Study Journalism
If you want to become a career journalist you can study journalism as an undergraduate at university, or you can do a one-year full-time vocational post A-level course accredited by the NCTJ (National Council for the Training of Journalists). Some of these courses are for graduates only. You can find links to universities and colleges running NCTJ accredited courses on the right of this page.
Of course you don't have to have any qualifications to be a journalist, but the NCTJ courses provide basic skills such as typing and shorthand, an understanding of media law, and practice at writing, using a camera, and producing journalism online.
To find out more about NCTJ courses you can go to their website, www.nctj.org.uk, or look at one of their accredited courses.
If you want to go further and do research about the news and/or take a break from journalism to go back to study, there are research institutes at Oxford University, Cardiff University, the LSE, and others (see links page).