Master's in Electronic Publishing

This programme, which has run successfully since 1997, is jointly delivered by the Department of Journalism and the School of Informatics. It combines elements of journalism with design and technology and is ideally suited for someone wanting to work in online journalism and other interactive digital media careers.

Graduate job prospects

Graduates from the programme are working in journalism, for example as:

  • Web Producer at Telegraph.co.uk
  • Interactive Producer at BBC
  • Deputy travel editor TimesOnline.co.uk
  • Production manager at TimesOnline.co.uk

 

Others are doing a wide range of jobs across the media as well as in business and the non-profit sector, for example:

  • Editor-in-Chief, European Websites, Sony Europe
  • Internet Content Manager, British Government’s Cabinet Office
  • Digital Media Manager, International Rugby Union
  • Strategic Planning Director, Craik Jones Watson Mitchell Voelkel Ltd
  • E-communications Manager, Youth Justice Board
  • Communications Manager, Open Learn (Open University)
  • Commissioning Editor, English and Theatre Studies, Palgrave / Macmillan publishers
    and many more.

 

You can see that this programme opens up a range of career options including, but not limited to, journalism.

Reputation in online journalism

The Master’s in Electronic Publishing programme has excellent reputation with, and contacts in, the online journalism industry:

 

  • One of this year’s students, Ben Lamothe, is currently interning at Telegraph.co.uk
  • EP student Merja Myllylahti’s Master’s thesis on the fate of newspapers, like the Seattle PI, who go kill the print edition and go online-only, received huge coverage this April: it was covered by The Guardian, The Independent, The Wall Street Journal, The Sydney Morning Herald, Journalism.co.uk, The Columbia Journalism Review, and many more.
  • EP student Ben Lupton won ‘best paper’ at the 9th International Symposium on Online Journalism in Austin, Texas, for his Master’s thesis ‘Convergence Calls: Multimedia Storytelling at British News Websites’. The study was covered by the Press Gazette and others.
  • EP student Jack Herbert interviewed all the online editors of the UK’s national newspapers for his Master’s thesis: ‘Paid Content Strategies for News Websites: An Empirical Study of British Newspapers' Online Business Models’.
  • EP student Charles Perrins worked with SunOnline.co.uk for his prize-winning dissertation project, analysing their search data and online advertising campaigns.

Practical course content

The course is also highly practical. In the first term students plan, write and publish a content-rich multimedia website. Lectures and seminars on web writing, user-generated content, and the effective use of multimedia are complemented by hand-on workshops. In the fast-changing web publishing environment the content of these workshops changes rapidly and may include blogging, RSS feeds, Twittering, streaming audio and video and mashups using, for example, Google maps. In addition students receive a solid grounding in: the lingua-franca of the web-XHTML; and the production of semantic markup. Find out more about the content of the programme.

Top-quality teaching

The teaching team for this year’s EP course includes:

  • Chris Brauer, former editor of PA News Centre and part of the team responsible for the rollout of Ananova, the world’s first digital newsreader.
  • Neil Thurman, the widely-published online journalism scholar and web publishing practitioner. Neil is happy to answer any questions about the programme on: 07813 009590 or neilt@soi.city.ac.uk

The changing face of journalism

Journalism, indeed the whole of the media industry, is going through enormous upheavals. The increased importance of convergence, interactivity, digitisation, web and mobile platforms, user-generated content, and multimedia are changing the opportunities available in the industry. Take, for example, these recent headlines from Journalism.co.uk

 

  • ‘Telegraph appoints digital specialists'
  • ‘Trinity Mirror makes digital appointments’
  • ‘Telegraph names Maani Safa as head of mobile’
  • 'PA makes senior appointments in multimedia expansion’

 

We can help you understand the changes taking place in journalism and equip you for the career challenges ahead, with our Master’s in Electronic Publishing.