
very much the same as it was some 30 years ago.
The growth in journalism education has fulfilled the
needs of the industry by producing more journalists who
would then be absorbed into the media organisations
since the 1980s. The downside, however, is that
journalism education today is commercialised in the sense
that institutions of higher learning tend to operate like
factories where journalists with excellent writing skills
are produced for the ultimate utilisation of the media
industry. However, journalism is not all about technical
skills, it is also about ideological construction of social
reality that journalism is involved in. This means that
journalists should also be trained not only to write but
also to be sensitive to the kind of social structures that
produce unequal power relations and, subsequently,
social inequalities; otherwise, the kind of journalists that
are produced would be mere scribes that only reinforce
the status quo.
Having said that, young journalism educators require
some amount of practical exposure to the industry as
this would help in the long run in the effective training
of student journalists. However, there are situations
where these educators are not inclined to do so simply
because they feel that they know it all. As for the older
journalism educators, they too would need to update
themselves with the latest developments in the media
industry by also attaching themselves to the industry
for some period of time.
Theories learnt from the higher institutions, on the
other hand, have always been considered by some people
in the media industry as something irrelevant to the so-
called real journalism world. The students are expected
to learn on the job. This perspective of course contradicts
that of the journalism educators. The clash of views on
what constitutes good journalism often prevents useful
collaboration between academia and industry. This
situation needs change.
Students should be strongly encouraged to have
their internship in alternative media, especially non-
government and non-political-party-related media, such
as SUARAM and Malaysiakini.com, as they provide the
public sphere where the discussion of news and opinions
often neglected and censored by the mainstream media
can be conducted. Moreover, these media are consistently
supportive of the principles of justice, human rights,
democracy, freedom of speech and good governance.
The Malaysian contemporary journalism education
system generally prepares journalism students for the
media industry. However, the journalism students face
problems of language mastery, be it in English or Malay.
The standard of English of the journalism students from
public universities has dropped substantially compared to
that of 20 years ago. It is time for the media institutions
as well as the educationists to look seriously into this
matter. Policy makers should put in effort to enhance
the younger generation’s language skills and to prepare
them for new challenges in today’s journalism world.
In a multi-ethnic society like Malaysia, the
contemporary press industry needs journalists who are
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multilingual and have good writing skills. For example,
Chinese daily journalists in Sin Chew Daily and Kwong
Wah Yit Poh are requested to have good Mandarin, and
at the same time be good in English and Malay too as
they have to attend government official functions and
international functions in which the languages Malay and
English are used. In today’s global world, those journalism
graduates who have a good command of three languages,
especially English, are most preferred by the industry.
The young generation of journalism students needs
to be encouraged to read and write more and this should
be part of the journalism curriculum. They should read
articles from both mainstream and alternatives media.
At the same time, they should not confine themselves
to certain political ideologies.
As for universities, especially the public universities, it
is important for the policy makers to allow the students
to have a bigger public sphere for discussion and debate.
The Universities and University Colleges Act (1971)
unnecessarily curbs the students’ freedom of expression in
a democracy. This law must be reviewed and considered
for repeal.
Critical thinking and independent thinking are essential
for contemporary journalists as they too are required not
only to write but also to write with discernment. Besides,
in certain situations, they are expected to act as an effective
catalyst for social reform.
Conclusion
This research is meant to assess the status and relevancy
of contemporary Malaysia journalism education. In
line with the research objective, the study examined
seven journalism education institutions and seven
media organisations in this country. The journalism
education institutions that were chosen are three public
universities—USM, UKM and UiTM, one private owned
university UTAR—and three private colleges, namely
KDU, New Era College and Han Chiang College. In order
to gain a diversity of opinions from different language
news organisations, three main languages newspaper
and a news agency were selected as research samples.
The organisations are BERNAMA and the Utusan Group
which mainly use Malay as medium of communication;
NST and The Star, which are the two top circulations
English daily in this country; and Sin Chew Daily and
Kwong Wah Yit Poh, the two Chinese dailies that were
selected. In line with the emergence of alternative media,
especially Internet newspapers, we have also chosen the
first Internet newspaper in this country, Malaysiakini.
com, as our research sample. This research used a
qualitative method, that is, interviews, to collect the data
from the 14 institutions as mentioned above.
Most of the university-level journalism institutions
offer a three-year programme compared to the college-
level journalism institutions, which require students
to complete their programme in two-and-a-half years.
The different time frames here shows that university
level students will need to take more papers compared
to college students. Nonetheless, both universities and
100
colleges do prepare the student in theory and practical
knowledge. The students are also required to take part
in industrial training but some colleges, such as New
Era College and Han Chiang College, allow this as an
option. One of the advantages of the public universities
is that they do give opportunities to students to do a
minor in other disciplines, such as political science,
sociology, humanities, translation and management, as
these studies can provide the students relevant and ample
knowledge that can help later in their reporting careers.
For example, those who minor in political science have a
better understanding of politics and do not need much
training in this matter if they are assigned to cover the
politics beat.
Some of the colleges overcome the shortage of their
resources by only offering one or two other disciplines to
the students. New Era College, for example, has designed
a political science paper so as to expose students to this
discipline.
As far as practical journalism is concerned, there is
a case for close collaboration between the educational
institutions and the media organisations. As it is, there
are a few institutions of higher learning that have
cooperation with media organisations in terms of hiring
media professionals on a part-time or contract basis.
Most of the gatekeepers in the media organisations who
were interviewed mentioned the poor command of English
language among journalism graduates. Additionally, the
latter are also known for their poor general knowledge and
poor communication skills, something that requires serious
attention from journalism schools and also policy makers
in the country. Furthermore, the campuses need to open
up so that there is freedom of ideas, expression and debate,
which in the long run will help harness the intellectual
capability of students, including journalism students. Such
an environment would certainly be useful in nurturing a
curious mind that is so crucial in journalism.
Generally, most of the courses offered by the journalism
schools in this country are sufficient to prepare students
for the ultimate goal of employment in the media industry.
Journalism graduates are able to pick up their work very
fast upon joining the media industry because they are
well trained in the technical aspects. But, it is also vital
to expose these students to critical and independent
thinking. Critical thinking is lacking in most of the
training programmes in this country. Nonetheless, USM
and New Era College distinguish themselves from the rest
of the tertiary institutions in terms of producing critical
students for the industry. Most of the private educational
institutions and even the public universities, however,
tend to be market-orientated. This means that most
journalism education institutions are inclined to produce
journalists who are good technically for the needs and
interests of the industry but have problems with critical
analyses of society. The educational institutions must
address this problem.
cont’d on page 109
 Journalism Education in the Philippines
Historical overview of media structure,
statistics and management in the Philippines
The Philippine mass media evolved in very much the same
way as it did in other countries, with print journalism as the
only medium up until the early years of the 19th century.
Radio, film, television and other media forms shared the
mass media stage with journalism in the 20th century.
Crispin C. Maslog, a distinguished historian and
researcher of the Philippine mass media, noted in his
book, Philippine communication: An introduction, that
Philippine mass communication came with its colonists
and, as such, Philippine mass media is greatly Westernised
(Maslog, 1988).
After the European explorer Ferdinand Magellan
discovered the Philippines in 1521, Spanish missionaries
brought printing presses and materials for converting
the locals to Christianity. After Guttenberg invented
printing with movable type in 1425, the first book to be
printed in the Philippines was Doctrina Christiana in
1593 (Maslog, 1988: 1–2).
Religious orders owned the first printing presses in the
country. The first Philippine newsletter, Sucesos Felices,
was published by the Spanish Dominican Fray Blancas de
San Jose and his Chinese-Filipino student Tomas Pinpin
some 40 years after Doctrina Christiana was printed. Alice
C. Villadolid (2005) stated in her book, Featuring … The
Philippine press: 1637 to 2005, that Sucesos Felices could
be considered as the forebear of Filipino journalism since
it did not carry anti-indio (anti-Filipino) material (p. 5).
Sucesos printed articles on naval battles and victories
over the Dutch off Ternate, as well as assaults against
Muslims (p. 12).
Maslog pointed out that in spite of these early
milestones, the Philippine mass media did not advance
as fast as Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Del Superior
Gobierno, the first real newspaper in the country, only
came out in 1811, centuries after Sucesos Felices (Maslog,
1988: 2).
Spanish period (1521–1900)
Villadolid (2005) pointed out that two centuries following
the short-lived Sucesos, the colonial media was the only
media that flourished in Manila. Colonial media came
in the form of reproducing and rewriting news from
Anna Ruby Gapasin
Kate M. Mirandilla
Ma. Rosel S. San Pascual
Deejay Cromwell V. Sanqui
newspapers in Spain to inform the Spanish community
in the Philippines about developments in Europe. In these
publications, developments in the Philippines were left
unreported due to strict censorship (Villadolid, 2005:
6). However, the Spanish Cortes later banned even the
reprinting of news from foreign publications without prior
approval of the government in Spain (Maslog, 1988: 3).
La Esperanza, the first daily newspaper in the country,
which began in 1846, dealt with non-controversial
subjects to pass the strict pre-publication censorship at
that time (Maslog, 1988: 3–4).
Maslog considered Diario de Manila, which started in
1848, as the best edited publication during the Spanish
period. Diario de Manila was staffed by competent men
and had its own foreign correspondent in Spain. However,
the Spanish Governor-General suppressed this paper
in 1898 for allegedly inciting the Filipinos against the
Spaniards (Maslog, 1988: 3).
In 1887, the first issue of La Opinion was released. La
Opinion marked the beginning of political journalism
in the country. While other papers were afraid of the
government censors, La Opinion was the first paper
to criticise the Spanish friars and campaigned for their
ouster (Maslog, 1988: 4).
In Maslog’s opinion, journalism during the Spanish
occupancy was marked by state and church censorship
as well as financial instability. The language used was
predominantly Spanish, hence circulation was limited
to Spaniards in the Philippines and Spanish-speaking
elites. Moreover, Maslog (1988) commented that papers
at that time were more literary organs than newspapers
due to journalists who had graceful literary styles but
lacked the skills for news writing (p. 4).
Revolutionary period (1890–1905)
The revolutionary period overlapped with the end of the
Spanish period and the start of the American period.
The most famous of the revolutionary papers was La
Solidaridad, which came out in February 1889. La
Solidaridad was first published in Spain and in the Spanish
language and as such, was read mostly by Filipino elites
living in Spain and in the Philippines. This revolutionary
paper became the rallying point of the Filipino intellectual
expatriates in Europe and its first editor, Graciano Lopez
Jaena, as well as its contributors, Jose Rizal, Marcelo H.
101
MEDIA ASIA, VOL 35 NO 2, 2008
del Pilar and Mariano Ponce, are some of the big names
in Philippine history (Maslog, 1988: 5).
La Solidaridad inspired the leaders of the secret
revolutionary society called Katipunan to publish
Kalayaan, a revolutionary paper written entirely in
Tagalog, in 1896. Only one issue of Kalayaan was
published because the Spanish authorities discovered
the location of the printing press. Nonetheless, Kalayaan
was credited for fanning the revolutionary fervour of the
Filipinos (Maslog, 1988: 5; Villadolid, 205: 13).
American period (1901–1946)
Shiela Coronel (1999), Executive Director of the
Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, wrote
in her book, From Loren to Marimar: The Philippine
media in the 1990s:
The foundations of modern-day newspapering
in the country were laid in the beginning of the
20th century by American colonisers who intro-
duced American notions of a commercially run,
profit-oriented press, brought in modern printing
technology, and schooled a generation of Filipino
journalists in US-style reporting (p. 7).
Villadolid (2005) remarked that the leadership of
liberal American and British publisher-editors who set
up dailies and employed Filipino editors and writers
characterised the Philippine press during the American
period. American language teachers honed the skills
of local writers and editors and American journalists
set high professional standards of work and behaviour
among Filipino journalists (p. 14–15).
However, she commented that newspapers at that time
often espoused the political and economic interests of the
United States (Villadolid, 2005: 15). These newspapers
include Manila Times, the first English-written daily in
the country, which came out in 1898, as well as the longest
running newspaper in the country, Manila Bulletin, which
started in 1900 as a shipping journal but was expanded in
1912 to include news of general interest (Maslog, 1988:
7). In Maslog’s opinion, however, Philippines Herald,
founded in 1920, was the first pro-Filipino newspaper
published during the American period.
Coronel (1999) noted that by the second decade of
American occupation, publishing became a profitable
business with newspapers gaining greater circulation
and, hence, a larger market for advertising (p. 7). In her
book, she also quoted the comment made by historian
Lewis Gleeck, who said that journalism during the early
years of the 20th century was marked by “the conversion
of Filipino journalists of opinion run by politicians into
newspapers run as business enterprises” (p. 7).
Newspaper chain ownership became prevalent with
hacienda owners, landed sugar barons and shipping
magnates.
Post-war period (1946–1972)
After the Second World War, a number of pre-war
newspapers were revived, such as the Manila Bulletin
102
and Philippines Herald, and several newspapers were
put up, such as Manila Chronicle.
Newspapers continued to be run as businesses owned
and managed by wealthy families. Coronel (1999) wrote:
For most of the post-war period, newspapering
was firmly in the hands of big businesspeople, who
were not shy about using their newspapers to push
for legislative and policy changes, put down their
rivals and promote their allies. They used their
publications to lash out against their enemies and
fight their crusades (p. 8).
Other forms of media such as movies, radio and
television came to the country also by way of the United
States. The locals had their first taste of movies in 1897
and its first shot at movie production in 1912, when two
Americans produced movies on Jose Rizal. The first
Philippine radio stations, on the other hand, were set
up in 1922. Three decades after the first three 50–watt
radio stations were put up in Manila, an American sold
the first television franchise in the country to a Filipino
to start DZAQ-TV, the first TV station in the Philippines
(Maslog, 1988: Preview, 6–12, 18).
In general, Maslog (1988) described the Philippine mass
media just before President Ferdinand Marcos proclaimed
martial law on 21 September 1972, as privately owned and
independent of government control, multilingual (although
the English-language press took the lead), Manila-centred,
politically free but controlled by big business and lacking
in ethics and professionalism (p. 19).
Martial law period (1972–1986)
The proclamation of martial law ushered in a new era
in Philippine history and in Philippine mass media.
According to Maslog, “for the first time since the turn
of the century, controls were imposed on Philippine
mass media, which in recent decades had been one of
the freest in the world” (Maslog 1988: 28).
In his proclamation, President Marcos accused
businessmen-ran mass media as being “sympathetic
to the insurgents who consequently intensified their
propaganda assault against the government and the
military establishment of the government”. He thus
ordered the Press Secretary and the National Defence
Secretary to “take over and control all communications
media for the duration of the present national emergency”
(Maslog, 1988: 27).
According to Coronel, mass media outlets that opened
a few months after the proclamation of martial law were
placed under strict government supervision (1999: 8).
Maslog identified these forms of government supervision
and control: overt censorship or threat of legal sanctions in
the form of presidential decrees, guidelines from the military
and government information agencies, covert censorship or
censorship by friendship, libel suits, bribery, physical threats,
intimidation, closures, banning, deportation, detention and
even death (Maslog, 1988: 30).
The mainstream media entities that were revived
and that survived martial law were owned either by the

president’s family or his cronies. During this period,
Coronel said that the press was pliant and obedient to the
ruling government and newspapers served the business
interests of their owners (Coronel 1999: 8).
Maslog noted that a few journalists began to speak
up towards the end of the 1970s, although not as freely
and passionately as they did before martial law. It was
not until the assassination of Senator Benigno Aquino, a
renowned critique of President Marcos, that journalists
became impassioned to cover what was really happening
in the country. According to Maslog (1998),
When the tragedy happened, there was no stop-
ping the story from spreading, although at first,
the crony newspapers and radio stations tried to
ignore the event … Among other things, it was
Xerox journalism and cassette journalism that
made it impossible for the authoritarian regime
of Marcos to suppress information on this tragic
event of national importance (p. 35).
Aquino’s assassination thus ushered the rise of the
alternative press both in print and on radio. A boycott
movement against the crony papers was launched, lasting
from September 1983 to the early part of 1984. During
these months, circulation of alternative papers increased
while sales of the crony papers dropped significantly.
Maslog (1998) said, “the boycott of dailies served as a
barometer of public anger at the inability and timidity
of the established newspapers to print stories on the
Aquino killing” (p. 36). The crony press had to change
editorial policies to bring back their sales. Maslog (1988)
commented, “the jab at these newspapers’ most vulnerable
spot, the cash box, was most effective in prodding them
to return to objective, truthful reporting and bringing
back press freedom” (p. 37).
Post-martial law period (1986–late 1990s)
When the Marcos regime ended in 1986, the alternative
press took the lead and ousted the crony papers (Maslog,
1988: 37). Coronel (1999) observed that the “media
situation soon resembled that of the 1960s”, where “the
economics of newspapering for a mass market meant
that media ownership would be limited to a small elite.
Setting up big press, a large marketing, distribution and
business staff, and a network of professional journalists
entails tremendous capital outlays that only big business
can mobilise” (p. 8).
Present times (from late 1990s to the present)
Free press is guaranteed by the Philippine constitution
and as such, there is virtually no government control.
Hence, the Philippine media is one of the freest in Asia,
restrained only by laws on libel and sedition (Coronel,
1999: 4).
Coronel (1999) noted that officials in the government
have sought alternative ways to influence the media
such as “paying off journalists or by exerting pressure on
press proprietors, many of whom operate a wide range
of interlocking corporate concerns”. She observed,
Journalism Education in the Philippines
The 1990s have also seen the emergence of newer
threats to media freedoms. These threats have had
less to do with state control than with the anarchy
of a crowded and competitive market. Respect for
a free press is institutionalised in the constitution
and the law, and is deeply ingrained in the politi-
cal culture. It is interesting to note that those who
wish to control or silence the press do so through
market mechanisms rather than the strong-arm
of the state … The last decade of this century has
thus seen the employment of more sophisticated
methods to control or influence media reportage:
envelopmental journalism, the use of advertisers
to tighten the noose around critical news organisa-
tions, and the pressure put on media owners who
are vulnerable to government pressure because they
own businesses that are subject to official regula-
tion. All these methods silence the press in various
ways and reduce the diversity of voices that can be
heard by the public (Coronel, 1999: ix).
Journalism education in the country
According to Maslog (1988), growth has characterised
Philippine communication education. In 1970, only
13 academic institutions offered degree programmes
either in communication or journalism. This figure rose
to 42 institutions in 1987, and as of January 2005, the
Commission on Higher Education identified some 214
institutions offering communication courses, 18 of which
have specific degree programmes in journalism (Maslog,
1988: 370; Commission on Higher Education (CHED),
2005). Luis Teodoro (2000), a journalism professor and
former Dean of University of the Philippines College of
Mass Communication, wrote in an article:
The Commission on Higher Education Commu-
nication Committee has found that, in apparent
indication of the popularity of what most students
refer to as “Mass Comm”, over a hundred schools
all over the country from Bukidnon in the South
to Laoag in the North offer mass communica-
tion, communication, journalism or broadcasting
degree courses.
Table 1 and 2 present the geographic distribution of
higher education institutions offering communication
and journalism courses, as of January 2005.
University of the Philippines (UP) was the first
academic institution to set up a journalism course. In
1919, Dean Conrado Benitez requested for Walter Wilgus
to develop a journalism curriculum in UP. However, this
course was pulled out when the UP budget for journalism
was eliminated after a UP president displeased a legislator
(Maslog, 1988: 371).
University of Santo Tomas (UST), on the other hand,
has the longest running journalism programme in the
country. Under the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, UST
started offering a Bachelor of Literature in Journalism
programme in 1936. In 1964, the faculty merged with
the College of Liberal Arts to form the Faculty of Arts
103
MEDIA ASIA, VOL 35 NO 2, 2008

Table 1 and Letters and since then, UST has offered the degrees
Geographic distribution of higher education in journalism and in communication arts (Maslog, 1988:
institutions offering communication courses (as of 370–371).
January 2005) The Diliman Campus of UP revived its journalism
programme under the English Department, which offered
Region No. of institutions Percentage (%) a Bachelor of Philosophy or Bachelor of Arts degree for
Region I 18 8.41 journalism major. In 1965, UP established the Institute
Region II 4 1.87 of Mass Communication, which offered BA, MA and
Region III 17 7.94 PhD degrees in Communication (Maslog, 1988: 371).
Region IV–A 30 14.02 Maslog (1988) pointed out two remarkable features
of the growth in academic institutions offering
Region IV–B 3 1.40
communication courses. One is the emergence of
Region V 15 7.01
communication school chains, such as the Ateneo chain
Region VI 9 4.21 (Ateneo de Davao, Ateneo de Naga, Ateneo de Manila,
Region VII 12 5.61 Ateneo de Zamboanga and Xavier University in Cagayan
Region VIII 7 3.27 de Oro); the St. Paul’s chain (St. Paul’s Iloilo, St. Paul’s
Region IX 6 2.80 Manila and St. Paul’s Quezon City); and the University
Region X 11 5.14 of the Philippines group (UP Diliman, UP Los Baños, UP
Region XI 9 4.21 Baguio, UP Cebu and UP Tacloban) (p. 369).
Region XII 9 4.21 Another noteworthy feature is the growth of
ARMM 1 0.47 communication schools outside Metro Manila. The first
CAR 7 3.27 institution to offer a degree programme in journalism
outside Metro Manila is the School of Communication in
CARAGA 2 0.93
Siliman University, which was established in 1966. The Los
NCR 54 25.23
Baños campus of University of the Philippines, on the other
Total 214 100.00 hand, became the first school to offer a Bachelor’s degree in
Source: CHED (2005). Development Communication (Maslog, 1988: 369–371).

Present state of journalism education in the

Table 2 Philippines
Geographic distribution of higher education The journalism education system
institutions offering journalism courses (as of
January 2005) The interviewees of this report agreed that the primary
objective of the journalism education system in the
Region Number of Percentage (%) Philippines is to produce journalists who are responsible,
journalism schools skilled, knowledgeable and ethical practitioners of the
field. It does not end with the theoretical aspects of the
Region I 2 11.11
trade but, most importantly, how the graduates eventually
Region II —   fare on the field.
Region III 1 5.56 The current system of journalism education in the
Region 2 11.11 country produces a very minimal percentage of journalists
IV–A who are good at their craft. Joyce Arriola, journalism
Region 1 5.56 professor and Department of Humanities chair at the
IV–B University of Santo Tomas, remarked, “most of our
Region V —   young practitioners are lacking, not only in writing
Region VI —   competence but in a firm grasp of issues, historical sense,
Region VII 2 11.11 and in establishing connections between disciplines”
Region VIII 1 5.56 (personal communication). Alice Villadolid, a writer,
Region IX 1 5.56 editor and former New York Times correspondent, added
that a “defect” she finds noticeable among the young
Region X 2 11.11
journalists is the concentration on the theoretical aspects
Region XI —  
of journalism skills, thereby leading to a lack of proper
Region XII —   applications of such in the field.
ARMM —   On top of the writing competence required of students,
CAR —   journalism education in the country needs to further
CARAGA —   grow in such aspects as described by Jose Pavia, Executive
NCR 6 33.33 Director of the Philippine Press Institute.
Total 18 100.00
• Solid foundation in “classical liberal education”, i.e.
Source: CEHD (2005) history, economics, philosophy, religion, literature,

104

culture and arts and language, to make them competent
in the content and context of their writing.
• Understanding of the dynamics of the entire
journalism process that goes beyond information
sourcing and writing, e.g. getting advertisements,
working with printers.
In general, informants of this country report deemed
that the current Philippine education system is “heavy on
skills orientation, but is lacking on the critical ability of
the students that would aid them in developing critical
insights and imagination”.
Curriculum content
Specific objectives and goals of journalism education/
typical route taken for training in the industry
“Ignorant journalism graduates cannot be good
journalists.” This was reiterated by a veteran journalist
and educator, Alice Villadolid (2005). Such is the reason
why journalism schools have a pivotal role in shaping
the country’s future watchdogs and should serve as
the market-place for thinkers who should find ways to
improve the journalism practice.
The Commission on Higher Education (CHED)
emphasised that competent and ethical professionals
should constitute the basis for the development of free
and responsible journalism in the Philippines.
There seems to be a long conflict between how much
weight should be placed on skills training, theory and
concepts. In CHED policies and standards, it was stated
that the mission statement of liberal arts education should
be reflected in its curricula for communication. Under the
CHED requirements for communication education, a total
of 126 academic units are required for graduation. According
to the CHED Memorandum 59 for General Education,
students are required to take 63 units, comprising 45 units
of major courses (30 units for the major field, 15 units for the
electives from related areas) and 18 units of other courses
that will be determined by the school.
Informants of the study mentioned common defects in
the current journalism system. Goals such as what should
be the emphasis of journalism educators, what should be
the emphasis of journalism education and what should be
the methods of teaching in schools are misdirected. It was
observed that young practitioners are not only lacking in
writing competence but also in a firm grasp of issues.
Luis Teodoro, former Dean of the University of the
Philippines’ Institute of Mass Communication, said that
most of the schools that the country has are still inadequate
in terms of faculty, curriculum and facilities.
Some curricula of journalism schools do not fulfil the
requirements of good journalism education and this,
therefore, remains a continuing need in terms of balance
in the skills and critical thinking ability of students.
Informants of the study assert that the first two years of
the course should be knowledge-based as is programmed
intentionally in the general education and liberal arts
subjects. The last two years, in principle, must focus on
skills-building.
Some of the errors committed by professional
Journalism Education in the Philippines
journalists can be blamed on the lack of basic training.
The students must learn the basic knowledge that they
need in writing. In journalistic writing, the students
should be given the principles before they write. The
knowledge to apply in practice has to be given first.
Journalism educators and practitioners agreed that the
main goal of journalism education is to train responsible
journalists who are well-versed in national and global
issues, competent in communication and who possess
ethical values and are committed to the pursuit of truth.
Journalism schools should equip the students
with a good basic education to provide them with an
understanding of their roles in society and the knowledge
and skills needed in their profession. In the same vein,
Luis Teodoro stressed that journalism schools should
produce skilled and ethical practitioners.
Assessment and feedback mechanism to measure student
performance/progress
Measurement of student performance in undergraduate
journalism training is done through standard class
activities such as assignments, rigid writing exercises,
quizzes, projects and exams programmed within the
semesters. The period of internship also generally serves
as one of the major gauges for evaluating the development
of the students’ knowledge and skills.
Most schools would also include co-curricular
activities like special coverage assignments, on-campus
journalism contests and writing competitions as further
tests of the students’ journalistic skills.
Selection procedures
Entrance requirements
In order to qualify in the journalism programme of a
university or college, applicants must, first of all, pass
the score requirements and reach the student quota set
by the institutions (i.e. colleges and universities) for the
said programme.
While most schools require applicants to go through
further stages of screening such as interviews and
specific writing tests, other institutions such as the ones
represented by the informants in this report rely exclusively
on the results of their university entrance exams (e.g.
University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila).
Entering class/student profiles
Majority of applicants to journalism programmes usually
have campus journalism experience in high school and
possess keen interest in the discipline.
However, a portion of some batches comprise students
who shifted from other courses that turned them down
or as an intentional decision to leave.
Teaching and training infrastructure
Faculty
The policies and standards for humanities, social sciences
and communication education (HuSoComm) of the
CHED indicate the following minimum requirements
for journalism faculty.
105
MEDIA ASIA, VOL 35 NO 2, 2008
• A faculty member should have completed a Master’s
degree in his/her area of specialisation or its
equivalent, or a Bachelor’s degree plus four to five
years of experience in the professional field.
• A faculty member should preferably be a member of
at least one professional organisation.
• A faculty member should have received, preferably,
at least a very satisfactory rating in the annual faculty
examination (for full-time faculty).
Most of the big universities benefit from having a
mixture of faculty who are highly qualified in terms of
academic background and field experience. As described
by Arriola, some teachers are “oriented in practice and they
bring in pragmatic pedagogy and applications to writing.
Some are into theory and research and they provide
foundational knowledge” (personal communication).
A pervading problem for most other institutions,
however, is the lack of qualified faculty; this holds true in
both the contexts of appropriate educational background
and practical experience. Prof. Luis Teodoro said that
although most schools claim that they have qualified
faculty, a closer look at the qualifications of the teachers
reveal that some come from disciplines that are not even
remotely connected to journalism or communication.
Teodoro cites,
For example, there was a faculty handling thesis
advising and teaching journalism research but
whose background is in philosophy. He does not
know the basics of communication research such
as content analysis and survey.
Professor Teodoro also cited other cases where teachers
taught journalism even though their backgrounds were
in speech communication or computer technology.
Added to the poor fit of most teachers in journalism
faculties is the lack of a sufficient foundation in the
discipline’s basic issues or areas of instruction. In
teaching ethics, for example, some teachers are not able to
integrate instances of ethical lapses in mainstream media.
This, according to Teodoro, is all because of their lack
of consciousness of how actual ethical issues manifest
themselves even in everyday, mundane circumstances.
Many also lack the needed work experience unanimously
regarded by the informants as an ideal complement to a
teacher’s educational background. There is a need for
journalism teachers to have practised journalism because
a practitioner will be more capable of explaining clearly
the realities of practice in the industry.
The informants of the study, however, emphasised
that although hiring professionals serves the advantage
of experiential teaching in journalism schools, skills for
instruction do not come automatically; hence, the need,
still, for careful selection of potential faculty. This is
notwithstanding the fact that practitioners who intend
to teach must have the time to conduct classes.
Facilities
For school facilities, universities follow the basic
requirements set by the CHED. Physical resources for
106
journalism training are practically simple and only vary
slightly per media type.
Journalism classes, for instance, normally just require
classrooms and a simple computer laboratory. Broadcast
journalism courses would require more specialised
facilities such as audio-visual equipment and studios.
Improvements in computer facilities were recently
introduced for online journalism courses where such
facilities as Internet connections, special programming
and Web software are needed.
According to CHED policies and standards, schools
offering journalism programmes must have, as a
minimum, the following facilities.
Table 3
List of laboratory facilities for journalism programmes
Facility Quantity
Desktop computer One for every five students
Still camera One for every ten students
Video camera One for every twenty
students
Audio-tape recorder One for every four students
Darkroom One
Although the acquisition of basic computer facilities
seems easy nowadays, some schools around the country
are not able to manage. Mostly, this is due to financial
constraints but on rare occasions, this can be due to
the sheer failure of staying up-to-date in the trends in
technologies for instruction.
Library holdings
The CHED mandates a specific number of book titles
(approximately 300) for the library collections of journalism
schools. The commission also requires schools offering
new programmes in journalism to obtain a minimum
of 10 titles per course and an additional five titles every
year thereafter. Similarly, efforts to build on these library
collections are hampered by lack of funds.
Collaboration with others
The schools offering journalism courses in the country
have consistently established or sustained their respective
networks or ties with the industry. One of the venues
to nourish such ties is through collaborative activities
such as the internship programmes initiated by the
universities/colleges. Generally, the current journalism
schools in the country require internship hours to be
taken by their students in various media organisations
such as The Business World (for print) or the ABS-CBN
Broadcasting Network (for broadcast). The number of
hours needed and the other written requirements vary
across these schools.
Proper exposure to the dynamics in the media
organisations, the newsroom in particular, is believed to
be contributory to the knowledge needed by the students.

