**1. Introduction**

Globally, journalism education has changed significantly over the past decade to keep abreast with the profession which has been through huge upheaval. The profession is transforming itself to keep relevant with the technological, audience and business model changes. It has also to deal in many countries with declining public trust in journalists and increased threats to both journalists' safety and media freedom. The challenge for educators and the profession is only just beginning given unrelenting pace of change. This research used the UK journalism profession as a case study of a profession in a state of change. It asked what were the changes in the profession since 2012. The implications of these changes for future professional UK journalism education were then analyzed.

Educators must plan for this ever-changing profession's future, and prepare teachers and students to cope with even greater turbulence throughout their careers. Frost [1], one of the world's longest serving journalism educators, does not underestimate the challenge. He said that the education bodies face the future where the boundary between the digital and human world become increasing blurred and the technical future may be something not even the most far-fetched sci-fi films could have predicted. Frost [1], postulated that a key future challenge will be teaching those in the profession to learn: "Journalism education also needs to take more seriously the need to not just train journalism students but to give them the tools to deal with a fast-moving world where things can change almost month by month". Across the globe journalism education is becoming professionalized mainly in courses at private universities. While country specific journalism culture dominates, the curriculum generally is moving to more uniformity globally. There are now over 30 national journalism education associations linked with the World Journalism Education Council (WJEC), the main global journalism education body. There is a strong exchange of information between them on the curriculum.

But the need for greater technical knowledge and agility has, in many countries, re-ignited the long-running debate at the center of global journalism education. This is the tension between the practical on the job training versus intellectual education. For this reason, in many universities' journalism education has been on the fringe of their activities as it lies across professional training and the liberal arts. Folkerts [2] said that "News professionals and university educators pondered whether journalists needed to be college-educated, whether they needed a liberal arts degree, or whether they needed professional education that combined liberal arts and practical training. This debate still rages today around the globe with no international uniform system for journalism education".

Hirst [3] concurs that the same debate is happening on the other side of the globe: "In Australia and New Zealand a key area of discussion is around attitudes towards the concept of professionalism in the practice, training and scholarship of journalism". It has also fueled the debate on how much attention should be given to teaching ever-changing technical skills and traditional news gathering skills. Research conducted amongs<sup>t</sup> veteran American employers indicated disquiet that training of online journalists, in particular, has become too skewed towards technical skills and away from the key tradition skills of information gathering, verification, writing and publication. Ferrucci [4] said: "This study finds that, while veterans said educators are doing a good job teaching technology, there is too much focus on it to the detriment of traditional journalism skills". But the bigger question facing educating the next generation for the profession is how you teach the skill of learning to learn on top of the already packed curriculum of traditional journalism skills. Frost [1] said: "Training simply for today's world is no longer good enough and lets our students down—students need skills for a future".

The added complication is journalism is a profession usually serving several often competing masters-the public's right to information, holding those in authority to account and the business interests of the employer. Given these triple requirements, education within the profession has become even more important. Particularly in a world where there is an increasingly contested information environment via censorship, propaganda or fake news. Richardson [5] argued that journalism is being constantly undermined by a determined counter-offensive that purports to show that 'truth' and 'accuracy' are pliable concepts in the hands of the mainstream media. Journalism educators, Richardson argued [5], have to confront this dilemma and affirm within the classroom the priority of the basic tenets of the job. "Not just reporting accurately and capturing balance, but committing to a process of verification that shows the rigor behind the best kind of journalism". The former editor of The Guardian Peter Preston [6] took it further: "Journalism may put you or your family at risk. Journalism offers no proper career structure. But journalism is also fundamental and necessary. Without it, there is no proper freedom". The Irish Times [7] editorialized too in 2018 about the importance of particularly investigative journalism: "The fundamental fact is that investigations-a basic rationale of journalism itself - are one of the ingredients of democracy". Thus, the importance of a robust professional education system as the profession has a strong ethical and public interest requirement in addition to technical skills. The aforementioned gives the background about what are the key debates around professional journalism education internationally.

## **2. Materials and Methods**

The primary data used in this paper are the Journalists at Work 2018 survey of 885 working journalists across the United Kingdom from a population of 73,000 journalists. The survey was sent to all major employers who were asked to forward it to employees as well as to industry bodies such as the National Union of Journalists and the Society of Editors. Journalists self-selected whether to complete it. The questionnaire was overseen by the board of the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ), the largest journalism education accrediting body in the UK. It was processed by Spilsbury Research and BMG Research, England. The response rate and results to the questionnaire were comparable to that of similar Journalism at Work studies in 2002 and 2012. These are also used in this paper for comparison purposes. The response rate for them was slightly higher than in 2018 at 1238 and 1067 respectively. But the 2018 response sample size, given it was random, was sufficient to provide reliable findings. The questionnaire was supplemented with other data from several sources including the UK Office for National Statistics' household survey, the annual Labour Force Survey and UK Higher Education Statistics Agency data. Documentation from the NCTJ relating to curriculum change, diversity and changes in the profession, was also reviewed. So too, surveys by YouGov on the reputation of various professions. This was supplemented with 11 formal and informal interviews with key stakeholders and educational providers. A review of the British and international literature on journalism education and changes in the profession was also conducted to put the UK changes into an international perspective.
