TALKING at a conference always sounds straight-forward: stand up, talk, sit down, cross your fingers for easy questions. Done.
But in advance of talking at next week’s Scotsman Conference on the Future of Media, I decided to rally some troops. I needed to ensure I didn’t simply vent my own views (and increasing frustrations) at the provision for media education in Scotland.
Of course, I started by consulting some academics – the ‘experts’.
Lecturers in colleges said one thing, lecturers in universities said something slightly different but all tended to agree that some of the age-old problems were still to be remedied. Let’s be fair, it’s a tough nut to crack – theory versus practice, with shades of work experience built in, and attempts to squeeze in some ‘graduate attributes’. None of this is easy.