From WESLEY BOYD
Sir, - Journalists require more than the 'in-service training' advocated by Mr Conor Brady, the editor of The Irish Times, at the recent Cleraun Media Conference. The newspaper industry in Ireland has always been reluctant to put effort and money into training. When Donogh O'Malley was Minister for Education in the 1960s, he enthusiastically supported efforts by the Dublin Newspaper Branch of the National Union of Journalists (of which I was honorary secretary at the time) to set up a faculty of journalism at one of the established university colleges. However, the plan met with indifference from proprietors and editors and withered with the Minister's early death in 1968.
In more recent years a plethora of schools of journalism (some of questionable standards) has sprouted, releasing an annual crop of relatively inexpensive and largely inexperienced labour to the market. Surely it is time for newspapers, broadcasters and the NUJ to get together to draw up uniform norms of professional training and qualification. - Yours, etc., Mount Merrion, Co Dublin.