The students on this year’s MA in Financial Journalism course at City University recently visited New York City as part of the Marjorie Deane Summer School. The trip, which was funded by the Marjorie Deane Financial Journalism Foundation, was a chance for students to explore New York, one of the world’s most important financial centres.

The group was led by Nigel Stephenson, a former journalist at Reuters who now teaches at City University, and Michelle LaRoche, who used to write for the Wall Street Journal, a newspaper. The students had a full schedule, packed full of speakers from a variety of backgrounds, including economists and bankers as well as journalists.

Journalists, including Bethany McLean, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, a magazine, and Paul Vigna, Bitcoin reporter at the Wall Street Journal, gave talks and answered students’ questions on what it is like to work as a journalist in New York.

The students were also given tours around the offices of Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, granting them an inside look into some of New York’s most successful newsrooms. They were able to talk to journalists about their experiences and ask questions relating to some of the big topics in journalism, such as the impact of social media and fake news.

They also heard from academics including Sara Collins, a health economist at the Commonwealth Fund, a think-tank, Gian Luca Clementi, an associate professor of economics at the NYU Stern School of Business and Joe Foudy, a clinical associate professor of economics at the NYU Stern School of Business. These talks provided insights into some of the issues facing America today, such as access to affordable healthcare, growing inequality and the country’s ageing population.

Other speakers included Arindam Nag, co-founder and the chief executive officer of CentSai, a financial-education outfit, and Brendan Conway, vice president and portfolio strategist at Goldman Sachs, a bank.