Nonetheless, one informant recognised the reality that
the internship programmes of the schools sometimes
receive a negative note from the media organisations
because such may contain “extra labour on their part”,
as they are similarly asked by the schools to regularly
monitor the performance of the interns.
Some schools in the country admit that their
programmes ensure various activities that provide ample
opportunities for their students to witness real-time
working dynamics in private business enterprises, as
well as both government and non-government offices.
These endeavours are believed to create more balanced
graduates equipped with the proper attitude to adapt
and be flexible in various working environments.
Overall assessment and recommendations
This section summarises the significant points raised
by the informants on the current journalism education
offered in the Philippines vis-à-vis the needs of the local
media industry. The latter part of this section presents
an assessment of the journalism education system based
on the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
analysis shared by the informants.
Current journalism education vis-à-vis industry needs
Over the progress of time, the informants are confident
that journalism education in the country has witnessed
significant changes. According to them, the advent of
the information communication technologies (ICTs)
spawned monumental changes in journalism practice.
These changes demanded not only variations in teaching
styles among the faculty handling the journalism courses
but also better data-gathering methods imperative for
the required journalistic outputs. Moreover, the coming
of age of online journalism resulted in a change in the
content—and the presentation and distribution of such—to
the more segmented media audiences in the country.
Teodoro, however, emphasises that these changes are
“not necessarily for the better”. He said that although there
is an increasing number of schools in the country that offer
journalism courses—and degrees, in some—the quality
of the graduates are not always satisfactory. To quote
him, “there are so many [schools offering journalism],
but then there are so few offering quality education”.
The informants still deem that there are a few schools in
the country offering well-rounded journalism education
that eventually produce the types of practitioners needed
by the media industry. A closer look at the schools’
curricula reveals that the mandates of the Commission
on Higher Education (CHED) are satisfied. However,
the success of the implementation of these guidelines
depends highly on the expertise of the faculty handling
the courses and the facilities and equipment needed.
Strengths of journalism education in the country
One of the major strengths of journalism education in
the country that was mentioned by the informants is the
presence of good media practitioners who are willing
Journalism Education in the Philippines
to teach, as part of their payback vocation to the future
practitioners. Second, there is the presence of institutions
such as the Center For Media Responsibility (CMFR) and
the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ)
that exemplify how journalists can rise above the challenges
faced when they are out in the field. Third, journalism
education in the country operates within a climate that
adheres to free expression, thus providing more elbow
room for the journalists to exercise their mandate as the
Fourth Estate in the society, together with the rest of the
media sector. Lastly, there are principled professionals in
the country who serve as inspiration and models to the
future practitioners. The former make themselves available
to be resource speakers in various school activities such
as forums and symposia, which are significant venues for
the journalism students to gain first-hand accounts on
certain journalistic issues and phenomena.
Weaknesses of journalism education in the country
On the other end of the spectrum, the informants raised
several weak points of the current journalism education
in the country. The following quotes are some of the weak
points mentioned by them.
• The overlapping of subjects taught in the schools’
curricula
• Most subjects are designed as output-based rather
than process-based
• Most industry practitioners are resistant to theoretical
concepts applied by the fresh graduates
• Most faculty in journalism schools are not active
enough in enriching research outputs
• Journalism is not subjected to theoretical validation
and thus lacks rigid research at times
• Lack of good practitioners who decide to teach in
journalism schools due to the low salaries
• Lack of updated curricula
• Methods of instruction are limited to English (thus
writing in Filipino is compromised)
• There is a tendency to regard journalism as an
academic field of study instead of a profession, thus,
there are instances when the skills are not properly
applied in real-time journalistic coverage
• Failure to avoid militant advocacy among young
journalists, which often distort their perception of
balanced reporting
Opportunities in journalism education in the country
In spite of the weaker areas in the journalism education
system experienced in the country, the informants
highlighted several opportunities that can be used as
leverage in further improving the system. First among
these is the advantage of the libertarian environment the
media operate in. This climate of free expression brings
forth a healthy environment for the journalists to hone
their skills in their chosen craft.
Second, the industry experience of the journalists
becomes a good resource for the training and education
imparted to the younger journalism students.
107
MEDIA ASIA, VOL 35 NO 2, 2008
Third, the high English literacy rate among the
journalists makes the country a potential journalism
education hub for Asia.
Fourth, the technological advancements (i.e. online
journalism) and the emergence of broadcast journalism
in the county generates more employment opportunities
for journalism graduates.
Fifth, there are more offices and agencies—government,
private and other non-government—that recognise the
need for writers with journalism background in the field
of public information, advertising and public relations.
And, finally, the academe may further offer venues for
encouraging critical and systematic research endeavours
on how to develop journalism into “interpretive
communities” (Arriola, personal communication) and
not solely as a skills-based profession.
Recommendations
The informants of this country report emphasised several
recommendations to improve the current state of journalism
education in the country. These are as follows:
• To review the existing curricula of the schools offering
journalism courses and/or degrees. There is a call
to reconcile whether the current needs of the media
industry require graduates coming from either a
skills-oriented or content-oriented perspective or a
combination of both.
• To enhance profile of the faculty handling the
journalism courses. This should also address the
distribution of part-time versus full-time faculty
members in these schools in order to ensure that the
students are given balanced perspectives that combine
the theoretical and applied aspects in journalism.
• For the schools to establish formal linkages with the
media industry.
• To encourage graduate education among journalists.
The informants recognise the need for continuing
education and lifelong learning programmes that
media practitioners should invest in to enhance their
professional growth. In the long run, this creates a
media sector made of practitioners who keep abreast
of and are in touch with the contemporary challenges
of their line of profession.
• For the Commission on Higher Education (CHED)
Technical Panel to include academics, researchers and
practitioners who hold higher postgraduate degrees
in journalism and/or communication.
• To institutionalise an extension service in journalism
schools. To quote Arriola, “the CHED incentive is
designed for research universities, which for the
meantime is applicable only to the University of the
Philippines” (personal communication). If CHED
would come up with guidelines to direct universities to
re-orient their faculties from being “training centres”
to “research centres”, then qualifying schemes would
eventually be democratised.
• To challenge the local journalism schools to aim for
the CHED Center of Excellence award, the earning
of which further strengthens the curricular course
108
offerings, as well as training opportunities for the
journalism students.
Future media scenario of journalism
education in the country
The informants believe that in spite of the promising
environment for journalism practice in the country,
the current journalism education being offered in local
journalism schools is inadequate to equal the demands of
the media landscape. According to Teodoro, Philippine
journalism is similar to an inverted pyramid—“very
few but very good” media practitioners at the top with
the rest of the practitioners who lack the proper skills
and knowledge for the profession at the bottom. There
remains the constant challenge to update the curricula
of the schools, both at the undergraduate and graduate
levels, if only to bridge the schism between the academic/
theoretical and practical/pragmatic orientations in
journalism.
Another possible reality is the industry’s continuous
shift from hard-core journalism to a more commercialised
one, where the lines between what is news and what
is entertainment continue to blur. Thus, journalism
education in the country must prepare the students to
make clear distinctions between the two and put emphasis
on the dangers brought by media organisations being
viewed as business enterprises of both their owners and
their audiences.
With the changes in the technological landscape
experienced by the Filipinos, the journalism education
of the country is envisioned to become responsive to the
demands of the increasingly “globalised” environment,
where knowledge-based applications and the ICTs
become important players in the production, distribution
and consumption of media messages.
Here, the informants see the fusion of the traditional
and online print and broadcast industries that will
eventually spur changes on the dynamics of how media
organisations operate. Consequently, these should also
see the light of fused curricula offerings where students
become more adept in performing well in both offline
(i.e. traditional) and online journalism.
Moreover, Teodoro, in his articles, envisions that the
current journalism education will have to be flexible in
accepting that, eventually, the Philippine government
will allow the foreign ownership of media systems in
the country. In his opinion, this is in support of the
Medium Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP)
2004–2010, which “would help create the jobs they [the
government] hope to generate, which would in turn
help alleviate poverty, which would then help raise
growth rates”, the very same objectives targeted by the
government planners (Teodoro, 2006). To him, this
scenario presents both an opportunity and a challenge to
future journalists. The former entails more employment
figures, whereas the latter speaks of pending threats
brought by the political climate of the country, vulnerable
to the protection of vested interests of the media owners
and the government. This projected transformation of

the Philippines as another “media hub” in the Asian
region will also incur the high cost of establishing the
necessary media and communication infrastructures
and systems.
These future circumstances in Philippine journalism
call for a serious matching of the journalism students being
honed by the academe and the types of journalists needed
by the industry. Bridging these two require a “shared
responsibility” (Teodoro, 2006) between the academe and
the media organisations in order to build journalism as
a worthwhile, promising and lasting profession to those
interested.
Finally, to quote Arriola, one of the informants of the
study,
The sector would soon rethink its position in terms
of conceptualising a curriculum that would help
question the uselessness of pragmatic skill-based
orientation in favour of process-based learning
strategies where content leads student[s] to specific
communication styles and techniques that are usu-
ally context-specific. We could have … students
[who] are introduced to issues (e.g. classic[s], his-
cont’d from page 100
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109
 Journalism Education in Vietnam
Introduction
With fast expansion in both size and substance in the
past 20 years, the Vietnamese media system is beginning
to feel the need for formal journalism education and
training. However, the country’s four major journalism
programmes have been fiercely criticised for lagging
far behind the huge demand, producing hundreds of
unqualified journalism graduates a year. Based on data
from archival research and in-depth interviews with
Vietnamese journalists and journalism educators as
well as an analysis of the curricula, this paper sets out
to review this situation and provide a critical analysis
of the reason for the irrelevance, its implications for
journalism standards in the country and the potential
measures and strategies to improve the situation. First,
it will provide a brief overview of journalism education
and training in Vietnam, particularly its history and
current structure of provision. Second, it reviews the
appealing nature of a journalism career among young
Vietnamese and the resulting tough entry requirements
of journalism programmes in universities. Third, it shows
that the good students who pass the harsh entrance
examination to start a journalism degree seem to have
become incompetent graduates in the eyes of many, if
not most, senior journalists and media managers, after
their four-year programmes. The report then goes on to
explore the curricula and other pedagogical aspects in the
country’s three major journalism schools to explore the
possible reasons for this failure. A recommendation for
changes towards professionalism in journalism education
will be presented at the end.
The data for this research project
This paper is based on three main sets of data. The
first consists of those obtained from an archival search
of relevant documents from the Vietnamese media.
Given the popular demand for journalism education in
Vietnam, it has recently attracted much interest in many
Vietnamese non-academic outlets, especially during the
period around the National Revolutionary Press Day—21
June—each year. To collect these data, I first conducted
searches for any document with the key-word phrases
dao tao bao chi (journalism training) and sinh vien bao
chi (journalism students) via two of the country’s most
popular search sites: Vietnam Google (google.com.vn)
and Vinaseek (www.vinaseek.com.vn). To maximise the
amount of obtained data, a further search for stories with
the above phrases was conducted on individual websites
110
An Nguyen
or print versions of some publications that were judged
likely to have more stories about the research subject.
All issues of Nghe Bao (The Journalism Profession)
published in 2004 and 2005 were also collected. Finally,
after consultations with experienced journalists and
journalism educators, some books and other materials
were obtained for the project.
After a preliminary analysis of these data, the second
set of data was collected from in-depth interviews with 12
senior journalists from seven major news organisations in
Ho Chi Minh City and four senior journalism educators
representing the country’s four journalism departments
or programmes. The news organisations were chosen
to encompass all media platforms: magazines, daily
newspapers, radio and television. Eventually, 16
interviews were conducted in February 2006.
Of the 16 interviews, four were conducted via e-mail
communication and the others, face-to-face. Given that
Ho Chi Minh City is the most active and concentrated
media centre in Vietnam, accounting for about two-thirds
of the country’s print titles, the industry’s viewpoints
presented for this project could be seen as more or less
typical. The third set of data comprises official documents
related to teaching methods, curricula, facilities and
other aspects of journalism education at the Academy
of Journalism and Communication (AJC),1 Vietnam
National University in Ho Chi Minh City (VNU-HCMC)
and Vietnam National University in Ha Noi (VNU-HN).
Many of these documents were supplied by Mr Nguyen
Van Ha, Dr Dinh Thuy Hang, Dr Dinh Huong and Ms
Mach Le Thu of the AJC Department of Broadcasting.
Some others were collected from their websites as well
as from edu.net.au (an intensive information website
provided by the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and
Training) and other sources. All these data will be analysed
and explored in both quantitative (descriptive statistics)
and qualitative (textual analysis) terms, with respect to
the data collected from the in-depth interviews.
Journalism and journalism education in
Vietnam: A brief overview
No comprehensive historical account of journalism
education in Vietnam was found in this project.
However, based on the bits of collected information,
the first journalism lessons in the country could be
traced back to the latter half of the 1860s, soon after the
first Vietnamese-language newspaper, The Gia Dinh
Journal, was published. In an early attempt to organise

his correspondence network among intellectuals—
“interpreters and teachers”—of his time, Truong Vinh
Ky, who was in charge of Gia Dinh, used his paper to
train potential collaborators in the whole journalistic
process, from how and what to write to how scripts will
be edited. Many of these rough lessons are surprisingly
not too distant from what modern journalism schools
are teaching. For example, in training for what we call
“news values” today, Vinh Ky called for contributions
about “what you know in your area”, including stories
about “stealing and robbery; diseases and accidents;
misfortunes; tigers snapping or crocodiles eating people;
market or household fires; how the (rice) season is going;
or which job is now popular at public offices” (Le, 2001:
15). Or, on the core of writing, he advised: “Please do not
forget to clearly report the dates and places of events. The
principle of story-telling requires us to specify where,
which day and which month, why, what happens initially,
how it proceeds, and how it ends—good or bad, fortune
or misfortune” (p. 16).
Journalism, however, was more a wordy literary
style written with parallel constructions until the late
1920s, when a group of French-educated journalists led
by Hoang Tich Chu pioneered a wave of revolutionary
changes in concise journalistic writing styles and
techniques in the country. Using their own publications
to create excitement among the young—and disgust
among the old—Chu and his associates made substantial
contributions to training a new generation of Vietnamese
journalists in professional journalism styles (Vu, 2003). By
the early 1930s, according to Hoang Tich Chu, journalism
was still “not a profession in its full meaning because
we still do not have a journalism school” and because
“journalists are only those who work to get paid like other
labourers” (Le, 2001: 38). By the late 1930s, however,
formal journalism textbooks translated from French were
already available. A copy of the Vietnamese version of
Cours de legislation de la presse—with over 1,000 pages
covering everything from basic journalism skills, writing
styles, editing techniques to journalism history from the
beginning to the 1930s, French media laws and media
ethics—could be found in the bookshelf of an ordinary
Vietnamese citizen. After the 1945 August Revolution
that ended the colonial period, journalists under the new
nation led by President Ho Chi Minh and his communist
party began to be seen as “revolutionary soldiers”, who, as
Ho said in 1962, used “pens and papers” as their “sharp
weapons” (Vietnam Journalists’ Association, 2000). The
first organised and intensive journalism course took place
over four months in 1949. Its educational objective can
be implicitly understood via a letter President Ho sent
to its 42 members, in which he identified the duty of “a
newspaper” to “propagandise, mobilise, train, mobilise
and organise the people so that they will obtain their
common aims” (Le, 2001: 94). This is indeed the core
of the communist theory of the press (Siebert et at.,
1956), which is still dominant in the country’s journalism
practices and journalism education today.
Journalism first gained its status as an academic
discipline in Vietnamese universities in Southern
Journalism Education in Vietnam
Vietnam, under the Republic of Vietnam—the nation
was divided into two countries in 1954 after the Geneva
Agreement and reunified on 30 April 1975. During
this 30–year period, according to Tran Xuan Sum, a
respected journalist who founded and directed a number
of broadcasting organisations under the Southern regime
and is now a part-time journalism lecturer in Ho Chi
Minh City, journalism programmes were offered at several
institutions, including Da Lat, Van Hanh, Minh Duc and
Van Khoa Universities. Many of their journalism courses
were taught by the country’s most talented and influential
journalists of that time, cabinet ministers and general
directors of news organisations, some among whom were
internationally renowned journalists working for news
publications like the New York Times (Tran Xuan Sum,
personal communication). In the meantime, journalism
education in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam
(North Vietnam) was mainly a vocational and ideological
education task. The most intensive journalism-training
centre was the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV)’s
Central School of Propaganda and Education, founded
in 1962, which produced many of the country’s key
ideological and cultural leaders.
Tertiary journalism education was non-existent
in the unified Vietnam, named Socialist Republic of
Vietnam since 1976, until after the CPV started its
economic reform—doi moi—in 1986. In 1990, as a
response to the rising need for professionally trained
journalism and communication cadres, the Vietnamese
government decided to upgrade the Central School of
Propaganda and Education to a university and licensed
the establishment of the Journalism Department at the
now VNU-HN College of Social Sciences and Humanities.
Renamed AJC since 1993, the former currently has two
journalism departments—one majoring in broadcasting
and electronic journalism and the other in print
journalism—with five specialist branches, namely,
print journalism, photojournalism, radio journalism,
television journalism and online journalism. In 1992,
the Department of Linguistics and Literature at the now
VNU-HCMC College of Social Sciences and Humanities
was renamed the Department of Linguistics, Literature
and Journalism after setting up its journalism programme.
This programme, according to Nguyen Van Ha, has
recently been permitted to become a Department of
Journalism (personal communication). In 1997, the
Department of Linguistics of Hue University in the
central region of Vietnam began to offer a Bachelor
degree of Linguistics “with journalism specialism”, which
was upgraded into a full journalism degree three years
ago (Nguyen Thanh, personal communication). More
recently, an institution in the highland, Da Lat University,
has started a dual Linguistics and Journalism degree. In
its national information development strategies to 2010,
the Vietnamese government has plans to establish a
national university of journalism and communication.
Journalism education, however, can only be offered
in state-owned universities. While there is no written
regulation, private and semi-private universities do
not usually eye this discipline. In 1992, the new Ho Chi
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MEDIA ASIA, VOL 35 NO 2, 2008
Minh City Open University was licensed to establish a
journalism department. In 1994, while its first students
were about to enter their third year, the department
was verbally ordered by the Ministry of Education and
Training (MoET) to shut down without an explanation.
Although the university asked for permission to
continue the programme for a few more years to fulfil
its responsibility to its current students, MoET decided
to move these students to the VNU-HCMC’s journalism
programme. It was not an easy job because the Open
University did not admit students based on harsh
entrance examinations like the public universities. Hence,
its journalism students had trouble in their application
for admission into the VNU-HCMC programme. Some
were lucky enough to be quickly accepted; others had to
delay their studies for a while. The reason, according to a
recent story by Thanh Nien, was that journalism belongs
to the ideological education sector, which produced
“revolutionary soldiers” (Thuy, 2004). In other words,
journalism education is the party’s monopoly (Dinh,
2004).
At the moment, Vietnam’s five journalism programmes
offer three different types of Bachelor degrees: regular
intensive degrees (mainly for school leavers), in-service
degrees (mainly for those who are already in the labour
force and want to obtain a university degree) and second
degrees (for those who already hold a university degree
and want to obtain another in a different discipline). AJC
and VNU-HN also offer journalism studies at Masters
and/or PhD levels. Of the three undergraduate education
types, employers usually look to the regular one. Regular
graduates are not only young and energetic but also
credited to the best of the Vietnamese higher education
system because regular education is the toughest category,
requiring students to pass a very harsh and competitive
entrance examination and to work hard under a fairly
strict assessment system during their university years. In
contrast, in-service and second-degree education is often
offered to those who already have a job and is not strict
in both terms of entrance requirements and graduate
attributes. In reality, these sectors are very “chaotic”,
with their quality sometimes being beyond the control
capacity of education authorities. In a recent informal
chat with the author of this report, one major university’s
vice-president has even described in-service education
as a form of “degree sales”. In this project, therefore, the
focus is on the regular journalism programmes at AJC,
VNU-HN, VNU-HCMC and Hue. Da Lat University
will not be taken into account because it does not offer
regular journalism education.
An appealing discipline: Tough entry requirements
In a country where there were only 118 tertiary students
for every 10,000 people in 2000 (MoET, 2003a),
obtaining a place in a regular university programme
is always tough. For journalism students, it might be
even tougher. To understand this, we need to have an
overview of university entrance examinations in Vietnam.
To be admitted into a university, Vietnamese school-
112
leavers have to take one of the toughest examinations
centrally controlled by MoET. The examinations are
organised along different blocks of subjects, depending
on the discipline that a candidate registers for. To take a
career in economy-related disciplines, natural sciences,
engineering and health sciences, for example, students
usually have to be examined with subjects in either block
A (Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry) or block B
(Mathematics, Chemistry and Biology). For students in
social sciences and humanities, including journalism, the
common test subjects are either in block C (Literature,
History and Geography) or in block D (Literature, Foreign
Language and, rather bizarrely, Mathematics). Although
all candidates in the same block will have the same
national tests, the standard entrance score (the lowest
score for admission) is different between universities
and/or between departments within the same university,
depending on each university’s or each department’s
MoET-assigned “teaching quotas” and its number of
registered examinees.
In recent years, the number of school-leavers registering
for journalism programmes has been consistently high,
leading to very tough competition. Table 1 shows the
latest (2005) intakes and standard entrance scores of
different social sciences and humanities disciplines at
the four universities that offer journalism.
As can be seen, standard scores to enter a journalism
programme are the highest of all the social science and
humanities disciplines within each university, whether
it was via examinations in block C or block D. At VNU-
HN, C-block and D-block journalism scores (20.5 and 20,
out of 30) top the list. A similar pattern is found at AJC.
Within the C-block, the print and television journalism
entrance scores (both 21) were behind no other. Within
the D-block, television journalism (20.5) was again the
highest. At VNU-HCMC, the picture does not change:
the C-block standard score of 18 for journalism was
higher than for any other C-block discipline while
its D-block score (20) was substantially higher than
the second-highest one (18, for both Oriental studies
and English linguistics and literature). In both blocks,
journalism scores were quite distant from those for other
disciplines (around 15 or 15.5). Even at Hue University
in the central region of Vietnam, which usually attracts
fewer candidates and/or less capable candidates than
HCMC and Hanoi, the journalism standard score for
C-block students reached 16.5 in 2005 (Hue only recruited
students within this block). This score is higher than not
only other social sciences and humanities programmes
within Hue University but also most of the C-block
entrance scores at VNU-HCMC, which is much bigger
and more advantageously located than Hue (Remember,
all entrance examinations used the same tests designed
by MoET).
One might argue that the high entrance scores of
journalism might be largely due to their typically smaller
intakes. This, however, is not necessarily the case. Indeed,
journalism scores at the above institutions were highest,
regardless of whether other disciplines have bigger, equal
or smaller intakes. Also, if students were not interested in
 Journalism Education in Vietnam

