Lecturer in Journalism Studies

Department of Film, Media & Journalism

University of Stirling

Stirling

FK9 4LA
Scotland

UK

Jenny McKay is a founder member of the Association for Journalism Education and of the International Association for Literary Journalism Studies of whose journal, Literary Journalism Studies, she is Associate Editor. Jenny belongs to the Society of Editors and Women in Journalism. Her main interests are in literary journalism and in magazine journalism and publishing.

Jenny has an MA in Old and Medieval English from St Hilda’s College, Oxford University, and a Diploma in Music from the Open University. Outside journalism her interests include music, as a choral singer. She lives near Edinburgh and visits the Hebrides whenever possible.

A revised edition of her book, The Magazines Handbook, was published by Routledge in January 2007 and is currently being translated into Russian and Mandarin. She is a judge for the Scottish Periodical Publishers’ Association’s Scottish Magazine Awards and for the SPPA’s School Magazine Awards. She contributed a chapter on Daniel Defoe’s The Storm to a collection of essays entitled The Journalistic Imagination, edited by Richard Keeble and published in September 2007 by Routledge. In 2010 her essay ‘Reportage in the UK: a hidden genre?’ will be part of an international collection entitled Confronting Literary Journalism, edited by John Bak, to be published by the University of Massachussetts Press.

Jenny’s journal articles include ‘Journalism and the Literature of Reality’ for Media Education Journal (Spring 2009), and ‘Preparing journalism students for the blameless bugle and the guilty gazette’, about the
ethics of local newspaper journalism for Ethical Space (2008, Vol 4 no. 4).

Jenny reviews books for the journals Journalism Studies, Journalism Practice and Media, Culture and Society.

Jenny McKay was a journalist for several years working in magazines, newspapers and television before joining City University in London to teach Periodical Journalism. She has since held posts at Lincoln, Napier and Strathclyde universities, teaching mainly postgraduate students.

She was Director of the Scottish Centre for Journalism Studies for four years. She has been external examiner for the University of Westminster’s MA in Journalism and the Surrey Institute’s BA in Journalism. Currently she is external examiner for the University of Sunderland’s BA in Journalism degree.