Convergence

So the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) and the Broadcast Journalism Training Council (BJTC) are to work more closely together (couldn't find an equivalent article on the NCTJ website).

In many ways not before time. The trick will be for each body to learn from the best aspects of the other.

Here in Cardiff we have a problem with the NCTJ and could possibly give up NCTJ accreditation for our newspaper Postgraduate Diploma. As Peter Preston wrote in last Sunday's Observer.

It’s basically a question of exemptions, from the public admin and legal bits of the courses. Why should long-suffering students be required to sit exams twice over, with a pile of shorthand thrown in? And why should the finest academic essayists have to play tick boxes and short, sharp answers to start on a local weekly at £13,000 a year? If Cardiff, say, were to go it alone, would any of their students really suffer?

City University have already abandonned the NCTJ and the University of Central Lancashire are also close to pulling out too.

The BJTC has so far not attempted to introduce its own qualifications. It has based its accreditation of courses on observed outcomes along with a set of guidelines to which it expects courses to conform.

This approach suits the wide variety of academic institutions which offer BJTC acccredited courses though, most agree, cracks are beginning to show.

A wider variety of courses from a wider range of course providers seriously challenges the BJTC's approach which was developed in response to a handful of pioneering University based postgraduate courses.

Now similar University courses are challenging the NCTJ approach which comes from a very different starting point.

There is massive room for a meeting of minds here.