Yes - if you are Chris Woodhead, or one of the idiots who writes for The Guardian, or a complete moron.

The Guardian has turned against Media Studies?

Blimey. I'm an ex-Telegraph reader myself (gave up due to dumbing-down).

>
>Blimey. I'm an ex-Telegraph reader myself (gave up due to dumbing-down).

You or the Telegraph?

No it isn't - I'm a media studies graduate, and can assure you that I was inundated with very hard and often extremely boring work for the whole three years.

Unlike my business studies-favouring housemates, I might add.

The Telegraph has dumbed down - to meet the needs of Media Studies students.... sorry, Al...

I did it for A-level and found it difficult - or maybe that was because my teacher was having a breakdown whislt he taught us, and preferred throwing sheets of confusing and unitelligable notes that he'd made at us, as opposed to actually teaching us anthing.

I did it for A-level, my lecturer had the pleasing surname of 'Joliffe'.

But are people (with the glorious exception of C4's Michael Jackson) employable? The CVs I have seen are almost always thrown in the bin.

But are people with media studies qualifications (with the glorious exception of C4's Michael Jackson) employable? The CVs I have seen are almost always thrown in the bin.

Why is it only Media Studies that is measured in this 'Media Studies students don't worj in the media' way? How many English graduates write novels? How many Physics graduates are physicists? A-Levels are not vocational qualifications, neither are degrees. I wish all these cretins who go on about media being a 'made up' subject or 'an easy A-level' or 'see it as part of 'dumbing down' would actually consider the point of the subject itself. We are constantly told what a media saturated society we live in, but if anyone one attempts to study it it is seen as a waste of time. Any social practice is worthy of study if it affects a significant section of the population. I think Media would qualify for this. Any cultural product can tell you enormous amounts about the prevailing attitude of that culture. The more popular the product, the more it can tell you. Archaeologists study the mosaics, paintings, and artwork of classical antiquity, no matter how crude or vulgar the subject matter. This does not diminish its status as a cultural document. Why should 20th and 21st century artefacts be any different?

The reason for all the carping is, I think, the flip side of the 'if it's old it must be good' argument. Viz: if it's new it must be crap. Media Studies is a study of cinema, television, journalism - many of the things we consider worthy of discussion on this forum. They are popular yes, but then so were Shakespeare and Dickens in their day and I don't see anyone complaining about students studying them. I began teaching Media Studies after completing a degree and PGCE in English, and, if anything, the theoretical concepts and understanding demanded by A-Level Media are more complex than anything asked of students at English A-Level.

Sorry to go on, but I've just seen two groups of students work their arses off for less than spectacular results. If Media Studies is so easy, perhaps someone could tell the examiners.

>Why is it only Media Studies that is measured in this 'Media Studies students don't worj in the media' way?

"...work in the media" Sorry.

I'm completely with Al on this one.

It's a bloody hard subject to study. My degree, starting in September, will prove incredibly challenging I'm sure.

Having already done it for A-Level, I'm certainly not taking Media as the easy option, because it isn't one.

Ta John! Media teachers and students unite and fight!

BTW, conspiracy fans, have you noticed how those who protest most vociferously about Media Studies are often in the media themselves. And Jon, surprising though it certainly is, The Guardian prints more anti-Media Studies articles than any other paper. I think it's The Times after that (but some considerable distance)

That surprises me. I was under the impression that The Guardian would be a supporter of media courses.

>have you noticed how those who protest most vociferously about Media Studies are often in the media themselves.

Speaking as a Media Production graduate (50% theory/film studies etc, 50% practical) with six subsequent years of work in the media, I have no problem with A-level Media Studies provided there is loads of analysis and critical writing, nor with degree courses provided there is a considerable amount of research work, a purposeful academic media dissertation of at least 10,000 words and useful production extras eg. short films or documentaries that count toward the final mark, production management/budgeting, production theory etc.

Unfortunately, however, one has to pick the right course. I studied at Bournemouth Uni, formerly Dorset Institute of Higher Education, which in its day was one of the highest regarded media courses in the UK. I had a great time there, and worked with some extremely talented people, some of whom have become my closest friends and who are achieving some great things in the media. Yes, even Rick Adams....

Sadly, it was based in the country's most right-wing university, full of apathetic rich fuckwits from Hampshire and Surrey, who drove posh cars and were entirely funded on their drunken whoring by their equally fuckwit parents. On B.A.Media Production, we delighted in our leftie radicalism, but it got us nowhere under the oligarchy of VC Bernard McManus, Thatcher's playboy... Anyway, it was a great course. I only hope it still is...

People I've worked with since who studied elsewhere, either work experience or full-time, make me feel that a good many other media courses seem to attract and churn out apathetic rich fuckwits who just want to arse about or chill out in the media. It's people like that who give media courses, and the media itself, a bad name... It can take years for them to be rumbled, by which time they're controlling BBC2 or sucking off the head of ITV Network centre.

Media studies wasn't the hardest A level i studied - but it wasn't the easiest either. There's some fundemental concept in there that are quite hard to understand, put are needed to follow the course.
I'm going to Bournemouth University - but not to study Media - something similar though. It's still supposedly got a good student:job ratio in thwe medai

>I'm going to Bournemouth University - but not to study Media - something similar though. It's still supposedly got a good student:job ratio in thwe medai

Not PR I hope - PR students are all total ononists, though not as bad as PR graduates or PR "professionals"

>That surprises me. I was under the impression that The Guardian would be a supporter of media courses.

