Universities and schools

Training in journalism is offered to undergraduate and graduate students as well as to executive or experienced individuals in numerous and various public universities and private schools. A focus on post bachelor students training shows a booming market of degrees in journalism while job offers in journalism remain very low. Accessing the journalistic profession doesn’t require any formal training or degree. Most of people working as journalists in France are moreover not graduated in journalism. In 2017, only 19 percent of the 35,047 registered journalists are graduated from a journalism school or were trained in journalism. Yet the new incomers are more and more highly educated (at master level), with a degree in journalism.

In order to optimise the opportunities to access a position as journalist in France it is better to access one of the fourteen labelled curricula. Since 1956 some journalism schools and degrees are subject to a label that legitimates their quality and compliance to a curriculum model. At the time of writing, fourteen curricula are labelled reconnues par la profession and are members of Commission Paritaire Nationale de l’Emploi des journalistes (National Council of Journalism Employment CPNEJ), a think tank on journalism education and a lobbying organisation.

These 14 schools or universities deliver journalism training, ranging from a DUT (two-year degree in Marketing Techniques Degree) to master. However the trend is to align these degrees on a five- year master level. At the time of writing, 12 of the 14 labelled degrees are masters (including the degree delivered by the IUT of Tours: the new cohort for the master will be hosted in September 2018, replacing the DUT and bachelor in journalism); the only trainings in journalism provided by the IUT of Lannion and Cannes-Nice are still bac+2 level degrees. The main advantages to enter one of these 14 programs are to surely getting the most valuable interns as well as finding easily a job. All of them are checked by the French Ministry of Research and Higher Education. Five of them are located in Paris, the nine others in province (Lille, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nice-Cannes, Strasbourg, Grenoble, Tours and Lannion in Brittany). The first has been launched in 1924 at the Ecole Supérieure de Journalisme de Lille (Lille Graduate School of Journalism).

The 14 labelled degrees in journalism are the following:  

  • Diplôme de l’ESJ – Ecole Supérieure de Journalisme (ESJ Lille) de Lille.
  • Master professionnel de journalisme – Institut Français de Presse (IFP), Université Paris II-Panthéon Assas.
  • Diplôme du CFJ – Centre de Formation des Journalistes (CFJ) de Paris.
  • Master de journalisme – Ecole des hautes études en sciences de l'information et de la communication (CELSA), Université Paris IV-Sorbonne.
  • Master de journalisme – Centre Universitaire d’Enseignement du Journalisme (CUEJ), Université de Strasbourg.
  • Master de journalisme – Institut de journalisme Bordeaux Aquitaine (IJBA), Université de Bordeaux Montaigne.
  • Master de journalisme – Institut Pratique du Journalisme (IPJ), Université Paris Dauphine
  • Master de journalisme – Ecole publique de journalisme de Tours (EPJT), Université de Tours.
  • Master de journalisme – Ecole de Journalisme et de Communication d'Aix-Marseille (EJCAM), Université d'Aix-Marseille.
  • Master de journalisme – Ecole de Journalisme de Grenoble (EJdG), Université Grenoble Alpes et Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Grenoble.
  • Diplôme de l’EJT – Ecole de Journalisme de Toulouse (EJT).
  • Master de journalisme – Ecole de journalisme de Sciences Po Paris.
  • DUT Info-Com, option Journalisme – Institut Universitaire de Technologie de Lannion (IUT Lannion), Université Rennes I.
  • DUT Info-Com, option Journalisme – Ecole de journalisme de Cannes (EDC), IUT Nice Côte d’Azur, Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis.