Financial Journalism

Wits Journalism offers three courses in financial journalism and FinWrite, a two-day workshop for working financial journalists.

The courses are:

Financial journalism

This is a one semester (13-week) course which covers the basics of financial journalism including reporting on monetary and fiscal policy, economics, markets, regulation, statistics and companies. Outside speakers are drawn from the National Treasury, Reserve Bank, JSE and Stats SA. The course aims to give students a working knowledge of economics and finance as well as building business writing skills.

The course is open to students who have completed a three-year degree with a 65% pass mark in the final year and have worked for three years. Students can also qualify in terms of Wits University’s RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning) programme.

Financial journalism can be done as a certificate or as part of Wits Journalism’s Honours or Masters programme.

Advanced financial journalism

This is also a 13-week, one semester course. It focuses on building specialised knowledge in both reporting and analysing economics and finance. Topics covered include regulation, resources, company law, company analysis, banking, environmental economics and trade. Speakers with expert knowledge in their fields are invited to give presentations.

Students are required to have completed the Financial Journalism course with a 65% pass mark as entry into Advanced Financial Journalism, but RPL also applies.

The story of money

This 13-week, one semester course has two aims: to improve the understanding of how economies work and to upgrade the writing skills of participants through examining great authors on the subject.
                          
Economies studied will include pre-industrial societies which evolved the use of credit long before coins became the dominant form of currency. It considers the relationship between economics and linguistics and the role of technologies which allowed some societies to dominate others. Numerous authors, some dating back hundreds of years, who have written about complex economics in clear and understandable terms, are studied as case studies of exemplary writing. The work of modern writers, who have laid bare the complexity of modern finance, including such events as the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the Eurozone crisis, will also be studied.

Course work will focus on a research and story component, students being required to show they are able to cover complex economic subjects in a clear, accessible manner.

The story of money is a certificate course which can be credited towards our Honours or Masters programme.