Tag: journalism

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Opinions

Editorial: What’s new with The Concordian

The 2019-20 academic year at Concordia University is here. The familiar routine of book-buying, Tim-Horton-guzzling, shuttle-bus-taking, Stingers-cheering and library-seat-searching begins once again. For all returning students, welcome back to downtown living / NDG commuting. For all new students, welcome to Concordia, home of (the always terrifying) Buzz the mascot and the always-convenient Pizza Bella.

As The Concordian prepares for another busy year, our first editorial of the year is dedicated to what we’re doing differently in 2019-20.The biggest item on the agenda: we’re changing from a weekly printed newspaper to a bi-weekly printed newspaper, moving from 26 print issues a year to 16.

This doesn’t mean that you’ll be getting less news; the opposite actually. We felt like we were spending more time putting together a physical issue instead of reporting what was happening on campus in a timely manner. This change means we’re going to be able to provide you with more stories as we transition to a digital first approach.

There were a couple reasons for this decision. The first, of course, being to best serve the Concordia community. Another major reason was sustainability. Based on research done by The Concordian last year, we found that the vast majority of our readers catch up on Concordia news online. We also found that a lot of the physical copies of the paper weren’t being picked up, due to us printing too often and too many copies per issue.

This year, we’ve also reduced the number of copies to better reflect this. This means that we’re using significantly less paper. Our goal to have more students pick up copies of the paper without flooding both campuses with copies that will go unread. Keeping the print version of The Concordian was important to us because that’s how a lot of students first hear about us on campus. From there, many would then move from print, to being regular readers online.. It’s also the way many of our writers first heard of us.

This switch will help us better achieve our goal of producing consistent, timely, and valuable reporting to the Concordia community. Looking at the landscape of student journalism across Canada, we found that more and more publications have begun to take a digital-first approach, and that switch has helped them connect with their university communities more effectively.

For The Concordian, recognizing this trend in student media has helped us plan a clear vision for the future of the publication, which includes focusing on producing timely online content, producing more content, connecting with the Concordia community, being more environmentally conscious and preparing our staff for the digital needs of the media industry.

Anyways, that’s what’s new with us this year. From the editorial team at The Concordian, it’s good to be back. We look forward to waiting for the shuttle in -40°C with you.

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Opinions

A Concordia student’s wake up call

Graphic by Alexa Hawksworth

One student’s experience as a first-year journalism student and what he has learned

As due dates for finals rear their ugly heads in the nearing weeks, it’s a good time to reflect on my first year at Concordia. When I was accepted into the journalism program, I didn’t think much of it. I didn’t expect it to be hard, because I was in a journalism program in CEGEP. I had this stupid thought that journalism was simple and that I had basically learned all I needed to in CEGEP. Two weeks into my first semester, reality hit me like a freight train. This year, I’ve learned some valuable lessons that came from trial and a whole lot of error.

The first lesson I learned was when we were asked to interview people for a streeter article. I don’t have a problem talking to people one-on-one, but not when I have to engage the conversation, so it was already a rocky start.  When one of the first people I tried to talk to told me to “go away” using more colourful language, morale was pretty low. However, determined to do well on my very first serious assignment of the semester, I kept at it, and sure enough, some people were willing to talk to me. I learned that while not everyone will want to talk to me, people are generally nicer than I think they are, and it’s all about how you approach the conversation.

Another important lesson was to always have a contingency plan. No matter how bulletproof you think your plan A is for an assignment, you always have to be prepared for the worst-case scenario. I recently learned that the hard way, when a topic for a feature story I was going to write fell through just over a week before the due date. Being the ever-so-foolish optimist that I was, I never considered a plan B, because I never considered the possibility that my story might fall apart. I was anxious and stressed out, but my teacher and classmates helped me find a new topic for my article. Everything worked out in the end—but it was a real eye-opener.

The most important lesson wasn’t something I learned from the journalism program, but from applying to another program, creative writing, and failing twice. When I first failed to get into the program, I was shocked; I was sure my writing was good enough to get me admitted. I thought it was simply because I didn’t read the guidelines clearly (I didn’t) and that my rejection had nothing to do with the quality of my portfolio.

When I failed the second time, I reviewed the stories I submitted, and noticed all the amateur mistakes I had made; mistakes that I’d never made before. It was a real wake up call for me. I was so focused on shaping my story the way I wanted that I didn’t consider writing it properly. So confident that I was above making stupid grammatical mistakes, I never bothered to reread them before submitting. Those failures made me realize that no matter how good you think you are at something, that shouldn’t stop you from improving and working hard.

After only one year at Concordia, I have learned a lot about myself, especially what I need to improve. My time studying journalism has taught me to be more diligent, better prepared, but most of all, to never take the easy way out—to always work hard. I hope the following years spent studying here help mould me into a better student and a better person.