Table 1
2005 standard entrance scores for journalism compared with other
disciplines within the social sciences and humanities at three major universities

University Discipline Intake Standard scores

C-block D-block
Vietnam National Journalism 100 20.5 20
University in Ha Noi Psychology 80 19 18.5
Management sciences 130 20 19
Sociology 90 20 19
Philosophy 90 18 18
Literature 110 20 19
Linguistics 100 18 18
History 110 20 20
Information and library sciences 90 18 18
Information storage and office administration 80 20 18.5
Oriental studies 100 21 19.5
International studies 100 19 19
Institute of Journalism Print journalism 50 21 20
and Communication Photojournalism 15 19.5 18.5
Radio journalism 20 20 19
Television journalism 30 21 20.5
Online journalism 30 19.5 19.5
Sociology 40 — 17
Marxist-Leninist philosophy 45 — 16
Scientific socialism 40 19 —
Political economy 45 — 17.5
Party history 45 19.5 —
Party and government building 50 19.5 —
Political science (ideological work) 50 19 —
Vietnamese political science 40 18 —
Social management 40 19.5 —
Ho Chi Minh’s thoughts 40 19 —
Publishing 40 19 —
Information for foreign relationships 40 — 19.5
English 40 — 17.5
Hue University Journalism 16.5
Legal studies 16
Linguistics and literature 16
History 15
Philosophy 15
Chinese characters and Vietnamese hieroglyph 15
Social work 16
Vietnam National Journalism 100 18 20
University in Ho Chi Linguistics and literature 200 16 15
Minh City History 150 16.5 15.5
Anthropology 100 15 15
Philosophy 160 15 15
Geography 160 15 15
Sociology 150 15 15
Information and library science 120 15 15
Education studies 120 15 15
Information storage studies 70 15 15
Oriental studies 260 — 18
English linguistics and literature 260 — 18
Russian and English linguistics 100 — 15.5
French linguistics and literature 100 — 15.5
Chinese linguistics and literature 150 — 15
German linguistics and literature 50 — 15.5
International studies 150 — 17
* Maximum score = 30 for three subjects
** C-block subjects: Literature, history and geography; D-block: Mathematics, literature and foreign language (usually English at a
high level)
Data source: Condensed from MoET (2005).

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journalism, they would have taken less risk by choosing
courses with bigger intakes. This is especially true in the
context that many D-block participants actually can take
entrance examinations into some disciplines with fairly
bright career prospects, such as foreign trade, economics
and finance and banking. A more systematic indicator that
can substantiate this view is the very high “competitive
exclusion indices”—the ratios showing the number of
examination participants from which one is chosen for
admission—of journalism. At AJC, for example, the 145
students admitted in 2005 came out of a total of 5,487
candidates (data provided by Mach Le Thu)—that is,
the exclusion index was nearly 1:38 (one in 38 students
sitting for the examination was successful). This was a
big jump from 1:6 in 1992 and 1:21 in 2003 (Dinh, 2004).
At VNU-HCMC, the journalism competition index
was 1:22 in 2005 but in the year before that, it went up
to 1:56 (Nguyen Van Ha, personal communication). At
Hue, according to Nguyen Thanh, the index has been
between 1:15 and 1:25 in the past three years (personal
communication).
All in all, the above numbers show that journalism
is the most attractive career path of all social sciences
and humanities in Vietnam. The appeal of journalism
is so overwhelming that the Department of Linguistics
at VNU-HN, which has no official duty to produce
journalists, has been including some journalism subjects
under the linguistic disguise in its curricula, such as
language and communication; language and journalistic
practices; language and editing practices; language and
social marketing; and characteristics of journalistic
language. Except for the last one, all these subjects
are compulsory. In an attempt to improve its students’
employment rate, the department also encourages its
students to undergo internships at media outlets.
Two major changes in the Vietnamese media landscape
in the past 20 years or so could be attributed to this appeal
of journalism.
First, the public image of the Vietnamese journalist
seems to have been raised to a certain degree of prestige
since doi moi. This came about indirectly from the CPV’s
more tolerant and receptive press control approach and
more directly from the changing performance of the press
from a mere “dry” propaganda system to a more active
and responsive social-monitoring and civic participation
mechanism marked by a more public-oriented service,
an increasing diversity of perspectives and a somewhat
aggressive and daring move towards investigative
journalism. Although still under the close watch of the
CPV’s Central Culture and Ideologies Department,
many Vietnamese media outlets have conscientiously
and courageously brought into their agenda the many
social, economic and, to some extent, political problems
of contemporary Vietnam, including social ills, power
abuse, corruption and injustice, hardships and suffering
of the ordinary citizens. Right at the time this report was
written, the Vietnamese Minister for Transportation had
to resign under public pressure mounted by an aggressive
press after his deputy and close subordinates were arrested
for stealing millions of dollars from budgets intended for
114
building roads and bridges. In a socio-political context
where public concerns and affairs used to be muted and
a newspaper was little more than a government/party
information bulletin, this change should have made a big
difference in the public’s view of journalism. While there
is no empirical research, anecdotal evidence suggests
that despite the traditional stereotyping of journalists
as those who “tell lies to make their living” (Nha bao noi
lao an tien—a popular pun that is on top of the lips of
any Vietnamese, even schoolboys), the journalist of the
doi moi age has become more trustworthy, authoritative
and, quite often, heroic in the public’s eyes than ever
before.
Second, there has been a steep increase in the
number and diversity of media outlets over the past
20 years. In the print sector, for example, the country
had 553 organisations publishing 713 publications with
a total circulation of 600 million in 2005 (Vietnamese
Government, 2005), compared with 450 organisations
publishing 563 publications with a total circulation of
565 million in 2000 (Vietnamese Journalists’ Association,
2000). In the broadcasting sector, as of 2005, the country
had about 80 radio and television organisations at
provincial, regional and national operational levels. This
does not include the thousands of small-scale (district
or ward) broadcasters and news bulletins. In addition,
new communication technologies are creating many new
operations in and out of traditional news organisations,
especially Internet news and cable television services.
Some new players, particularly Internet-only news
outlets such as VietnamNet or VnExpress, are becoming
increasingly larger in both size and substance. The
demand for well-trained journalists, therefore, has
become quite critical, especially in areas with a high
concentration of newsrooms like Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi.
This is particularly pressing at fast-growing organisations
like Tuoi Tre, which too often hears complaints of work
overload and sometimes even feels incapable of keeping
up with its own development (Do Dinh Tan, personal
communication).
Massive supply with poor quality: The not-so-good
image of journalism education
As a result of the high demand for formal journalism
education both among learners and the industry, the
country’s journalism schools have produced thousands
(or possibly tens of thousands) of journalism graduates of
different types. By 2005, VNU-HN alone had conferred
bachelor and master journalism degrees to about 2,800
people and trained another 1,376 students of all types
of journalism (Dinh Huong, personal communication).
In the 2005–2006 academic year, as the MoET numbers
in Table 1 show, a total of 345 students were taken in for
the three major regular journalism schools (145 at AJC,
100 at VNU-HN and 100 at VNU-HCMC). According
to Nguyen Thanh, Hue University took in another 60
(personal communication). These numbers, according
to the academic interviewees, have remained quite stable
for some years. That means that, at the moment, around

400 regular journalism graduates are produced every year.
That has excluded much bigger numbers of in-service
and second-degree intakes. In 2005, for instance, AJC
alone received a total of 540 students for the two non-
regular degree types.
This massive supply of graduate journalists has not
found it way into the media industry. While the tracking
of employment rates as an indicator of education success
is almost absent in Vietnamese public universities,
which do not face any real competition, some figures
on the educational background of current working
journalists will show this. Of about the 13,000 nationally
recognised Vietnamese journalists—those conferred a
professional identity card by the Ministry of Culture and
Information—in 2005, about 75 per cent have never gone
through any formal journalism class (Huynh, 2005). Most
of the journalists interviewed for this project admitted
that a substantial portion of the other 25 per cent would
have been trained at a minimal level, namely, in short
training courses offered by newsrooms, the Vietnamese
Journalists’ Association (VJA) or by foreign institutions
such as SIDA (Sweden) or Lille (France). For instance,
only 9 per cent of the 154 editorial staff members at
Thanh Nien have a journalism degree although around
120 have been through some in-house training courses
within SIDA’s journalism training project (Nguyen
Quang Thong, personal communication). At the New
World Magazine, only one among its 18 journalists has
a journalism Bachelor degree.
What is the key reason behind this mismatch between
the universities’ supply of graduates and the industry’s
labour force? From the materials collected and the
interviews conducted for this project, there are three
key arguments: (a) it is a “historical” problem; (b) it is
a problem of oversupply of journalism graduates; and
(c) it is a matter of journalism education quality. In this
section, I will briefly touch on the first two arguments
before presenting a detailed discussion of the last one.
The historical argument is that the proportion of
formally trained journalists in the workforce is tiny
because tertiary journalism education only took off in
Vietnam in the early 1990s. In reality, many, if not most,
editor-in-chiefs in Vietnam (including those working at
the country’s most influential news outlets today) were not
professionally educated in universities. The oversupply
argument blames universities for overproduction of
journalism graduates: the industry is too small to take
up hundreds of regular journalism students graduating
from universities each year. In other words, students are
studying journalism “à la mode”—namely, as a fad rather
than something deriving from real market demands—and
universities are more than happy to catch this “fad”
wave.
Looking at recent figures of the media workforce,
however, one might see both of these suggested reasons
do not really address the core of the issue. While this
might be partly a “historical product”, 15 years of tertiary
journalism education is not a short period. And during
these 15 years, as mentioned, the Vietnamese media have
changed very much in both platform diversity and number
Journalism Education in Vietnam
of players, creating a critical demand for well-trained
journalists. One key indicator is the increasing number
of nationally recognised journalists in Vietnam—it went
up from 7,000 in 1991 to 9,000 by the year 2000 (Ha et
al., 2002) and to 13,000 in 2005, that is, the professional
workforce size almost doubled during the short history
of tertiary journalism education.2 This does not include
thousands of journalists without a professional ID card,
which usually requires at least three years of continuous
and productive work in the media to be considered for one.
On one hand, these numbers show that the thousands of
regular journalism graduates produced in the past 15 years
are not that different when compared with the increase
in the media workforce size; hence, the oversupply
argument is not really correct. On the other hand, the
numbers also show that the “historical” tiny contribution
of formally trained journalists to this workforce should
have substantially increased if only a substantial portion
of the thousands of journalism graduates have joined this
continually increasing workforce.
In this light, the core problem is neither historical nor
abundant supply but that not many journalism graduates
have entered the news media workforce. However, the
academics interviewed for this project were quite insistent
on their graduates ability to secure employment after
graduation. Dinh Huong said that the majority of his
students could find a job after graduation while Nguyen
Van Ha estimated that about 90 per cent of his students
could quickly enter the labour force. Where have they
gone?3
One possible destination, as pointed out by Nguyen
Van Ha, Dinh Huong and Do Dinh Tan, is the new
publicity-related industry, such as advertising, public
relations and events organisation. This specific area
is growing very fast, demands more people than ever
before and is usually attractive in terms of salary. Another
alternative is the many commercial or academic research
organisations or the government’s media management
bodies. In reality, this is not a by-product—it is officially
specified as one of the duties of the country’s journalism
schools. But, even when these employment sectors have
become more popular, they are still very new and, in terms
of employment opportunities, might look like a clown
standing beside the giant media industry. Also, being a
journalist is usually more attractive than working in an
advertising company or a PR organisation; it brings more
power and has more prestige, more opportunities to
travel around and to create a widespread social network
and, frankly, none too poor pay. The fact then is that
journalism graduates cannot enter the news industry,
rather than them wanting to work in other areas.
The third and most frequently cited reason for that tiny
proportion of graduate journalists in the media industry
is the quality of journalism education. The high entrance
requirements mentioned above indicate that journalism
students are the best of all university students in the social
sciences and humanities disciplines. But what comes out
from their four-year journalism degrees does not seem to
meet the needs of the industry. Of all the senior journalists
interviewed for this project, nobody is happy with what
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they receive from journalism schools (j-schools). Some,
namely Ngoc My and Hoai Nam of HCMC People’s Voice,
Quang Thong of Thanh Nien, Duc Quang of Sai Gon Giai
Phong, and Vu Trong Thanh of The Gioi Moi, admitted
that journalism graduates have obtained some necessary
knowledge base and/or built a professional passion for
the job. But, in Duc Quang’s words, “there is a big gap
between what they have and what we need”. Vu Trong
Thanh summed up the particular weakness shared by
all the interviewees in the following comment.
They are good at catching new social and techno-
logical trends, particularly in exploiting the Internet.
But they lack a general social knowledge base. They
do not have good news sense and sufficient skills
to find news, to gather information and to handle
information. Their English-language level is too low.
Even the use of their mother tongue is disappointing.
Almost all journalism graduates have at least some
Vietnamese writing problems and their grammar
and spelling are seriously flawed. You can find these
errors in any medium these days. Journalism schools
look down on this frustrating reality.
That is, they have almost no practice in journalistic
writing! Vu Mai Nam of Khoa Hoc & Doi Song was even
harsher in his criticism.
They learn everything but have an understanding
of nothing. [Why] can’t a journalism student even
handle a headline or distinguish one journalistic
genre from another? Worse, their general under-
standing of the surrounding world is terrible and it
seems to me that they are not used to the reading
culture. They simply don’t read. When interviewing
a journalism student some time ago, I was shocked
when he couldn’t explain how the political system
works in Vietnam and how government organisa-
tions are different from non-government ones.
Comments like these were rife in the materials
obtained for this project. Even journalism educators
have admitted the problem. “Of journalism graduates,
about 50 to 60 per cent are good enough for the job and
only about 20 per cent can advance well in their career,”
said A/Professor Nguyen Van Dung, former deputy head
of AJC’s Print Journalism Department, in an interview
with VietnamNet (2005). This means that about half of
graduates are still unqualified after four intensive years
of formal journalism education. To make matters worse,
these figures appear “too self-confident” to some people
in the industry, such as Dinh Phong (2003), former vice
president of the VJA, who said in an interview with
The Gioi Moi that only about 10 per cent of journalism
bachelors could do the job. The barrage of criticisms of
journalism education quality has recently led a former
journalism student to pose the following question to his/
her fellows on VietnamNet.
What should you, I and all of us—those formally
educated journalism bachelors—do … so that oth-
ers don’t see us as those ambivalent bats that are
116
(difficult to classify) because they have both wings
and mammae (Quoc, 2003)?
As a result, the ball is thrown from the universities
back into the industry’s court. To save themselves from
lagging behind new market and technological demands,
many newsrooms have set up their own systems and
distributed resources to recruit cadets from different
disciplines, including journalism, and train them from
scratch. In most cases, this training system is based on
a range of hands-on and/or convenient methods. The
common approach at the seven news organisations
visited during the study is to use a system of tests and
interviews to select people with potential for writing
and news presentation, in the case of broadcasting
organisations, good general knowledge and, in some
cases, competence in English and computer use. Those
who pass the tests and interviews then enter a “learning
by working” probation period, which usually lasts from
six to 12 months but can sometimes extend to even a
few years. During their probation period, candidates
are usually paid a fixed salary as part-time contributors
and receive royalties for every published story. Some
organisations like HTV or Sai Gon Giai Phong run short
introductory courses before sending cadets to specific
editorial sections, where they train themselves through
working with and learning from their senior colleagues
via daily news meetings, professional exchange seminars
and/or mentorship. HTV has been hiring journalism
educators and experienced journalists from overseas,
for example, CNN in the US, Channel 7, Channel 9, the
ABC, La Trobe University and Macquarie University and
Adelaide University in Australia, to train their new and
old staff (Tran Xuan Sum, personal communication).
Even with these programmes, the employment rate
of journalism graduates in the media industry remains
limited. For instance, according to Nguyen Quang
Thong, in its most recent recruitment round, from over
100 applications, Thanh Nien selected 10 candidates for
probation, at the end of which three were given a full
contract and none of the selected three had a journalism
degree (personal communication). He added that of all
the journalism graduates that account for nine per cent
of his organisation’s editorial staff, only about half could
perform to his and the other executives’ satisfaction
within their probation period—the rest had to wait for a
fairly longer time before a full contract could be signed.
Similarly, at Sai Gon Giai Phong, it takes no less than
one hardworking year to turn a journalism graduate
into a prepared journalist (Nguyen Duc Quang, personal
communication). At Thoi Bao Kinh Te Sai Gon of the
Saigon Times Group, a leading weekly economic news
review, two experiments have been tried—the first was
to recruit only journalism graduates and the second
was to recruit only graduates from economics-related
disciplines. Both failed; no candidate was chosen after
attending its retraining programme. The magazine finally
decided to fill the human resources gap by employing
people from its existing network of outside contributors,
some of whom were actually working at other news

organisations (Quoc Vinh, personal communication).
A similar but more aggressive approach was taken by
Tuoi Tre in 2004. In response to its rapid development,
the newspaper decided to recruit experienced journalists
from all over Vietnam. Before being selected for an
interview, candidates had to write a 500–word news story
and a 1000–word feature from supplied raw materials and
then translate the news story into English. The newspaper
set no intake limit this time: all qualified candidates would
be appointed. “We used to look for, and did find some
promising young journalists,” said Huynh Son Phuoc
(2004), the daily’s deputy editor-in-chief in an interview
with Nghe Bao. “However, it took us too much time to
retrain these young people without achieving everything
we would expect. Therefore, this time we want to find
those with extensive and mature experience so that they
can adapt to our newsroom and start right away. This
helps us to quickly strengthen our staff with experienced
journalists while reducing the training cost and shortening
the training time.” However, in a public-service system
where labour is still not widely seen as a market, the
move was seen by some other news outlets as using the
big name of Tuoi Tre to “steal” their hard-earned staff.
Responding to this, Phuoc said: “We opened our door
widely, creating opportunities for those journalists who
have an aptitude and love the job, especially our existing
outside contributors. Certainly, there would be some
writers and editors from other newspapers applying for
our positions, but it is the result, not the aim, of Tuoi
Tre. We don’t look to people from other organisations
but at the same time, we don’t have the right to refuse
candidates from other organisations” (2004: 17).
The danger of all this is that, in their desperate search for
well-trained journalism graduates, journalists and media
executives begin to disregard the role the universities play
in journalism education. As Tran Quoc Toan of The Gioi
Moi commented, “The common mentality in the industry
now is that they don’t need and don’t want journalism
education. Most working journalists themselves learn on
the job, the best ones are often not formally educated,
and journalism graduates are unbearably incompetent
in their eyes; so why should they rely on universities?”
This view was shared by an anonymous interviewee who
felt that the contempt for academia has led to a largely
non-standardised news industry. Showing a copy of his
daily paper, he said:
They (the media executives) simply don’t care about
academia. They think they have all the practical
experience and that’s enough for the job. Indeed,
the so-called training systems in many newsrooms
today are not system[atic] in any sense. They are
more informal networks of experience sharing than
formal approaches to professionalism. As a result,
there is no professional standard—even a stylebook
is still non-existent in a very big newsroom like ours.
Can you see the chaos in this front page? There
are no principles in the design and layout, the use
of types and fonts which have been scientifically
researched for years.
Journalism Education in Vietnam
The young Vietnamese tertiary journalism schools, in
short, are facing a real image crisis, which, if not handled,
might become a crisis of legitimacy. To justify their
existence and the many social benefits it will generate,
journalism schools have to seriously look at what has
gone wrong and to act accordingly. The next section
will examine the current journalism education process
in Vietnamese universities to find out what needs to be
improved.
What’s wrong with the j-schools?
In order to identify the current problems of journalism
education in Vietnam, I conducted a systematic analysis
of the curricula, teaching methods and other pedagogical
aspects, such as teaching facilities, of AJC, VNU-HN
and VNU-HCMC. As AJC has different journalism
curricula for its five specialist branches, it would be too
cumbersome to analyse everything here. For that reason,
only its most established branch, the print journalism
programme will be analysed. Indeed, the five specialist
branches are only different in the professional skills
training subjects being offered. In particular, some
attention was also paid to the national frame journalism
curriculum issued by MoET in 2003, one that universities
have to follow, depending on their specific capacities.
Three research questions guided this analysis: (a) what
is expected; (b) what is being taught; and (c) how are
things being taught. In this section, the findings will be
presented with respect to the data collected from in-
depth interviews. Other methodological details will be
presented as well.
What is expected?
As seen from the previous sections, tertiary journalism
education in Vietnam, like any other discipline, is
heavily controlled by MoET in almost every aspect,
from educational aims and admission requirements
to student quotas and teaching agenda. This analysis
of Vietnamese journalism curricula, therefore, started
with what journalism education is supposed to do in the
national framework. In a rather lengthy, unfocussed and
confusing statement, the frame curriculum states that
Vietnamese journalism graduates are expected to “(a) have
a (high) level of political enlightenment and a firm class
standpoint; (b) have a deep level of patriotism; (c) have
a professional journalism capacity to equally integrate
into professional activities in the region and the world;
(d) have an immaculate ethical standard, healthy lifestyle,
and courageous attitude to participate in the struggle to
protect the policies and guidelines of the Communist
Party and the State of Vietnam, to fight against anti-
regime conspiracies and activities, and to mobilise and
guide the mass in building and protecting the socialist
Vietnam fatherland; and (e) have a high sense of discipline
and responsibility, a professional passion, a serious,
scientific and self-development-oriented working style
on the basis of a full and voluntary awareness of the role
and social status of journalism and mass communication”
(MoET, 2003b: 1).
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In short, two major graduate attributes are expected
for journalism education: a clear and strong loyalty
and commitment to the revolutionary cause of the
CPV and the “socialist fatherland” (items a and d);
and a mastery of professional practices and a sense of
professional responsibility and duty based on a thorough
understanding of journalism and mass communication
theories (items c and e). Of these, the former is obviously
given more priority. This is reflected in one way or another
in the curricula of the country’s journalism schools. For
example, in the VNU-HCMC College of Social Sciences
and Humanities (2004)’s proposed plan for establishing a
journalism department, the overall aim was to generate
journalism bachelors as “both reds and experts”, namely,
those with both political quality and professional expertise
(p. 8). In particular, VNU-HCMC journalism graduates
are expected to “firmly understand the standpoints,
guidelines and policies of the Party and the State; have a
healthy and ethical lifestyle and courage in protecting the
honour and interest of the nation, protecting the Party and
the State’s lines and policies, and protecting reasonable
causes and social equality; have the basic knowledge about
politics, economics, society and culture; have an ability
to analyse and comment on domestic and international
affairs; have a theoretical background and practical skills
in doing journalism; … are able to use journalistic toolkits;
… (and) have a scientific and disciplined working style and
an orientation to self-development on the basis of a full
awareness of the role and social status of journalism and
mass communication” (VNU-HCMC College of Social
Sciences and Humanities, 2004: 8). Notice some of the
interesting differences between the college’s statement
and the above MoET statement, especially the part
indicated in italics.
This comes as no surprise. The overall aim of
Vietnamese higher education in general is “to train
learners to have a political and ethical quality with a sense
of duty to serve the people, to have the knowledge and
professional capacity relevant to the training level, and to
have adequate health to meet the requirement of building
and protecting the fatherland” (MoET, 2003a: 26). That is,
political quality must come first in any tertiary discipline,
let alone a politically sensitive one like journalism. As
Quoc Vinh of the Saigon Times explained:
It’s not difficult to understand. Here, because the
Vietnamese media are the party’s political propa-
ganda mechanism, they quite often don’t care how
good a news or feature story is. Look at the annual
national media awards—they are not for excellent
journalism works; they are for politically correct
ones. So is a university journalism education
programme—it needs to guarantee the “political
quality” of its graduates above and at the expense
of everything, including practical skills.
What is being taught?
This overall aim is well reflected in the structural
composition of the three journalism programmes
in question. In accordance with the MoET’s frame
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curriculum, all the three curricula contain two major
blocks of courses: the general-education block taught in
the first two years and the professional-education block
taught in the last two years. The general block consists of a
range of social science and humanities subjects along with
courses that are compulsory for any Vietnamese student,
including physical and military training, foreign languages
and five political courses—Marxist-Leninist philosophy,
political economy, scientific socialism, the CPV’s history
and Ho Chi Minh’s thoughts. The professional education
block, as its name suggests, contains subjects that cover
different historical, theoretical and practical aspects
of journalism. This is subdivided into four modules:
foundational knowledge for journalism, practical training,
internship and graduation thesis or examination.
In this analysis, however, this structural composition
is not strictly followed for three reasons. First, different
universities have different ways of classifying their
subjects. For example, design and layout is under
the foundational module at AJC but is a practical
subject at VNU-HCMC. Second, some of the general
education subjects, particularly the physical and military
components, are counted in terms of learning units at
one university but listed as a compulsory requirement
for graduation, with no academic weight, at another.
Third, for the purpose of analysing what is being taught
in relation to what is needed in professional journalism,
a classification system utilising journalism as the central
referent will provide more telling information. For
example, some of the social sciences and humanities
courses, such as Vietnamese grammar, might have a direct
influence on the outcome of daily journalistic works and
thus should not be seen as subjects belonging to “general
education”. They need to be classified as complementary
to professional journalism.
Based on these observations, detailed readings
and analyses of the three curricula, with particular
attention to the aims, content and assessment items of
courses, resulted in a classification of seven mutually
exclusive modules. Table 2 presents the number of
courses, academic weight and contribution of each of
these modules to the whole compulsory programme at
the three institutions. Before embarking on a detailed
analysis, two methodological issues must be mentioned.
First, only compulsory courses were taken into account
in this table because (a) it makes it easier to figure out
the minimal amount of knowledge and skills that a
standard journalism graduate of a particular programme
possesses and (b) it simplifies the data analysis because
elective subjects might contain many journalism subjects
at one institution (VNU-HN) but only a few at another
(VNU-HCMC). Second, because of the aforementioned
inconsistency in assigning academic weights to the
military and physical training and of their fairly remote
relationships with journalism, these components were
excluded from the analysis. Therefore, the total number
of compulsory course units presented in Table 2 does
not include military and physical training. The VNU-
HCMC’s journalism programme, for example, would be
seen as requiring 186 rather than 202 compulsory units
 Journalism Education in Vietnam

Table 2
Structural composition of three typical Vietnamese journalism curricula

Module Analysis items VNU-HCMC VNU-HN AJC Print

Programme Programme Programme
Political Number of courses 6 6 6
Academic weight 24 24 25
(units)a
Academic 12.9 12.6 13.2
contribution (%)
Non-journalism social Number of courses 15 17 10
sciences & humanities Academic weight 39 50 33
(units)
Academic 21.0 26.3 17.3
contribution (%)
Journalism Number of courses 15 8 18
background Academic weight 41 22 56
(units)
Academic 22.0 11.6 29.5
contribution (%)
Journalism skill Number of courses 11 11 10
Academic weight 30 39 27
(units)
Academic 16.2 20.5 14.2
contribution (%)
Journalism- Number of courses 10 8 7
complementary skills Academic weight 30 39 27
(units)
Academic 16.1 20.5 14.2
contribution (%)
Internship Number of courses 1 1 2
Academic weight 12 6 12
(units)
Academic 6.4 3.2 6.3
contribution (%)
Graduation Number of courses N/A N/A N/A
Academic weight 10 10 10
(units)
Academic 5.4 5.3 5.3
contribution (%)
Total compulsory Number of courses 58 plus graduation 51 plus graduation 53 plus graduation
programmeb Academic weight 186 190 190
(units)
Academic 100 100 100
contribution (%)

(a) 1 unit = 15 periods; 1 period = 45 minutes

(b) Excluding military and physical training

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MEDIA ASIA, VOL 35 NO 2, 2008
because it contains five units for physical training and
11 for military training.
With the aforementioned considerations in mind, we
can see the following structural composition of the three
analysed journalism curricula from Table 2.
The political module consists of subjects that directly
train journalism students to be committed to the CPV’s
ideologies and policies, including the above five common
political courses along with subjects like party building
(AJC) or the CPV’s standpoint on journalism (VNU-
HCMC and VNU-HN). This module’s contribution is
almost identical in the three institutions: six courses with
26 to 27 learning units (1 unit = 15 periods; 1 period =
45 minutes), accounting for around 13 per cent of the
total compulsory academic weight.
The non-journalism social sciences and humanities
module consists of subjects that provide journalism
students with a general knowledge base to understand
their society and culture. This includes subjects like
introduction to political sciences, economic principles
and laws, introduction to psychology, introduction to the
state and the law, sociological research methodologies
(or probability and statistics), history of civilisations,
introduction to aesthetics, the bases of Vietnamese
culture, foundational linguistics, introduction to logic,
Vietnamese literature, international literature, population
and development and Vietnam’s history. VNU-HN takes
the lead in this module, with 17 courses worth 50 units
(26.3% of the total compulsory weightage), followed by
VNU-HCMC (15 courses worth 39 units, comprising
21% in total) and then AJC (10 courses worth 33 units,
totalling a 17% weightage).
The journalism background module encompasses
theoretical subjects that provide journalism students
with an understanding of (a) general journalism and
communication processes in society or (b) different
aspects of their future job and working environment.
Examples of the first block include communication
theories, foundational journalism theories, media
psychology, media sociology, Vietnamese journalism
history and the world’s journalism history. The second
block can be represented by courses like the journalist’s
labour, introduction to print journalism, introduction
to online journalism, introduction to radio journalism,
introduction to TV journalism, newsroom organisation
and management, the language of journalism,
introduction to journalism works, media laws, journalism
ethics, advertising and public relations and the like. In
this module, AJC takes the lead, with a total of 18 courses
worthy of 56 units (29.5% of the total compulsory weight),
followed by VNU-HCMC (15 courses worth 41 units and
22% in total weightage) and then VNU-HN (8 courses
worth 22 units and 11.6% in total weightage).
The journalism practice module includes subjects with
a certain focus on equipping students with the skills and/
or necessary knowledge to conduct some specific task
in the news production process. It must be noted that
because courses are classified according to their content
and not their teaching methods, not all courses under
this module are primarily skills training. Any course
120
that is focused, theoretically and/or practically, on one
specific set of journalistic skills, namely, interviewing
and news writing, falls under this umbrella. At VNU-
HCMC, this includes 11 subjects—interviewing, news
writing, reportage and other feature genres, media
commentaries, newspaper editing methods, newspaper
design and printing, photography and photojournalism
techniques, television broadcasting techniques, television
programmes, creating television works and radio
broadcasting techniques. These account for 16.2 per cent
of its total compulsory weightage (30 units). At VNU-HN,
there are also 11 courses in this module: news genres;
commentary genres; commentary reportage; literary
and journalistic features; newspaper design; theory
and practice of newspaper and book editing; theory
and practice of photojournalism; theory and practice
of radio broadcasting; theory and practice of television
broadcasting; television production process; and theory
and practice of online journalism. These make up 20.5
per cent of the total compulsory weightage (39 units).
In the AJC Print Journalism Programme, there are 10
subjects within the skill domain: print news; reporting
for the print media; interviewing for the print media;
quick notes for the print media; descriptive articles for the
print media; reportage for the print media; investigating
for the print media; commentaries for the print media;
content organisation and design for the print media; and
editing for print publications. They account for 27 units
or 14.2 per cent of the whole compulsory weightage.
The journalism-complementary skill module consists
of non-journalism subjects that provide students with
skills and/or knowledge that are not journalistic but have
a direct influence on daily journalistic practices and thus
the outcome of journalism works. They include subjects
that directly affecting the quality of writing, namely,
applied Vietnamese, Vietnamese grammar, Vietnamese
vocabulary, or the quality of news gathering, for example,
IT skills and English for journalism, which encompasses all
English courses from basic to specialised ones throughout
the four-year programme. This complementary module
is not unsubstantial: 27 units (14.2%) at AJC; 39 units
(20.5%) at VNU-HN; and 30 (16.1%) at VNU-HCMC.
The internship module, which is generally aimed
at providing students with an opportunity to (a) learn
about the structure, activities and management issues of
a news organisation; (b) learn about the news production
chain; and (c) participate in the news production process
and create journalism works as journalists. Usually, a
student is required to bring back at least four published
articles from this internship (Nguyen Van Ha, personal
communication). At AJC and VNU-HCMC, this is given
a stronger emphasis, being worth 12 units (or around
6.5% of the total weight). At VNU-HN, the internship’s
academic value is only six units (3.2%).
The graduation module can take the form of a thesis
or a written examination. Usually, only students with
high academic achievements are allowed to conduct
the research thesis; the rest have to take the written
examination. At all three institutions, the graduation
component is worth 10 units, accounting for around 5.3

per cent of the total compulsory weightage.
Two major problems could be identified from this
analysis. First, journalism students are forced to learn too
much during their eight-semester programme. In addition
to the military and physical training, journalism students at
the three institutions had to accumulate a total of around
190 compulsory units in a total of 51 to 58 courses (plus
the graduation thesis/examination), which makes up
around 6 to 7 courses a semester. That excludes elective
subjects at the two VNUs (seven at VNU-HN and five
at VNU-HCMC). By comparison, a standard journalism
programme in Australia usually takes three full-time
years with a total of no more than 24 courses. While
the workload and diversity of courses in the Vietnamese
curricula seem impressive and suggests that Vietnamese
journalism graduates are well equipped, the problem is
that the students do not have enough time to effectively
and efficiently learn and “digest” the huge amount of
knowledge. In reality, this has led many students to learn
primarily how to cope with the usually harsh and heavy-
weighted end-of-term exam, rather than to brainstorm,
critically reason and selectively retain knowledge for later
application. This “mind-cramming” educational approach
is, in fact, not only a specific problem of journalism
education but a problem in every discipline and at every
educational level in Vietnam.
Second, according to all of the 12 interviewed
journalists, journalism schools are injecting too much
theory and politics and too little practice into their
students’ tool kits. In reality, political and ideological
content is integrated not only in the subjects under
the political module but also in almost every other
theoretical journalism or non-journalism course. When
the journalism background module is combined with the
graduation module (also theoretical in nature), the total
weightage of mere theoretical journalism courses goes
up to more than a third (34.8%) at AJC, 25.4 per cent
at VNU-HCMC and nearly 17 per cent at VNU-HN.
The VNU-HN’s percentage is far lower than the others
because most of its elective courses, which were not
taken into account, belong to the background module.
If all the theoretical journalism and non-journalism
components are taken together, the overall contribution
of theories—counted by adding the percentages in first
three rows and the graduation one in Table 2—accounts
for 55.8, 61.3 and 65.3 per cent of compulsory courses at
VNU-HN, VNU-HCMC and AJC respectively.
By comparison, when the internship is taken together
with the journalism skills modules, the total academic
contribution of journalism practice-focused courses does
not even exceed a quarter—23.7 per cent at VNU-HN, 20.5
per cent at AJC and 22.6 per cent at VNU-HCMC. This,
in essence, means that the amount of time allocated for
teaching skill-related issues is too little. “With 45 periods
for teaching television programming to a crowded class
of a few dozen students, I could only go like a jet-plane,”
said Tran Xuan Sum about his teaching at VNU-HCMC.
Vu Trong Thanh also aptly remarks, “students hear [more]
about journalism than learn how to do journalism and
to become journalists”.
Journalism Education in Vietnam
On close scrutiny of the above curricula, however,
one might hope that this is not as bad as it appears.
After all, j-schools seem to cover almost every basic
skill that a future journalist needs, from interviewing
and reporting to feature and commentary writing, to
editing, design and layout. If these were appropriately
delivered, journalism programmes would have done a
fair job in producing well-prepared journalism graduates.
The problem is that these already small contributions
of skills-related courses are even smaller in reality. This
is because many of the courses classified under the
journalism practice module, as noted above, are not
necessarily those of primarily practical training. The
criterion for a course to be included in this module was
a teaching agenda focused, theoretically or practically, on
some journalistic skill. Indeed, the practical component
of most of these courses hardly exceeds half of their total
workload. A recent VNU-HCMC journalism graduate
even disclosed that reportage and other feature genres
was a totally theoretical subject taught by a literature
scholar (Nguyen, 2004). Sadly, the in-depth interviews
within this project show that both theoretical issues and
the tiny proportion of skills training are being provided
in a deplorable manner.
How is journalism being taught?
The first oft-mentioned problem is the lack of a systematic
approach in journalism education represented by the
shortage of scientific and updated teaching materials. All
the interviewed journalists were particularly concerned
that many journalism subjects are being taught without
standard textbooks. Until very recently, according to a
well-known reporter and part-time journalism lecturer,
only about 30 per cent of AJC courses had a set textbook
while at VNU-HCMC, no journalism course (except
English for journalism) was based on a standard one
(Huynh Dung Nhan, 2005). Furthermore, those books
available are infused with much politics and written by
senior party media officials. They are mainly memoirs and
commentary books, which must be “accepted, respected
and unblemished” because they represent what the CPV
wants journalism to be (Dinh, 2004: 184). Therefore, most
courses—especially those about professional skills—rely
heavily on self-written lectures. “They teach what they
know and have, not what their students should learn,”
said Quang Thong (personal interview).
The same thing happens at VNU-HCMC and other
universities, according to Nguyen Van Ha, who revealed
that research aiming to upgrade and update the body of
journalism knowledge is still a luxury at his institution.
Furthermore, the knowledge being provided cannot
keep up with modern journalism techniques and
communication technologies. “Some of them still use
textbooks from the former Soviet and East European
system, many of which were written in the 1970s,”
said Hoai Nam (personal communication). Indeed,
many of the course outlines that were read during the
study did include updated English-language textbooks.
These books, however, seem to be listed to make a
good impression to their readers—including education
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authorities—rather than to serve as actual learning
materials, because not many journalism students will
have a command of English which will enable them to
read them. Even if they are able to read them, they would
not have much motivation to do so as assessment would
not be based on the content in these books. They are also
hardly available in bookstores.
The danger of this is not only that students lag far
behind reality but also that, because of their own poor
and outdated knowledge base and other long established
cultural problems, many journalism lecturers provide
students with a lot of information and no chance to
ask about or discuss them. An examination of course
outlines in the above curricula shows that almost every
modern teaching and assessment approach from seminar
presentations, student debates and discussions, to
practical reporting, writing and editing assignments, is
well incorporated. These, again, seem to be presented
more to give a good impression rather than to set
standards for actual teaching and learning. The dominant
teaching approach in most theoretical and many practical
courses, as admitted by three of the four journalism
educators interviewed for this project,4 is no more than
a church minister’s preaching monologue: the teacher
talks, the student hastily takes notes and then learns these
decisive notes by heart for their final examinations. Vu
Mai Nam, who worked for a long time as a high school’s
vice principal before starting his journalism career, was
particularly worried about this. He remarked:
They are teaching a hotchpotch of dogmatic,
hackneyed and empty theories. While these are
from classical doctrines, they are irrelevant in
the context of modern realities. They do not even
respect what is going on in the real world. Much
of the provided theory is subjectively constructed
rather than accumulated from objective research.
Also, everything is severely presented in a “too
proper” machine-like sequence—foundational
history, theoretical basis, current status, problems,
solutions, so on and so on. The number of “liste-
nable” lecturers in the ears of students could be
counted on their fingertips. That’s why students
learn a lot without appreciating much.
Another problem of particular concern is that
journalism is taught by people who have little experience
in journalism and are kept too far behind its development.
“If you go to a journalism department … [and meet] its
staff, you’ll see that the majority of them—the many
professors and PhDs out there have nothing in their
background to do with journalism,” said Quoc Vinh
(personal communication). “They are from philosophy,
politics, literature, linguistics and so on. How can one
teach journalism without knowing what it … [is] like?”
According to Nguyen Van Ha, only one of the 35 internal
journalism staff members at VNU-HCMC has worked as
a full-time journalist (personal communication). The total
number of counterparts at Hue University is zero. AJC is
a little better; according to the data supplied by Mach Le
Thu, three of its current print and broadcasting journalism
122
staff (39 people in total) worked as full-time journalists
before joining academia. To cope with increasing teaching
demands, universities have been employing their own
students. In theory, only those who graduate with some
good academic achievements will be asked to join their
former teachers. In reality, however, good students
rarely stay because they have other higher-income jobs
waiting in the market—and only average “so-so” students
would stay (Dinh, personal communication). Even when
good graduates are attracted, it does nothing to improve
quality in the long term because the major—and usually
only—real-world experience of these new teachers is the
internship during their undergraduate programme. It can
worsen the current situation because the knowledge base
they possess is quite inappropriate. The only thing that
can be hoped about these young teachers is their upward
mobility, or at least their orientation and/or moral duty
to update themselves.
In their attempt to shorten the theory-practice gap,
universities have been inviting experienced journalists to
teach and coordinate some practical courses. In addition
to its 35 internal academics, for example, VNU-HCMC
has another 15 part-time lecturers from the industry,
including senior and well-known journalists and officials
from the government’s media management bodies.
While these lecturers bring with them some “fresh
air from the real world”, this solution is not without
criticism. The anonymous interviewee was particularly
concerned about these unprofessional teachers’ teaching
approach: “They have no training in how to train
students. [In] most of the cases, these journalists are
teaching journalism in an ad-hoc approach.” Probably
more importantly, according to Ngoc My of VoH, “they
do not have any theoretical foundation for what they
teach” (personal communication). “A good journalism
lecturer must have both academic background and
professional expertise,” she said. But to attract good
journalists to a full-time academic career is not an easy
job. As explained by Tran Xuan Sum, these people often
earn good money from their usually senior positions
and/or well-established reputation in the industry while
teaching requires too much hard work with much less
income (personal communication). Nguyen Van Ha
agreed, citing his salary of VND two million (around
US$125) per month. That has not included many other
factors such as the professional passion of journalists and
other privileges. “Frankly, we understand that journalism
is a theory-hyphenating-practice discipline and we have
tried to get people from the industry. We widely open
our arms to welcome them but nobody comes,” said
Nguyen Thanh (personal communication). Even basic
facilities for skills training are not always well supplied.
As Vietnam’s most heavily invested in and powerful
journalism institution, AJC is the best in this aspect,
possessing seven Internet-connected computer labs,
each containing 50 to 100 computers, a radio studio and
a television studio. This strong teaching and research
infrastructure serves its journalism students as well
as courses within government-sanctioned journalism
training projects funded by international organisations.

One of the computer labs and the studios are usually open
day and night, according to Le Thu. With these facilities,
AJC is able to provide students with the opportunity to
produce and publish their own works via an internal print
publication (32 A4 pages, published in 10 issues a year
within AJC) and an internal radio programme (broadcast
three times a week in the dormitory and staff residence
area). At VNU-HN, recent efforts have resulted in the
establishment of a training centre with print, online and
broadcasting instruments worth billions of VNDs (Dinh
Huong, personal interview).
In the other journalism education programmes,
however, teaching facilities are almost absent. Nine years
after starting to offer journalism, Hue University is still
planning to call for industrial and governmental support
to build a journalism practice lab. At VNU-HCMC, a
radio and television studio worth VND one billion (over
US$60,000) was set up in 2003 but this is usually “filled
with dust” because it is seldom used. The aforementioned
VNU-HCMC journalism graduate reported that during
his/her four-year programme, he/she had only two
opportunities to enter this room, one of which was not
to learn anything but to pose for a television news story
about the then new and “magnificent” lab (Nguyen, 2004).
At the time of graduation, some of his/her class fellows did
not even know where that lab was. According to Nguyen
Van Ha, this still happens due to many administrative
constraints that he hoped would be overcome when his
programme gains the departmental status later this year
(personal communication).
Without real playing fields, practical journalism at
these institutions has been delivered in a cursory and
even potentially dangerous manner. Interviewing, for
example, is often practised via “pseudo-interviews”, in
which the teacher acts as a public figure for students to
interview. For news writing, the common approach is to
supply students with some hypothetical situations and
raw data and ask them to put them together into news
stories. On better occasions, a public figure is invited to
the class for some real interviews, or some journalist-
lecturers use their own contacts to arrange field trips
to some organisations for students to collect real data
for their writing assignments; but opportunities like
these remain rare. An even more pitiable situation is
found in the design and layout course at VNU-HCMC:
the lecturer preaches on a lot of theory and then asks
students to cut pieces from different print publications
and manually arrange and paste them together to make
their own “newspaper page”. This is more a problem of
the administration system than of journalism educators
themselves. As Dinh Thuy Hang commented: “Most
of my colleagues want to be kindly and professionally
responsible in their teaching. They really want their
students to achieve something but with this sort of
teaching facility being provided, nobody can do more
than what it is now” (personal communication).
Most of the interviewed journalists voiced their strong
concerns over these “pseudo-practice” approaches.
“They (the universities) don’t even understand what
journalism practice is. Teaching in this way does not help
Journalism Education in Vietnam
students—it can only damage and destroy them,” said
Tran Xuan Sum. For Do Dinh Tan, teaching students via
hypothetical situations is “extremely dangerous” in that it
could produce a generation of “pseudo-journalists” who
go out and rely on their imagination rather than reality
exploration. He further elaborates:
A journalist, above all, has to attach him[self ] or
herself to reality and to find problems and news
issues from that reality. Journalists have to breathe
with their own noses, not with breathing equip-
ment supplied by others; they have to see the world
through their own eyes and think about it with their
own minds. This habit should be established from
their university days. Training future journalists
in the current way is [no] different from killing
journalism.
But the result is not just a whole generation of
journalism graduates who are quickly driven out of
the playing field on which they are supposed to be the
most active players. It is also a generation of journalists
with little or no conscious respect for ethical standards.
“Students not only learn little from classes—sometimes,
under the pressure to fulfil academic requirements,
they become deceitful,” said Tran Xuan Sum. Citing the
fact that many of his television students go out and hire
professional video services to do assignments for them,
Sum added: “Some pass the course without even knowing
where to press the shutter button. Where is the integrity
in these future journalists? Many journalism graduates
today are irresponsible to themselves, let alone to society.
Many enter the media market with the urge to make
money from using the power of the mass media.”
Meanwhile, the internship—the only well-meaning
chance for students to practise journalism—does
not always fulfil its promise. As universities have not
established any official link with the industry, sending
interns to news organisations is not an easy task.
“Generally, news organisations are not eager to receive
interns from universities; it only adds weight to their
already heavy workload,” said Dinh Thuy Hang. In
the interview with The Gioi Moi, Dinh Phong (2003)
further clarified this: “The whole production chain is
already established, so people are not very enthusiastic
when some strangers come in and reverse their working
routines. Moreover, universities send students to news
organisations without paying their trainers as well as
other training costs” (p. 6). A journalism lecturer of VNU-
HCMC described his/her experience as follows: “At some
newspapers, the editor-in-chief bluntly refuses to help
right after we put forth a request. At some others, from
the time we contact until the time some arrangement
is made, students already lose half of their internship
time” (Thanh, 2004: 40). The situation is so bad that at
a conference on international integration in education,
a colleague of this lecturer stood up and said: “[Why]
do we talk too much about international integration for
when there can’t be integration within the same city, …
when a journalism training school producing human
resources for news organisations finds it extremely
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difficult to contact them for its students’ internship”
(as cited in Thanh, 2004: 40). Therefore, according to
both Dinh Phong (2003) and Nguyen Van Ha (personal
communication), most news organisations receive
interns today because their bosses have some social or
personal relationships, for example friends and alumni,
with universities or universities’ leaders.
However, while the bosses may receive these students,
it does not indicate that the employees are willing to
help. As news organisations do not have any formal
training system, how and what a student learns from
their internship depends largely on the ability of the
journalists he or she works with and their willingness to
teach. While some are lucky enough to be assigned to
enthusiastic and responsible journalists, many others are
disappointed at the indifferent treatment they receive at
their internship venues. Sometimes, instead of sharing
their experiences in a learning-supportive environment,
many trainers help students to obtain their four required
articles—and in the process, help themselves to get rid of
the “burden”—by letting students co-author news reports
and feature stories. The situation is even worse at radio
and television stations, where expensive technologies
and tight security measures often prevent students
from touching them, let alone create some work. “Doing
internship at these stations is like riding a horse to watch
flowers and sometimes, students don’t even have flowers
to watch,” said Tran Xuan Sum. “That [does not take]
into account the fact that quite often, students have to
work with some incapable journalists who are employed
more because [of ] their personal contacts with powerful
people or veteran cadres than because of their ability.”
Certainly, some active students still can find their way
around to benefit from their internship both in terms
of learning and making good impressions that could
result in future employment opportunities. In 2005,
one VNU-HCMC student produced a total of 90 news
items during internship. However, in general, according
to Le Quoc Minh, Head of the International Affairs
Department of Vietnam News Agency, the few months
of internship have become a formal procedure that must
be accomplished rather than a chance to “get out there”
and learn from reality (Thanh, 2005). In a very positive
attempt to encourage students to devote more time to
producing works during their internship, VNU-HN
started a new initiative in 2004 that allows students to
use these products for graduation assessment instead of
the usual graduation thesis, which usually takes place at
the same time as the internship. Eight months after its
announcement, only 11 of all the 53 students academically
qualified for doing a thesis (instead of the examination)
in his department registered for this programme. One of
the reasons for this might lie in the difficulties students
face during their internship.
Conclusion
This research has shown that 15 years into its existence,
tertiary journalism education in Vietnam is undergoing
a crisis of image—and even that of legitimacy—in the
124
eyes of the news industry. By unduly emphasising theory
and politics while deplorably overlooking practice,
the young Vietnamese j-schools, in the words of Dinh
Phong (2003), are producing too many journalism
graduates but too few journalists. Not only are they
incompetent in their capacity to practise journalism,
these journalism graduates also display a serious lack
of general knowledge as well as the capacity for critical
enquiry, despite learning a very large amount of broad
and/or in-depth knowledge about society, politics,
culture and mass communications. They lag behind
reality while armed with outdated knowledge and are
largely unprepared to meet the requirements of the job.
Certainly, not everything is irrelevant or useless, as To
Dinh Tuan, a VNU-HCMC journalism graduate and the
only professionally educated journalist participating in
this project, acknowledged. He explained: “For me, the
knowledge I learnt from my university years is extremely
important. It might not have direct values but it forms
the background for every thought of mine. It helps us
to be confident in practising journalism and to have a
strong journalistic reasoning background … Theory is
only one thing but it does have a crucial role, doesn’t it?”
But, in an industry that has relied mainly on hands-on
experiences and is desperately seeking well-trained staff
to meet its urgent development requirements, such a
journalism education system is under serious attack
from all sides.
To be fair, the legitimacy of journalism education is not
a specific problem of Vietnamese universities. Many of the
complaints heard in this project can be found everywhere
in the world, including the more media-savvy countries. In
the US, journalism classes are viewed as a waste of time for
many practitioners, who see the newsroom as the greatest
classroom for journalists (Persis, 1997). In Australia, its
85–year-old journalism education history has often been
criticised over the years for producing an oversupply of
unqualified journalism graduates. At a conference held
in the late-1990s, some metropolitan newspaper editors
even called for participants to question the “disgrace” of
overproducing journalism graduates (Green & McIlwaine,
1999). Recently, journalism educator David Conley wrote
in the introduction of his feature on Australian journalism
education in The Australian: “Want to be a doctor? Study
medicine. Want to be a lawyer? Study law. Want to be a
journalist? Study anything, not necessarily journalism”
(2006: 13). The imbalance between theory and practice
is not unusual in these countries either, as pointed out by
Ricketson (2001):
If many working in the industry are lukewarm or
even scornful of journalism schools, while never-
theless employing journalism graduates, few have
publicly discussed the idea that universities and
newsrooms should play to their strengths. The
debate remains mired in the bog of dichotomy:
theory versus practice. Ivory-tower-dwelling
journalism schools versus on-the-job newsroom
training (p. 91).
Even within the academia, the status of journalism

