No qualifications are needed, although almost every entrant is a graduate.Newspaper journalists normally start on a local or regional newspaper. Many of these register their trainees with the National Council for the Training of Journalists. The NCTJ provides distance learning packs which, if successfully completed, lead to college-based training and to a National or Scottish Vocational Qualification at level 4.It is usually easier to become a journalist on a magazine or journal, and the training tends to be less structured. There is a national training scheme administered by the Periodical Training Council, which is standard in large publishing houses, but not in small ones.

However, it can be difficult to move from magazines and journals to the national press unless you have developed a reputation as an expert in a particular field.The BBC offers a two-year local radio trainee reporter scheme which prepares people for all aspects of radio journalism. At national level BBC journalists are expected to work on both radio and television The BBC’s news trainee scheme covers both. The BBC receives about 100 applications for each training post, and it is a distinct advantage to have prior journalistic experience on a reputable national or local paper.Advertising copywriting is tough to enter, and no agencies provide formal training. This is because it is difficult to identify an individual’s talent until it has been tried on the job. A unique new one-year postgraduate vocational course in advertising at Falmouth College of Art is run by an ex-agency team and develops both creative and copywriting skills.

This is likely to give its students a competitive edge.One back-door route into copywriting is newspaper classified advertising. The sales people sell space and write much of the advertising. This develops commercial awareness and the skill to write selling copy fast.Copywriters usually work alongside a designer (usually called an art director, to impress an agency’s clients). Students on the Falmouth advertising course work in pairs of an “art director” and a “copywriter”. Designers are usually selected by agencies on the basis of their portfolios.Artists working in design have a wide choice, although competition is fierce in the more popular careers such as advertising, fashion design and set design.Most employers in the creative fields agree with Samuel Butler: “An art can only be learned in the workshop of those who are winning their bread by it”n. As postgraduate numbers have boomed, so have postgraduate recruitment fairs.