For many of us it is easier to decide what we don’t want to be than make the hard so-called ‘grown up choice’ of choosing a career.
School is a compelling leveller here. Maybe you went through classes thinking I am not going to be a scientist, biologist, physicist, chemist or mathematician. Geography seems improbable, and historian as a career? Similarly, many of us have been turned off accountancy or business.
Maybe you are working now, thinking this is a stopgap and not know what you want to spend the rest of your life doing. Maybe your undergrad degree just isn’t the long-term direction you want to take.
Journalism as a career
How about a career in media? This means having the skills to work in broadcasting, radio, TV, online, print, and publishing. Griffith graduates are also people working in public relations, marketing and advertising.
They are writers, reporters, presenters, producers, content creators, interviewers, researchers, curators, and broadcasters.
What links all these occupations together is that the people are involved in creating content. It could be a radio show, a TV series, a news broadcast, designing a website, making a YouTube video, launching a podcast, or just writing an article, like this.
They are all harnessing ideas into words, pictures, and sounds, sometimes all three to communicate with an audience and hopefully get paid along the way. This is the world of modern journalism. You are a media generalist able to take photographs, film events, record interviews and write articles, and edit all these formats for public consumption.
Our graduates are journalists online, on radio, TV and in print. They are also film makers like MA graduate Robert Higgins. His Lakelands film was in cinemas across Ireland this year. Our graduates are fiction writers, historians, or have set up their own firm in everything from Public Relations to vegan foods.
Media matters more than ever
This is an exciting time to work in media, to be that journalist. Media matters more than ever, and people are consuming more news, reading more, while also watching and listening in growing numbers, and there are a range of careers in these areas.
Think about what you know of the war reporting, or the reviews from one of the many summer music gigs and events. It’s all journalism. From news on the housing and health crisis to investigations into organised crime or the never-ending cycle of what celebrity did what with whom.
Media workers, whether they are journalists, or some form of content creators are in demand across the communications sector. The work is stimulating and constantly changing. Wherever there is a website there is a need for content creators and there is significant growth in demand for journalists across radio, television, print and online. Journalists today work seamlessly across these mediums.
Griffith Graduates from our programmes build up the key skills needed to be a successful media worker, whether it is learning to write for TV, online, radio or print, or to work in live radio or TV, or maybe develop a podcast career. They are film and documentary makers, press photographers, writers, layout and web designers. Our students have access to industry standard facilities with equipment, labs and studios available seven days a week.
Within the first weeks of arriving on campus, our students are learning to make media. This includes how to film and edit on your phone, how to hone your online writing skills and negotiate the key media software packages like Adobe Premiere. They are learning digital photography and then the challenge of live radio. As they go through the programme they build and deepen these skills.
We have graduates working across the media spectrum in Ireland, from the leading newspapers to the studios of RTE, Newstalk and Virgin Media News. They work in Google, Facebook and other social media platforms. They can also build careers in public relations and marketing. Some have built successful companies, all from those first steps of learning how to write an article, focus a camera, or record an interview.
So, think about an undergraduate degree from our BA in Communications and Media Production, or one of our three Master’s in Journalism and Media Communications, Journalism and Public Relations or TV and Radio Journalism.
Visit www.griffith.ie today and find out more.