as a discipline has been seriously questioned and
university administration is not always willing to confer
a departmental status and distribute research funds
to journalism (Henningham, 1990). In 2001, at the
time that it was advancing well as the country’s best
journalism programme, Australia’s only journalism
department—the University of Queensland Department
of Journalism—vanished after its amalgamation with
other communication disciplines, leading to the sudden
departure from academia of its head, John Henningham,
Australia’s first professor of journalism. More recently,
Lee Bollinger, President of Columbia University, stopped
seeking a dean for its Columbia Graduate School of
Journalism on the basis that what the school, a world
leader in journalism education, had was inadequate and
inappropriate. He said, “To teach the craft of journalism
is a worthy goal but clearly insufficient in this new world
and within the setting of a great university” (as cited in
Glasser, 2005).
That is, however, not comforting news to Vietnamese
journalism educators. Rather, it is a reminder that it
will be a long way off before their young programmes
can “conquer” the news industry in particular and
society in general. Considering that many of the world’s
best journalism schools with intensive and extensive
experience in journalism research and education and far
more advanced teaching facilities and methods are still
struggling to gain a firm foothold, Vietnamese j-schools
have even more work to do. They have to act responsively
and responsibly to justify their existence, especially the
many perceived benefits generated for society in general
and the news industry in particular.
Above all, these schools must act more responsibly
towards their students. During the research process,
an impression was formed that certain aspects of the
journalism programmes are not relevant—and in some
cases outright irrelevant—for their potentially talented
students. Their course outlines promise a lot but end
up being impractical. Some courses are set up without
anybody with adequate expertise to teach. Part of the
problem might be that that there is no competition
between the universities. As mentioned above, in a
society where gaining a university degree is too often
the only guarantee to a good future for young people,
there is a common mentality that students need a place
in universities and not vice versa. This is a dangerous
attitude that Vietnam’s universities in general and
Vietnamese journalism educators in particular have to
change. While there is no competitive pressure for the
universities because they are under the state’s protection,
they have, at the very least, a social responsibility to
ensure the future of the media in Vietnam, which is the
very reason for their existence.
What, then, is the social responsibility of journalism
education? For the journalists interviewed for this project,
it is simply to produce skilled graduates whom the media
organisations can use right away or after some minimal
retraining. But, responding to the industry’s pragmatic
need for trained employees is not enough. A university
is not a vocational school that trains students how to
Journalism Education in Vietnam
do something; it also has to educate them about the
processes behind the training so that the students can
practise journalism while meeting and improving existing
standards and developing new ones. For a university
journalism school, it means meeting the short-term
labour demands for skilled graduates while at the same
time enhancing journalism’s standards for the long-term
benefits of society, including the news industry. This
encompasses a move towards professionalism, using
its key content as a guideline for successful journalism
education. While it is understood that Vietnam has its own
socio-political system, the key elements of journalistic
professionalism—the principles of public service based
on an autonomous working culture, a body of journalism
knowledge and a code of conduct that are protected
and developed by a journalist association—cannot and
should not be applied in the country (Henningham, 1990).
Indeed, after years of ad-hoc learning from doing and with
no systematic approach to professionalism, Vietnamese
journalism has proved to be potentially destructive for
society in some respects.
For instance, as a result of the lack of a set of common
professional standards (including a body of specialised
knowledge), journalism is now a sector that any
Vietnamese with some aptitude for writing and passion for
the job can enter. Journalism is too often seen as a branch
of literature and is sometimes called “new literature” in
Vietnam.5 The absence of stylebooks in newsrooms and
of institutionalised news-writing styles like the inverted-
pyramid structure are just a few examples. “You can see it
through the ironical fact that many journalism students
do not wait for their schools [to] teach them how to
do journalism to enter the workforce”, said Tran Quoc
Toan of The Gioi Moi. “With some inherent capacity for
writing, they do it right from the first or second year.
Part of the problem of this easy journalism is that there
is no clear distinction between literature and journalism.
The common thinking is that journalism skills do not
need to be trained formally in schools”. This blurred line
between journalism and literature has many dangerous
implications for journalism practices and for society. One
example was given by Tran Quoc Toan himself, a well-
known novelist living on his income as a journalist. He
questioned: “[Doe]s being able to write [mean] being able
to do journalism, you can find a lot of current working
journalists who sit at their desk, extracting facts from
others’ articles and put them together for their own
articles. Is it ethical? Is this lawful?”
Another symptom of non-professionalism that has
presented itself throughout this research is the failure
to separate public relations from journalism. More than
half of the interviewed journalists saw public relations
as a form of journalism or at least an “intimate friend”
of journalism. In the broader context, many journalism
practitioners see more contacts with PR companies as
some professional success, something for them to be
proud of. How can something primarily serving the
vested private interest of a company or an organisation
of some other type be seen as journalism or a measure
of successful journalism that serves the public interest?
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MEDIA ASIA, VOL 35 NO 2, 2008
The only thing that should and could be in common is,
again, some writing skill. This is potentially dangerous to
society as a whole. For instance, what would happen to the
Vietnamese society if its public is kept informed by news
reports uncritically copied from press releases distributed
by PR companies, whose job is to build good images for
their clients in any possible way, including “white bribery”,
namely, the popular “coffee-money” envelope enclosed
in press clippings at news conferences?
Unfortunately, according to Tran Quoc Toan, the
number of Vietnamese journalists living on press releases
and their enclosed envelopes is substantial today.
The priority of Vietnamese journalism schools is
to resolve these problems in the long run. Sadly, the
research results do not seem to suggest that this is what
journalism schools are doing in Vietnam. As shown
above, the schools’ teaching results in the creation of
journalists with not only poor skills but also with few
professional ideals. Worse still, it does not seem that
professionalism is well understood by them. While stating
professionalism as one of their educational aims, they
are acting as a catalyst for the further expansion of the
many problems associated with non-professionalism.
Public relations, for example, is officially stated as a
targeted labour market for journalism graduates in
their curricula. Additionally, being good in literature is
very often seen as crucial for success in journalism, as
indicated in the entrance examinations into journalism
programmes and in the large proportion of the academic
staff in journalism schools teaching literature. PR is not
always a bad industry—it is helpful for journalism in some
cases—but as an opponent of journalism, and quite often
dubbed as a “weapon of mass deception”, PR should only
be seen as a by-product of journalism education rather
than one of its educational objectives. If universities want
to teach PR, it must be under a programme separate from
journalism. Similarly, I am not suggesting that literature
is not important in journalism but rather that it must
be distinguished clearly and definitely from journalism
in terms of not only writing style but also of the type of
creative work. A journalist cannot sit at a desk and dream
of an imaginary world as a way of data collection. He or
she has to get out there, inspect things, probe for problems
and talk to different people with a questioning mind. In
order to do this well, he or she has to be equipped with
a professional tool-kit that includes not only sharp skills
in news gathering and research, reporting, writing or
editing, but also a sense of duty to their audiences with
professional respect for accuracy, integrity, objectivity,
fairness, balance and privacy.
I do not mean that these standards are absent from
the Vietnamese media but it seems that these are still not
ingrained in many, if not most, Vietnamese journalists.
To change this requires effort from both the industry and
journalism schools. Both have to work together to find
out the best way to reconcile their needs and duties. For
journalism schools, they can consider Stephen Reese’s
(1999) suggestion to generate journalism graduates
with both a set of journalistic skills and habits of the
journalistic mind that would help them not only to practise
126
journalism, but also to practise it responsibly. When a
photojournalist graduates from university journalism
education for example, how is he or she different
from another person learning to take photos from a
private photography business? The basic skills are fairly
similar; quite often, many professional photographers
can produce better quality pictures than a professional
photojournalist. If j-schools want to have a meaningful
existence, they have to make some distinction between the
two by placing an important emphasis on the professional
principles behind everything the journalism graduates
produce. With their firm stand on professional standards,
journalism graduates must then act differently from those
not formally educated, as described by Theodore Glasser
(2005):
Who among us hasn’t wondered if there’s any
meaningful difference between a graduate from
one of our better journalism programmes and a
well-educated liberal arts major who spent sum-
mers interning at a good newspaper and four
school years reporting for and finally editing the
campus daily? I bet there is a difference, and I bet
the difference has little to do with basic skills and
everything to do with rigorous thinking about the
nature of journalism.
To continue the trend of thought, a formally educated
photojournalist is different, not because he knows how
to produce a photo, but because he or she knows how to
produce a photo that depicts reality, upholds its subject’s
privacy and does the least possible harm to a mass
audience. Hence, he or she cannot fabricate a scene to
take a picture or use the computer to make things better
or worse without an ethical justification.
Would the industry like it? Certainly, they would—a
story with fairness and balance (presenting different
viewpoints in a proper proportion) would sell better
than a story that is a monologue. A well-meaning
media business makes money by having an established
reputation, which is based largely on professionalism.
Would this be suitable in the context of a press system
under a one-party system? It probably would, given
recent changes in the Vietnamese government’s control
of the media, which have given the press much more
freedom and power to convey the people’s voices and to
aggressively address the many social, economic and, to
some extent, political problems. Indeed, if done properly,
it would help the party in its nation-building efforts
and strategic development in many ways. Rather than
subjectively examine these aspects here, I would call
for a national policy-based research project to explore
the applicability and feasibility of professionalism of the
country’s media industry.
Of course, that is more easily said than done, given
the lack of financial and human resources in journalism
schools today. But, using this as an excuse not to make
any move can only worsen the situation. There are things
that can be fixed immediately to improve the current
situation, without costing too much. To move beyond
this recommendation, this paper will elaborate on a few

tactical and strategic suggestions that might be helpful
for improving the quality of professional journalism
education in Vietnam in the years ahead.
1. Overhaul current curricula for a stronger emphasis
on practical subjects
Before Vietnamese journalism schools can do anything
substantial, they needs to get themselves out of the
current difficult situation. In essence, j-schools are
doing a great service to the news industry by saving
it the high cost of training. But, the quality of training
must serve the immediate needs of the industrial
stakeholders. The set of skills with which journalism
graduates are equipped is what industrial employers
see directly. Is this individual good at news writing?
Does he have a good news sense, an investigation
capacity that can be developed, or a good voice or
presentation style? Addressing these immediate needs
of the news industry sends a strong message about
quality, which results in a better chance for journalism
educators to get journalism practitioners on board
in a move towards professionalism. Therefore, an
overhaul of the current journalism curricula and
teaching approaches is urgently needed. A stronger
emphasis on practice training should be the primary
aim. This can be obtained by reducing the number of
non-journalism subjects and/or placing less emphasis
on them. In a longer term, when resources are available,
other important subjects that are still missing, such
as news gathering and computer-assisted reporting,
should be added. Also, professional principles on, for
example, how to ensure balance or accuracy or how
to separate factual information from viewpoints,
should be incorporated in these practical subjects.
They should be seen as techniques, not abstract
ideals. In the best approach, the curricula review
might be conducted with the active involvement of
media representatives. Obviously, curricula that are
supported and endorsed by representatives from
different types of news organisations would be those
that are more likely to succeed.
2. Reverse the current temporary allocation of courses
across the four-year programme
At all Vietnamese journalism schools, almost all
journalism subjects are not taught until the third
year. This limits the chance for students to “get out
there” to work and learn right from their first or
second year. If universities equip them with the basic
skills right from these early years, they would have
a fundamental “tool-kit” and more confidence to
start the training process. It is time to change the old
mindset; journalism students do not need to learn,
for instance, how mass communication takes place
in society before being able to practise journalism. It
might be even better for them to accumulate some
practical experience first and then tap on it to enhance
their theoretical learning. This recommendation has
three main benefits: (a) it could serve better as an
immediate measure for universities to reduce the
many problems caused by their shortcomings in
Journalism Education in Vietnam
practical training facilities; (b) it reduces the students’
burden of finding organisations for internship because
by the time of their fourth year, many students would
have their own contacts which will facilitate their
internship arrangement; and (c) it improves the
students’ opportunity for employment immediately
after graduation and thus the reputation of journalism
education. This is potentially promising because
outsourcing—relying on outside contributions—is
very popular in Vietnamese news organisations.
3. Set up news sites for journalism students to practise
as real journalists
With the emergence of the Internet and its
complementary technologies, it is no longer too
expensive to create a real playing field for journalism
students. Digital publishing is cheap and it is multi-
functional due to its multimedia capacity, and it could
be an efficient platform for training many basic skills
in print, radio, television as well as online journalism.
As official news outlets like any other, these news sites
will provide students with a legitimate status to work
as journalists in the real world. It also helps them and
their teachers to familiarise themselves with new
technological developments. With increasingly cheap
and available digital technologies, this is within the
reach of journalism schools that, as shown above, have
been investing billions of VNDs into broadcasting
studios. If they, on their own, cannot afford it, there are
many potential funding sources out there. In addition
to state funding, industrial support—both finance and
professional expertise—should be sought. Journalism
schools must put forth the case that they are saving
a lot of money and resources for the industry. Also,
many domestic and foreign corporations in Vietnam
are running community-support funds and at least
a few would be willing to aid a cause like journalism
education. An example might be to negotiate with
a computer sales company for discounts. Other
funding sources include national and international
development aid organisations as well as private
foundations outside Vietnam.
4. Build up substantial journalism and mass
communication libraries for students and educators
to learn and do research
A national conference should be convened as soon
as possible for Vietnamese journalism educators,
industry representatives as well as educational,
cultural and ideological authorities to come
together and discuss some national plans to enhance
journalism learning and develop teaching materials.
An initiative like setting up a task force of journalists,
journalism academics and professional translators
to review and translate or edit updated textbooks
from developed countries might be a good idea.
Buying the rights to use international journalism
and communication databases such as JSTOR or
InfoTrac is another good option. In addition to this
joint effort, each individual journalism school will
have to develop their own resource base and, at
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MEDIA ASIA, VOL 35 NO 2, 2008
some point, create an inter-library exchange network
so that students and teachers at one university can
use another’s resources. An immediate and helpful
measure could be a collection of available materials.
When collecting data for this research, I was surprised
that the number of recent books on journalism and
mass communication in Vietnamese is not too small.
At a medium-sized bookshop in Da Nang City, where
there is no j-school, a simple computer search resulted
in over 50 books on “communication” and nearly 70
on “journalism”. Many of these books are translated
versions of very recent English and French-language
research books and textbooks. If all or most available
titles are collected for teaching and research purposes,
the number might go up to hundreds, which could
serve as a good starting point. They are also not too
expensive for universities to buy.
5. Change the way journalism students are assessed
The existing heavy weightage on end-of-course
examinations should be abandoned. For practical
subjects, students should not primarily be evaluated
on their theoretical understanding of news reporting
and the like. Their academic achievements in these
courses should be based on what they produce for the
suggested news sites. Not all stories can be published,
but all stories should aim for publication in these
outlets. For theoretical courses, critical thinking and
problem solving should be the core objective. With
a strong library resource and connections to the
Internet, students can be encouraged academically
and professionally in their written assignments to
gradually find where they stand in the world and
form their own “habits of mind”. A good way to link
these theories to practice is to ask students to be
“media watchers”, using their theories to analyse and
criticise good or bad examples and to raise issues in
the media.
6. Get the industry involved
I have included industrial representatives in some
of the above suggestions but still want to emphasise
their involvement in a separate section because it
is critically important for the success of journalism
education. While I do not propose that journalism
schools be totally subject to the industry’s demand,
they should go out of their long-established “ivory
tower” and shake hands with the industry. It helps
them not only to continually appraise how they are
performing with respect to current happenings in
the media labour market but also to negotiate and
form a common set of professional standards that
both the industry and academia can aim for. For
example, a journalism graduate well equipped with
the inverted-pyramid news writing style will obviously
find it very difficult to find a place in a media where
this style is almost absent. In addition, giving the
industry a substantial voice ensures its commitment
to supporting journalism education. At the moment,
there are senior journalists who are willing to help,
but have never been asked. Learning from his
128
French experience, Do Dinh Tan, for example, has
been suggesting that Tuoi Tre’s executives support,
financially and professionally, a publication for
VNU-HCMC journalism students. But, his internal
voice can only be taken seriously when the j-school
approaches the newspaper and puts forth an official
request.
In the long term, a formal national accreditation system
might be set up to maintain the crucial relationship
between producers and employers of journalism
graduates. A committee like the US Accrediting Council of
the Education in Journalism and Mass Communication—
consisting of seven industry representatives and eight
journalism educators who meet every six years to examine
different attributes of journalism schools—might be a
good model for reference (Conley, 2006). Of course,
localisation is always necessary to make sure that the
programme works efficiently and effectively.
It is completely understandable that many of these
suggestions are not easy to realise. For example, will
culture and information authorities license a journalism
school to publish its own news site and if yes, who would
be in charge of the site and be legally responsible for its
operation? These goals are difficult but not unachievable.
The most important obstacle, as Dinh Thuy Hang (2004)
says, is to change the way of thinking among current
journalism educators. The core issue, again, is whether
journalism schools and their administration system are
responsible enough to get started. The key, therefore, is
responsibility, responsibility and responsibility.
Acknowledgement
I am very much indebted to the 18 journalists and
academics for their willingness to respond to the
interviews and to supply the raw materials for this project.
Special thanks are extended to the following journalists
and colleagues for their help in arranging some of the
interviews or supplying the materials: Mr Duong Trong
Dat (Sai Gon Giai Phong), Ms Cam Pho (Sai Gon Giai
Phong), Mr Nguyen Cong Thang (Thanh Nien), Mr Dao
Quoc Toan (The Gioi Moi), Mr Nguyen Trong Tri (VoH)
and Mr Ngoc Vang (Van Hoa). The assistance of Mr
Stephen Logan, Head of Publications at the Asian Media
Information and Communication Centre, is also much
appreciated. This project would have been impossible
without their kind and enthusiastic involvement. Finally,
I am especially grateful to my newlywed, Nguyen Thi
Ngoc Minh, for her enormous understanding and support
during a period when I should have devoted all my time
to being with her.
Notes
1. In fact, AJC is only an institute—Institute of
Journalism and Propaganda as it is named in
Vietnamese—within the Ho Chi Minh Political
Academy rather than an “academy” itself.
However, in this report, I used AJC to respect its
official English name. Also, Dinh Thuy Hang was
interviewed because she is among the very few

