Dreaming of becoming a journalist?

The Young Journalists’ Academy is a programme for London state school pupils who have the passion and the guts, but not ‘the right contacts’, to break into journalism. We run a journalism summer school in Canary Wharf along with schemes like YJA in Schools, the YJA Graduates network and training for Journalism Ambassadors. On this site you can find out more about what we do and get some great tips and inspiration from YJA Graduates and professional journalists.

Applications for the 2012 summer school are now open. The school will run from Saturday 18 August to Saturday 25 August at Canary Wharf in London. Apply here.

YJA news alerts

4 August 2011
Summer School 2011 blogs
Check out the blogs created by this year's summer school participants.

20 April 2011
The YJA alumni survey
Calling all YJA Graduates: Take a couple of minutes to fill in our survey to help us improve the summer school and get some media coverage! If you participate in the survey, you may even be contacted for a media interview... Click here to fill in the survey.

18 April 2011
Column Idol
The Column Idol competition offers 18 to 25-year-olds the chance to be mentored by top journalists – with one lucky winner getting the chance to have their column printed in the Sun.

8 April 2011
Time to close the journalism colleges?
Former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie argues that courses are useless - journalism is a knack to acquire, not a lesson to be taught in classrooms.

23 March 2011
Tips from a YJA graduate
Robin McMichael, who did an internship at The Times after winning the Best Blog competition at the 2010 summer school, has two tips for aspiring journalists: 1) Take whatever opportunity you get to talk to people in the know. Five minutes of talking to a top class journalist can do a lot of good. 2) Look at newspaper and big news websites. Their writing is the best in the UK and should help your quality of writing.

22 March 2011
YJA graduate website recommendation
YJA graduate Neelam Shah recommends aspiring journalists to take a look at the websites of the Chartered Institute of Journalists and the British College of Journalism.

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