Journalism Students get hands-on experience with The Glasgow Standard

Multimedia Journalism students at Glasgow Caledonian have been producing news content for The Glasgow Standard as part of their course, churning out a variety of pieces such as hard news, features, lifestyle and video content on social media.

Brooke Harwood, an MA Multimedia Journalism student explained: “It’s a student newspaper that we have to do for our course. It’s a way to show us how to use social media as a form of journalism, seeing as that’s become the modern way for news to be shared.”

Kendra Schertell, also studying on the MA Multimedia Journalism programme added: “It’s nice to have a class that mimics the real world, especially now with social media being a really important audience.”

The Glasgow Standard regularly posts on Twitter with students’ pieces they have produced for the course.

Brooke added: “It’s a nice opportunity to be able to show our work throughout the year. Most of the work we produce is for our course, so unless people have got a part-time job at a newspaper it’s a good way to share the stuff we’ve been working on.

“I think the Twitter in particular is a chance to be creative more so than the briefs of assessments because we really do have free reign with it. We’ve got a lot more features on there than we would have in a newspaper for example and there’s no limit as to how much we can post online.”

Both Brooke and Kendra believe that the course is a great way to prepare them for the working world post-university. Brooke explained that “to be a journalist you’re not going to be sitting wiring academic articles so this is a very modern way of doing a course, we’re actually learning what we’ll be doing nine till five in the real world. We’re in university all day, rather than just coming in for an hour long class so it’s good to get some real life experience.”

They also both agree that this experience is not only preparing them for working life, but is also providing them with key experience that future employers will pick up on. Brooke said: “It looks really good on your CV to say you’ve had your work published, even it it’s just a student publication it’s still your work being published somewhere.”

The course allows students to explore any curiosities they may have, Kendra said: “I really enjoy the creativity that comes with it and the research we get to put into it. It’s great to be able to take your curiosities and put them somewhere and share them with people.

“Sometimes it feels like it’s a lot of work but once it’s done it feels good to have done a post, video or article and have shared something that other people can see.”

The Glasgow Standard has shared thousands of pieces from students old and new, and is continually publishing new content created by GCU students.

Content ranges from current affairs to videos about peoples’ first kisses, and is regularly engaged with by the page’s followers.

“I did a piece on the Govan Stones which I really liked because not many people know about that part of Glasgow. I interviewed someone who’s really enthusiastic about the medieval stones and they were really fun and interested so I really enjoyed making that piece,” Kendra told us.

Brooke also said: “I did an AI piece a while ago that I really enjoyed. It’s a topic that everyone seems to have an opinion on at the moment so that was really interesting and it was really fun to just speak to students around campus and see how similar everyone’s answers were.”

Follow The Glasgow Standard on Twitter.

By Derry Wyllie