Magazine industry body director visits students

By Alex Jackson

Loraine Davies, Director of the Periodicals Training Council, talked to magazine journalism students about the PTC and magazine publishing.

The PTC is the leading body for best practice in training, development and people management for both the magazine publishing and professional media industries.

In short, they “encourage and enable the brightest and best students into careers” says Loraine. They do this through a number of ways including accreditations (which includes the UCLan MA, with the BA route on course for next summer), and hosting the PTC New Journalist Awards – a valuable networking opportunity.

Buoyant place to be

The PTC provides access to every major publishing house and Lorraine describes the magazine-publishing sector as a "buoyant place to be."

Currently there are 3366 consumer titles and 5108 business titles alone and a job in publishing is one of the most highly sought in industry. Unsurprisingly then, the standard is very high.

But Loraine was not about to leave us as gloomy as the Preston weather. Her good news is that 98 per cent of employees are graduates. Better still, there is an increasing number of post-graduates. There are also a big opportunities for freelancers due to the online publishing revolution.

The web, we were also told, is the biggest threat to publishers. It tends to tempt advertisers’ money away from print media in ever increasing amounts due to size of audiences it can reach.

To our collective relief, however, Loraine says magazines are actually regarded as different to other print media “because of their importance in a social context”.

Magazine moment

People are working harder and longer and experience an “information overload”, she explained. Magazines, though, can form a deeply personal relationship with their reader by providing what has become known as “the Magazine Moment” where “the unique ability to engage in a coverline promise extends the brand to the reader”.

Women’s weeklies and ‘Real-Life’ weeklies especially have experienced a definite growth. It would appear that the zeitgeist is for fast, short, immediate information.

This too ties in with the magazine’s social context. It also highlights the importance the power of the ‘pass-on’: the number of people who read a magazine is said to be two to three times as many as the actual circulation rates!

Magazines, therefore, remain in rude health. “Almost four in five journalists agree they are happy with their job,” says Loraine. Clearly the message is that magazine publishing provides a desirable and valuable place to enter the world of journalism.

More info
MA Magazine Journalism
Periodicals Training Council (PTC)

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Extra and related information

Our print and broadcast courses are accredited by the The Broadcast Journalism Training Council and the National Council for the Training of Journalists. Our MA Magazine Journalism is accredited by the Periodicals Training Council.