Vietnamese journalism educators with a PhD in
journalism from a Western university (University
of Technology Sydney, Australia). Although her
current position is a lecturer, she has recently been
going through formal procedures to take up a
senior position at AJC later this year.
2. My observation is that not all those with the
professional ID cards are actually editorial staff.
Many news organisations are more than happy to
recommend business and administration people
as journalists to the Ministry of Culture and
Information. This is because holding this card
equals enjoying some official privileges (e.g. given
priority on the road) and a fair amount of power.
While it is difficult to estimate the number of
these “journalists”, this false composition could be
compensated by the thousands of real journalists
who are ironically working without a professional
ID, that is, the mentioned increase in the media
labour workforce could be substantiated.
3. Another explanation might lie in the sometimes
corrupt recruitment process in the media. In
informal chats with the author, many senior
journalists who were not interviewed for this have
been complaining that their news organisations are
employing too many people who “have not a bit
of ability but a lot of relationships”. This happens
more often at news organisations where editors
and other management people see their job as
not to compete or to strive for audiences but to
fulfil their political duties. In the interview for this
project, one of the journalists even estimated that
about 30 per cent of his organisation’s employers
were taken in via personal contacts with its veteran
staff members, especially the bosses. That has not
included bribery. At a recent seminar at VNU-
HCMC, an academic had to sadly say yes when
a journalism student asked whether it was true
that there was a newspaper that asked people
to pay VND 70 million to be employed. This is
equivalent to around US$4,500, which, in my
personal estimate, would require a good journalist
at a medium-level news outlet to work hard for two
years to earn. But we cannot be sure how much
this “steals” job opportunities from journalism
graduates.
4. According to Dinh Thuy Hang, there have been
some positive changes in teaching approaches at
AJC in recent years because a substantial number
of its lecturers have been trained within the SIDA
project on improving the quality of journalism in
Vietnam, which is worth $4 million in its second
stage (2004–2007).
5. This is partly a “historical product”, according
to Dinh Thuy Hang (2004: 185): “The idea that
journalism is literature seems to have derived
from a historical concept of the communist press.
For many years the Vietnamese media have been
the conduit of party propaganda, which requires
Journalism Education in Vietnam
journalists to be ‘fluent’, ‘rhetorical’, ‘verbose’ and
‘persuasive’ … Questioning the “why, what and
how factual accuracy and investigative writing
skills are regarded as less essential elements”.
Under the market economy, however, I think this
has vigorously been changing, especially among
those big news outlets competing for readers and
influence like Thanh Nien or Tuoi Tre.
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nghe bao (Changes required for journalism
training approaches). Retrieved from www.
vietnamjournalism.com/module.html?name=News
&file=article&sid=880.
Thuy, N. (2004). Luat va bao chi: chi co dai hoc
cong lap? (Law and journalism: only public
universities?) Retrieved on 17 February
2006 from www.thanhnien.com.vn/TinTuc/
GiaoDuc/2004/12/9/36674/
Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training. (2003a).
Giao duc DH Viet Nam (Vietnam’s Tertiary
Education). Ha Noi: Education Publisher.
Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training. (2003b).
Chuong trinh khung giao duc dai hoc nganh bao
chi (Frame curriculum for journalism education at
universities). Ha Noi: Education Publisher.
Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training. (2005).
Diem trung tuyen vao cac truong DH nam 2005
(Standard scores for entry into universities—2005
intake). Retrieved on 17 February 2006 from
edunet.net.vn
Vietnamese Journalists’ Association. (2000). Fifty years
of the Vietnamese Journalists’ Association. Ha Noi:
Vietnam News Agency.
VNU-HCMC College of Social Sciences and
Humanities. (2004). De an thanh lap khoa bao
chi (Proposed plan for establishing a journalism
department). Ho Chi Minh City.
130
Vu, B. (2003). Bon muon nam noi lao (Forty years of
telling lies). Ho Chi Minh City: Youth Publisher.
List of Interviewees
Newspapers and news magazines
Mr Nguyen Duc Quang, General Managing Editor
and Director of Training, Sai Gon Giai Phong
(Liberated Saigon).
Mr Do Dinh Tan, Deputy General Managing Editor of
Tuoi Tre (The Youth).
Mr Nguyen Quang Thong, General Managing Editor of
Thanh Nien (Young People).
Mr To Dinh Tuan, Deputy Managing Editor, Sai Gon
Giai Phong.
Mr Quoc Vinh, Deputy Editor-in-Chief, the Saigon
Times Group (consisting of five daily and weekly
publications in Vietnamese, English and French).
The head of research and training of a major daily that
requested anonymity.
General interest magazines
Mr Vu Mai Nam, Director, Khoa Hoc & Doi Song
(Science & Life)’s Ho Chi Minh City Bureau.
Mr Tran Quoc Toan, Head of the Domestic Affairs
Department, The Gioi Moi (New World Magazine).
Mr Vu Trong Thanh, Deputy Editor-in-chief, The Gioi
Moi.
Broadcasting organisations
Ms Ngoc My, General Managing Editor, Ho Chi Minh
City People’s Voice (VoH).
Mr Hoai Nam, Head, Department of Science and
Education Affairs, VoH.
Mr Tran Xuan Sum, former Deputy Training Manager,
Ho Chi Minh City Television (recently retired).
Journalism departments/programmes
Mr Nguyen Van Ha, Head of Journalism, Department
of Linguistics, Literature and Journalism, Vietnam
National University in Ho Chi Minh City (VNU-
HCMC).
Dr Dinh Thi Thuy Hang, Lecturer, Department of
Broadcasting Journalism, Academy of Journalism
and Communication (AJC).
A/Prof Dinh Huong, Head, Department of Journalism,
Vietnam National University in Ha Noi (VNU-
HN).
Dr Nguyen Thanh, Head of Journalism, Department of
Linguistics and Literature, Hue University.
 Summing Up
Identifying Generic Problems and Recommending Solutions for Improving the
Status and Relevance of Journalism Education in Asia
T he earlier chapters presented case studies of five
countries on the status and relevance of journalism
education in Asia. The sheer diversity and the vastness
of the Asian continent makes it impossible to capture all
the individual subtleties and essences of the journalism
programme in each country. However, there is an
increased demand and an urgent need to address the
status and relevance of journalism education. This is
mainly because of the explosion in media and journalism
outlets in the region.
Most of these countries have witnessed, and are still
witnessing, a phenomenal boom that is leading to an
increased demand for trained media and journalism
professionals. This has led to a spurt in the number of
colleges and institutes offering media and journalism
courses and in most cases, in an unregulated manner.
This final chapter is a holistic summary of the
relevance and the status of journalism education in the
present within these countries in Asia. It will identify
generic issues and problems that are indicative of most
of the programmes in these countries specifically and
on the Asian continent generally. While identifying such
problems and challenges to journalism education, some
possible solutions will be presented at the end as well.
Problems
In most of these countries, there is no journalism or
communication education-specific professional body
to set specific standards, regulate and police them to
ensure compliance except in a few controlled societies
wherein the purpose is more to ensure adherence and
loyalty to the government and prevent an independent
press than anything else. Some of the generic problems
that were identified in this multi-country study include
the following.
The increased demand for media and journalism
professionals has led to a variety of training programmes
and of varied durations. They offer different degrees,
diplomas and on-the-job training programmes with
different focuses as well. For example, a bachelor’s
degree could be a “Bachelor of Journalism”, “Bachelor of
Communication”, “Bachelor of Television Production” or
a number of other titles. Similar is the case with diplomas
and the duration of the courses. Some are two-year
courses while some are of only a few weeks’ duration.
In addition, the shift to include courses and degrees
offering specialisations in advertising, public relations,
Sundeep R. Muppidi
events management, for example, under this rubric only
muddies the picture further.
In terms of the “content” of journalism education,
there are problems with what is to be taught. There
are strong advocates for all perspectives with a strong
rationale for the viewpoint they advocate. For example,
some insist that media and journalism courses should
focus on “skills training”, others stress on the “liberal arts
emphasis”, some others advocate a mix of both, and some
others believe in recruiting from other social sciences and
imparting “on-the-job training” in newsrooms. There is
definitely a broad spectrum between those advocating
skills-based courses and those advocating regular and
interdisciplinary liberal arts education.
In terms of the “philosophy” of what is to be taught,
there is a basic confusion with the role and function of
journalism itself. The much-bandied terms “watchdog
of society”, “fourth estate”, and other similar functions are
used in the same breath as “profit motives” and “audience
ratings”, now conceded to be important in journalism.
Some argue there is a shift away from “professional
journalism” to “sensationalism” or “ratings-driven” stories
to even promoting one “ideology” over another, religious
or otherwise. Across the board, there is a demand for
professionally trained journalists but there is no systematic
and consistent procedure outlined for doing so for skills,
critical ability, and stress on output, rather than the process.
There is also an increase in advocacy journalism.
Whatever is to be taught takes a back seat to the
fundamental problem that all programmes face, namely,
infrastructure and resource limitations. This includes
a lack of proper infrastructure, from hardware and
buildings to libraries, equipment and trained faculty. This
resource crunch is severely limiting also because the stress
is mostly on a “West-based” perspective of journalism
training. Considering the expenses of acquiring books
published in the West, it is all the more limiting.
While most of these countries have a viable and strong
media and journalism industry, there is a severe lack of
industry support for broad-based journalism education.
As most authors have pointed out, the schools produce
graduates with journalism and communication degrees
who are not necessarily well-trained journalists, leading to
a situation of “too many bachelor’s degrees in journalism
but not enough journalists”. This is also because these
graduates are mostly ill-equipped for the newsroom, and
also seem to expect glamour instead of hard commitment
on their jobs.
131
MEDIA ASIA, VOL 35 NO 2, 2008
In terms of journalism and journalism education
history, there does not seem to be much systematic
documentation. Most of the erstwhile colonies under
the British, French, Dutch, and other colonial powers are
independent countries today. The origins of journalism
and journalism education are especially rooted in that
colonial period and are strongly influenced by their
colonial histories. However, most of them are really
profit-making enterprises today.
Solutions and Recommendations
While specific solutions relevant to the idiosyncratic
differences of each country need to be provided on a case-
by-case basis, some of them as mentioned below can be
generic and applicable to all countries in the region.
The primary thing that needs to be done to improve
the status and relevance of journalism education in
any of these countries is to set up an independent
professional regulatory body that is tasked with laying
out the standards and the specifications for all institutions
offering journalism, media and communication
courses. These standards and specifications should
include guidelines on content, nomenclature, duration,
internship requirements, infrastructure and other
resource specifications that will ensure a consistent course
curriculum across the nation. A policy organisation like
the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre
(AMIC) can serve as an umbrella organisation to provide
expert consulting and guidance to all nations that have
such a need.
In terms of content, interdisciplinary study in relevant
humanities and social sciences needs to be encouraged
to provide a rich background for all aspiring media
professionals. These can be determined based on the
specialisation offered. For example, those interested in
becoming foreign correspondents may be required to take
courses in international relations and political science,
while those interested in becoming science or health
journalists can be required to take courses in related
biological sciences. Teaching how to write a journalism
story is necessary but not a sufficient requirement for
nurturing a good journalist. All programmes should
also work on developing and requiring an internship
experience while the students are in the programme.
This means that each institution will need to develop
132
collaborations with local media houses. This will serve
both parties—the internships which will give real-life
training to the students and the media houses which will
also be able to tap into well-trained local talent.
All good programmes need sufficient funding and
relevant training equipment to offer good education.
This can possibly be developed with planned grant
support from the oversight body and help from private
foundations. Alumni support can also be harnessed over
a period of time for longer-term goals.
Another important recommendation is that all
programmes develop on-campus student newspapers
and clubs—a purely voluntary outlet run by the students
and out of their own interest. This can also become
professional money-making enterprises if successful, as
the students can then choose to take on real clients.
Most of the countries in Asia have strong cultural
and literary backgrounds in various languages. Hence,
a planned approach to developing and publishing books
and training materials relevant to local conditions is also
important. A stronger emphasis also needs to be placed
on providing linguistic journalism and encouraging
local knowledge and techniques. This is an important
criterion for journalism in countries like India so training
courses need to stress that aspect. Such an approach also
supplants Western influences and encourages localisation
and relevance.
While resources need to be developed over a period
of time and in a planned systematic manner, there is also
a need for periodic refresher and orientation sessions for
the journalism faculty. All faculties need to be provided
with incentives for retraining and more professional
development opportunities. This will increase not only
their motivational levels, but also provide them better job
satisfaction, thereby leading them to give their best. All
faculties should be required to do research on, publish
and present their papers at professional conferences, and
be provided the opportunity to do so.
Finally, the world is witnessing a phenomenal change
with the diffusion and proliferation of new communication
technologies. It is important to address the challenges
of new media and convergence while developing new
journalism-training curricula in every country. This will
ensure that all these countries leapfrog into the future
information society without necessarily losing out in the
present one.
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Martin, D. G., & Sengupta, S. (1998). Turning the ‘domino
theory’ upside down in Asia: Advertising and Singapore’s
cultural evolution. Asian Journal of Communication, 8
(2), 148-166.
• Articles in daily newspapers; No author
A day of devotional frenzy. (1995, September 22).
Hindustan Times, p. 1.
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violence. New York: John Wiley.
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Lozare, J. B. (1989). The concept and values of Socioplay.
In A. B. Cheong (Ed.), Social values in development (pp.
1-150). Chicago: Chicago University Press.
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Anwar, S. E. (1968). Modernization and youth. PhD
dissertation. Bangladesh: University of Dhaka.
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