Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism
Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism and Media Studies 2026
with a focus on digital community media
Year co-ordinator: Prof Anthea Garman
Room: 231
Email: a.garman@ru.ac.za
Overview
The Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism and Media Studies (PGDip) is an NQF 8 level qualification offered by the School of Journalism and Media Studies. It offers students with a degree in any other subject or discipline (and working practitioners with a previous NQF 7 qualification) practical coursework exposure to journalism production in the Grocott’s Mail newsroom. PGDip students will form the core newsgathering and reporting team for Grocott's Mail for the duration of the academic year (end January to end November). The PGDip aims to provide a bridge for aspiring students from varied backgrounds who wish to gain a formal qualification and training in the discipline of journalism. Being an NQF 8-level qualification means this is the perfect step for experienced journalists and aspiring undergraduates to gain a solid postgraduate foothold in their career path or to proceed to a masters degree.
Course aims
The 21st century is 25 years old. South Africa’s democracy is 31 years old. Both show the turbulence characteristic of early adulthood. Both demand journalism equal to the task of documenting the complexities and contradictions of these times. Journalism with a clear moral compass, but also bold and humane. However, the media landscape is also turbulent, evolving its technologies and dissolving its platforms faster than it takes to sharpen a pencil. Change this profound incubates fear and uncertainty. But it also invites opportunity and possibility. By emphasising the mutually informative relationship between the theory of media and its production, this course equips its students with the intellectual, personal and professional tools to occupy a range of media roles in the industry or the academy.
The Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism and Media Studies aims to prepare students for careers as critical and skilled media practitioners. By the end of the course, students should have a portfolio of journalistic work published across a range of platforms, and which showcases a diversity of story approaches and formats. This work (some of which may also be published in titles other than Grocott’s Mail) should also demonstrate the critical thinking which underpins all study undertaken in the School of Journalism and Media Studies. To achieve this dual aim, the coursework demonstrates a mode of thinking and being known as praxis, in which media production and the critical and philosophical ideas that inform it are mutually conceptualised. To this end, it may not be superficially discernible which parts of the coursework are ‘journalism’ and which parts are ‘media studies’ as both are indispensable to responsible journalism in 2026 in South Africa. In other words, our focus is on journalism as a critical social practice.
While the journalism is taught through actual practice (or experiential learning) in the Grocott’s Mail newsroom and in Makana, the journalism studies and media studies aspects of the course are taught through courses and an engagement with a range of scholarly and research literature. This praxis works in two ways. First, your journalistic work will reflect your growing critical awareness of the issues that you face as a media producer in a complex social space. Second, your media production will become the springboard from which you reflect on the media and its critiques in the literature you encounter. In other words, you will use the ideas you encounter in media studies to both inform and reflect on your media production, and use your production to reflect on critical theory. This reflection will become increasingly complex as your insights into the key issues of critical media studies grow more nuanced and your knowledge of practice matures.
Course outcomes
This course aims to build your confidence and flexibility in a range of activities which are essential to the conceptualising and production of scintillating journalism. These include but are not confined to:
- Curating and editing
- Interviewing and listening
- Carrying an effective multimedia toolkit
- Recognising stories and knowing how best to tell them
- Processing and packaging those stories (aka editing)
- Placing those stories in appropriate mediums (aka freelancing)
- Marketing those stories (aka deploying social media and other relevant digital platforms) I ways that are responsive to the digital environment
- Analysing the reception and comments on stories
- Connecting (locating story ideas, building and maintaining contacts, building and maintaining audiences)
While practising and refining these outcomes, this course aims to also:
- familiarise you with the wide range of story forms, formats, and approaches and show you the repertoire of how journalists operate and perform in the world;
- expose you to and prepare you for some of the demands which the digital environment makes on us as media producers by sharing, distributing, archiving and searching for information; interaction and social journalism, ethics and security;
- focus on the thinking, conceptualising, editing and structuring aspect of crafting meaning for your readers;
- develop your eye and ear for a good story and refine your ability to pitch it successfully;
- alert you to skills and practice in writing in a wide variety of formats and styles and enable you to choose form and style to suit the purpose and audience of the article;
- help you read like a writer;
- help you think about the public dimensions of the work you do and for what purpose your stories are being written and published;
- help you formulate an ethics, a politics and an identity as a journalist/media producer/communicator for yourself.
This year-long diploma course is worth 100 marks (120 credits at NQF level 8)
- Journalism Studies: 70%
First semester portfolio: 10%
Photography: 20%
Elective module: 10%
Project or Internship: 10%
Second semester portfolio: 20% - Media studies: 30%
Media Law and Ethics: 10%
Communication Studies: 10%
Research methods: 10%
Course content
This course introduces the student to journalism and media studies via exposure to and active participation in writing, editing, research, photography, audio, video, design and social media. Students will practice journalism in a range of formats (e.g. news, feature, analysis) and across a range of beats (e.g. health, education, arts, politics). We also experiment with a range of approaches to journalism such as constructive journalism, solutions journalism and engaged journalism.
The core journalism module of this programme is based in the Grocott’s Mail newsroom where you will participate as news reporters. This immersion aims to deepen your production experience and dovetail with all the threads of your learning through the year. There is considerable scope to tailor this reporting assignment to gain experience in the kind and form of journalism you wish to practice.
By the end of 2026, you should have sufficient diverse material to compile a portfolio that showcases the type of media practitioner you have become.
Additional opportunities
Student media participation: we recommend that you join one of the campus media organisations. Activate and RMR are vibrant news operations that will enhance your journalism praxis.
Cuemedia during the National Arts Festival: covering the annual NAF is a great opportunity to experience the National Arts Festival as a journalist and to get a taste of arts journalism.
Last Modified: Tue, 16 Sep 2025 12:36:47 SAST