You'd think so wouldn't you? I attended an interesting seminar at the BFI Media Studies Conference with a guy called Martin Barker who's done extensive research into the rubbishing of Media Studies in the media and The Guardian is truly top of the pops in this regard.

BTW Simon, I found your comments v. interesting. I think there is definitely a problem with students seeing Media as a purely vocational degree and not having any commitment to theoretical side of things. However, the problem of the rich kids passing their time at the taxpayers expense (or not as the case may be now) is not limited to Media course. I spent a year in Bristol on my PGCE and Bristol University is chock full of the poncy bastards, all doing a variety of courses.

OK, cards on the table. Communication Studies A-Level is a waste of time (all of it spent watching ropy copies of 'Washes Whiter') but I graduated from a Media course at Leeds uni in June. Today I started a job with a promotions company.

This tells you four things - why I've been mailing every day for the last two months (dole), a little taste of my life, my age and the possibilty that I'm on a whipping to nothing.

The Media course had bugger all to do with it, yet it's a big part of what they do. But there's a lot to recommend the course even if it avoided TV, meaning that I had to crowbar it in.

The balance within a Media course is wrong. Nothing much on advertising in mine.

"Not PR I hope"

Nope - i'd rather not say what it is though...

Baking?

I studied Philosophy (after doing 2 years of Chemistry). I think philosophers are treated as the lowest of the low, such that people don't even think it's worth saying that they are worthless. Which is a shame because modern philsophers do have more worthwhile things to say than any of the eminent ecclesiastical windbags you'll hear on Sunday mornings on R4.

I don't know anything about Media Studies, I can't see it being any more objectionable as a subject of study than Eng.Lit. (which actually took a while to become a respectable subject - the first examined courses only started at Oxbridge around the turn of the century (I think), and for a while it was viewed as an easy option, since any educated gent. should have read all that stuff anyway (cf. "It's only about watching telly"). Later on Leavis &co. made it a rigourous subject with its own academic vocabulary, for better or worse).

I read a few years back that some BBC bod had complained that MS grads didn't know anything they couldn't be taught in a fortnight. Looking at what has been written above, it seems there is a mismatch between expectations that it will be a vocational course for media work, and actual courses concerned with critical theory and whatnot. That causes all the aggro in this area.

Mind you, I tried to read some Baudrillard once, and concluded he was rubbish.

A further message to Al:

The point is not "If it's old, it must be good", what the critics mean is that worthwhile study takes time and you cannot expect to make great conclusions about recent phenomena, such as trends in the media, which are (historically speaking) very short-lived. Historians don't churn out chronicles of last year's events, they look at issues about which a lot of documentary evidence has accumulated (takes at least 20 years - there are many 'revisionary' views of the Vietnam War coming out now, using sources not available in the 70s/80s, including western ones) and the debates can often carry on longer than the events concerned. The objection - as I understand it - is that MS cannot be serious if it deals in ephemera not susceptible to long-term study, since media trends pass away without posterity caring much for them.

But as I don't know much about what MS people study, I don't know if this depends on a misrepresentation of the field. It might do.

i think the main problem is a lot of people just see media studies as watching recent television/film - don't papers realise that they are a media production too? - how long have papers been in circulation?
The point of the present day media we studied was to follow history as it was happening - to see how media products are presented, and how they would change over time - giving a better insight into how the modern miedia works then looking at historical points, meaning what is learnt is more useful to working in medai
Plus, as far as i could see, there was as much revision of theory in Psychology as there was in Media Studies - but there doesn't seem to be the same problem with that (or is there?)

Do you have to do course modules about ITV idents through the ages?

If not, who the hell are these people who keep writing about them? Do they do it for *fun*?

Apparently.

ITV idents have fascinated the human race for literally tens of years.

Jon

Two points. a) Media Studies does deal with events from 20 years ago and beyond. One of the major areas I teach is the Hollywood Studio System 1930-1959.
b) But it isn't History in the sense you describe. Media trends can pass quickly (although not always - the classic narrative structure of a lot of Hollywood films is still very similar to Hollywood stories of the past) but Media Studies is a relative of Sociology, and Cultural Studies. It is partly a chronicle of past social/cultural development, but it is also an attempt to observe, document and analyse culture as it unfolds. Now this may be an impossible task (I don't think so) but it is not a worthless one, or an easy one. It is however fascinating, and revealing.

Anyway, I guess I'd better stop blathering on about it now - it seems I am among friends here at least :0)

As part of my A-level we studied the Hollywood studios during the period you mention, Al, and also British films of the 1960s.

I found it very interesting indeed, and I know my degree is to cover the history of film.

Our teacher (mad, if you remember) forced us to watch lots of film noir (such as the big sleep/asphalt jungle etc.) till our brains stopped working - and then we watch more. He was only slightly obsessed.

Two small points:
One: Why does everyone cap up subject titles? English I can understand, but chemistry and media studies? It's all very Teutonic. I could understand if it was the title of the course, I suppose. But even then it's all a bit self-important.
Two: Media studies: It is a bit polytechnic, isn't it?

>Two: Media studies: It is a bit polytechnic, isn't it?


That's an incredibly snobbish way to look at it.

I thought they were all universities nowadays anyway.

>Two: Media studies: It is a bit polytechnic, isn't it?

Fine. If you want to ignore everything that's been said so far, go ahead.

Maybe he's being obtuse for the sake of it?

>I thought they were all universities nowadays anyway.

they are

>>I thought they were all universities nowadays anyway.
>
Alas and alack!

...just proves what I said, on this strand the other day, about prejudices against philosophers. Nice one, Corpses!

Still, I'm used to it... that's why I never mention it.