Schooling in China

BEIJING

Tsinghua University

In April, 15 City Financial Journalism students travelled to China, first to Beijing and then to Shanghai. For the first week, students were based at Tsinghua University’s Global Business Journalism department in Beijing. The week started with lectures on understanding media policy and development by Min Hang, Director of the Global Business Journalism Program. Students also participated in the panel discussion with Tsinghua journalism students on business news data mining and analysis led by Lee Miller, Editor-at-Large for Bloomberg News.

Zhenzhi  Guo, PhD, Professor of Broadcasting History sparked students’ interest with a fascinating discussion of the difficulties faced by broadcasters relating to censorship and political interference. Qingan Zhou, Director of International Communication Program and an anchor at CCTV, provided an international perspective on public diplomacy and relations in China. The very productive week was topped off by a lecture on multi-media and how it has changed journalism in the USA, China and around the world.

Students heard from Rick Dunham, a veteran political journalist and one of America’s foremost authorities on the use of social media for journalism. During the whole week students were accompanied and lectured by top academics and experts in the industry who introduced them to a very different reporting and editorial culture.

SHANGHAI

Fudan University

On Sunday April 27, students moved to another cradle of the financial world – Shanghai. They were warmly welcome by Fudan University, one of the oldest and most selective universities in China. The programme was very vivid and business-like and students had lots of opportunities to see how the financial industry works from inside. 

They started with a lecture on Applied Media Management by Dr David Maguire, a former journalist at Shanghai Daily and former editor of Sunday Morning Post in Hong Kong. Doug Young, Reuters Correspondent and author of “The Party Line: How the Media Dictates Public Opinion in Modern China”, took students through group exercises on how both Chinese and foreign media report financial news in China, and the challenges and restrictions of their reporting.

“A complete educational, cultural and social adventure”

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.”