Women and Journalism

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The education and training of women journalists

As a profession, journalism exercises very few formal controls over itself. It does not require its practitioners to have specific training or education, and unlike medicine or law there are no licensing requirements. Indeed, one journalist said: ‘You become a journalist when you declare you are one, and you remain a journalist as long as you keep declaring you are one’ (Delano 2000: 264). That said, throughout the twentieth century in both the United States and in Britain, journalism became increasingly professionalized, although at different rates, and this is reflected in the different approaches to journalists’ education and training. All of these factors have gendered implications.

In the ...