Marjorie Deane Financial Journalism Summer School (MAFJ) was launched in 2014 and is an exciting educational initiative aimed at aspiring financial journalists, helping them to enhance their knowledge and open up new career horizons. Students on City University’s MA in Financial Journalism (MAFJ) were offered the opportunity to travel to New York and China to study business and economic coverage in a global context. This followed the setting up of partnerships with several leading universities – New York University (NYU) in the United States along with Fudan and Tsinghua Universities, in Shanghai and Beijing. Students agreed it was an “educational, cultural and social adventure.”
The MAFJ programme is led by Professor Steve Schifferes, who is the Marjorie Deane Professor of Financial Journalism at City University London. The summer school director is Linda Lewis, who was acting Programme Director, MA Broadcast and Television Journalism. She designed the summer school curriculum and together they accompanied 15 MAFJ students to China in April 2014 and hosted students from NYU on their visit to London in May, with a further 11 students travelling to New York in June.
Professor Schifferes says:
‘This new programme demonstrates the attractiveness of City’s financial journalism programme to leading journalism departments around the world. It is a vital component in our educational approach which stresses the global nature of business and economic coverage, and provides valuable insights into the two key financial world to supplement our own close ties with London as a leading financial and media centre.”
In May, City University’s Journalism Department hosted NYU business journalism students in London, who also attended classes at City’s journalism department as part of a mutual exchange. Accompanied by the City students, they had various lectures on the euro-crisis, the austerity plan in the UK, and visited the Bank of England, the Economist, Thomson Reuters and the BBC.
Linda Lewis said:
“This has been an exciting opportunity to expose students to other cultures, with different approaches to the media. The fantastic collaboration we have established with leading journalism schools in China and New York has enabled students to combine the best of academic teaching with practical experience in both these centres.”
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