Exhibit JC42 - The Leveson Inquiry

For Distribution to CPsDevelopments in the Practical Journalism Component of the Diploma for Journalism 1935-1939 ioncluding a Termly Examination from 1937 onwardsChapter EightDevelopments in the Practical Journalism Component of the Diplomafor Journalism 1935-1939 including a Termly Examination from 1937onwardsDevelopments in Practical Journalism, 1935-1939Before attempting a perspective on the achievements of the LondonUniversity Diploma for Journalism it is as well to take into considerationwhat the King’s College Course Tutor for Journalist Students, the manresponsible for the educational progress of these students, thought aboutthem and their prospects. In his 1935 address to the Institute for JournalistsDr. Harrison stated that, intellectually, the men were too often of lowerquality than the women, although he also had to warn the women theirchances of getting posts were slight. It was his opinion, even though he feltjournalism had not then realised the possibilities of women journalists, that,of 80 women on the course, 40 were only there to escape their mothers, orto make up the deficiencies of an education at some select school foryoung ladies; while perhaps 20 seriously hoped to become journalists.It was also his opinion that too many students ’found a refuge in thecourse’ and that too many of them were ’third rate, who (would) becomejunior reporters on county papers and then stick. ’1 This could explain whyone student who won the Newspaper So(~iety Exhibition for 1935-37,Howard J. Whitten, remained mildly astonished, in 1977, that so few ’of mybrighter contemporaries monopolise the hottest seats in Fleet Street. ’2 Withhindsight Dr. Harrison commented that the Diploma for Journalismstudents: ’were more interesting than the conventional kind, but we didattract some who thought the course an amiable way of spending a coupleof years after leaving school. ’3While ’scholarship boys’ could win places to Oxbridge to take honoursdegrees others found it difficult to get local authority grants to study for theDiploma and one, Geoffrey Pinnington, had to repay his as a loan, after theSecond World War, while he was working his way up through localnewspapers. In conversation with the author he declared that if he had triedfor Oxford or Cambridge, as his schoolmasters wanted, he would have wona scholarship place. As it was he came first in the Journalism ExhibitionExam for 1937 (Appendix XXXIla, pp. 278-81) where his war-widowedmother’s income is listed as ’nil’. Possibly because of the kind of studentwho could afford the fees one former student, David Dunhill (1936-37),described his feelings on first meeting Tom Clarke: ’Perhaps it was just myfancy; but Tom Clarke eyed us, the newcomers, with scarcely veileddisdain. We can’t have seemed to him the kind who were going to make a140MOD100051311