Exhibit JC42 - The Leveson Inquiry

For Distribution to CPsHacks and Dons - Teaching at the London University Journalism School 1919-1939: Its origin,development and influence.Appendix XXXVIINotes on Journalism Course. 1936 by Tom ClarkeThe case for centralisation of a specialist Course with the peculiar necessities ofJournalism has not been newly made out. It was made out more than five yearsago, before I had any direct connection with the course, when the JournalismCommittee recommended it.My own first-hand experience as Director of Practical Journalism in the pastyear makes me feel it a duty to endorse that recommendation. I do so entirely as aperson with 30 years experience in the executive and administrative fields ofmodern journalism; and I do so in the interests of the course and its successfulcontinuance.It does not matter at which particular college the course is centralised, butcentralised it certainly should be. The case for centralisation was stated, as I say,more than 5 years ago. It was stated again this year, when, after long discussion theJournalism Committee, voted, except for University College representatives, infavour of centralisation.It is not for me to go over that ground again. The arguments for and against arebefore you. My task, I take, is to explain the difficulties of the present system asthey have become apparent to me since I took up the Directorship of the practicalwork of the Course.These difficulties are very real as far as I am concerned. It is not my province todiscuss the academic side. Yet it does seem to me that one difficulty bearing on thequestion is that the two colleges mainly concerned have different opinions as towhat this course should be. There are two conflicting policies.One takes the view of a general cultural course; the other a view of turning outpeople for a career in journalism. Now a great part - the major part - of the course,must obviously be cultural. I would be the last man to wish to reduce theintellectual training. But the purely cultural policy brings in many students neitherfitted for journalism, nor helpful to the Course.The more definite career policy reveals the Course as it is understood andaccepted by the profession, and, if but in small degree at the moment, is backed bythem. Some day to day work difficulties on the practical side are:- It is impossibleproperly to supervise the work of students in practical journalism within the limitsof their two hours a week attendance at King’s. The present system provides nomeans of overcoming that difficulty. I would like to see it in a still better room,with still more of the newspaper atmosphere, but, for what it is, it is the meetingroom on all days outside lecture hours for Journalism students.My view is that you cannot teach practical journalism simply by lecturing aboutit. The student can only learn journalism by doing journalism from day to day - bywatching the raw material of news coming in and seeing from the newspapers howit is treated by the professional journalist; by actually going out on reportingassignments - and, more important still, having a ’deadline’ time at which he musthand in what he has written, as if he or she were working on a newspaper or otherjournal.289MOD100051460