Archive Graphic by Alexa Hawksworth

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Student Life

Reopening a heartfelt chapter from the past

Moe’s diner finds a new home in the CJ basement

When I was a kid, I spent most of my time in the basement of a 60s-style diner behind the Old Forum. My days consisted of playing “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls on the jukeboxes on repeat, riding around the block in one of the regular customer’s cabs, and mixing coffee, ketchup, pancake mix—anything I could get my hands on—together in a giant bowl. I called it a potion and begged my dad’s staff to have a taste.

The Corner Snack Bar—dubbed Moe’s—was opened by a man named Moe Sweigman in 1958. It was purchased by my grandparents, Vasiliki and Petros Thomas, 20 years later. For decades, the 24-hour greasy spoon served as an after-game pitstop for the Habs, whose home arena was located just across the street before they moved to the Bell Centre in 1996.

Eddy Thomas, father of Katelyn Thomas, in the 90s. Photo by Lee Jenkinson.

The Thomas’s eldest son, Eddy, dropped out of school at 15 to work at the diner full time. Eventually, a woman from Ontario named Lee was hired as a waitress. After a few years of bickering, the two fell in love and went on to have two children: my brother and me.

My grandparents passed the diner down to my dad in the 90s, and it’s where my parents worked for the better half of my life. It was everything to me; everything to us. Customers at Moe’s were as intrinsically tied to us as our family members. Even now, after all these years, they remain threaded into my memory like quirky, lovable characters from a Disney film.

I cried when employees quit. I cried when employees were fired (actually, the first time my parents told me they fired someone, I thought they meant they set him on fire). My mom used to say that when customers I didn’t like tried to talk to me, I’d just swivel around on my stool to face the opposite direction. I also apparently used to command customers to “talk” if they wore CHOM 97.7 apparel, in an attempt to recognize their voices, since the station served as the soundtrack to Moe’s until aux cords became a thing.

The diner meant so much to so many people. For some, it was a 3 a.m. poutine pitstop after a drunken night on the town. For others, it was where they brought a first date whose heart they would go on to claim forever; a place where you could bump into actors who were in town to shoot a movie; even a refuge during the Ice Storm of 1998 and the Dawson College shooting in 2006. For me, it was a go-to hangout, bottomless fries, Yiayia’s unrivaled tzatziki, and my first (and longest) full-time job. But above all, it was home.

Eddy, Katelyn and Justin Thomas (left to right). Photo by Lee Jenkinson.

When times got tough and we had to close in December 2015, it felt like I was losing part of my soul. My mom passed away six years prior to that, so it also felt like I was losing yet another part of her. A chapter of my life closed forever, and it still feels like I’m being stabbed in the heart when I drive by its former location to find a trendy café in its place.

Nowadays, Moe’s crosses my mind every so often, like when I come across an old photograph I haven’t seen in a while. But for the most part, it’s been compartmentalized into a part of my brain labelled “this hurts too much to think about.”

Since the diner’s closing, I’ve taken on a few different jobs, but most of my time has been devoted to the journalism degree I’m pursuing at Concordia. As a journalism student, I spend a lot of time in the CJ building on the Loyola campus. Last fall, as I was walking down the hallway that leads to the tunnel connecting CJ to the SP building, I looked up and stopped dead in my tracks. Hanging there on the wall was a 7UP sign that read “CASSE-CROUTE DU COIN RESTAURANT.” It took a second, but then it hit me: I know this sign. It used to hang above the window outside my diner.

It’s hard to put how I felt in that moment into words, but for the most part I was overcome with a distinct feeling of warmth that I’ve never experienced before. It might be comparable to bumping into an old friend you haven’t seen in years, whose whereabouts you were entirely unaware of up until your paths happened to cross again. A twist of fate.

Of all the places on earth this sign could have ended up, it so happened to be in a building where I spend most of my days. Moe’s lives on forever in the hearts of everyone who frequented it over the years, but also in the basement of Concordia’s CJ building. Somehow, three years later, it made its way back to me.

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Opinions

Editorial: Remember, unpaid is unfair

graphic by @spooky_soda

Picture this: you’re scrolling down Indeed, aimlessly searching for a job that fits your criteria—or more accurately, a job where you meet the criteria. Your eyes land on something that almost sounds too good to be true.

Eagerly, you click on the posting and, with hope, cross your fingers. You’re gleeful as you read the responsibilities and requirements—they’re all things you can actually do. Suddenly, you read the last line of the post: “This is an unpaid internship, but we reward our interns with exposure and experience!” As if exposure and experience can put food on the table, pay the rent, or a massive amount of bills.

On Jan. 16, the Journalism Student Association (JSA) voted in favour of going on a week-long strike against unpaid internships. Some of the goals of this protest, outlined by the JSA, are to pressure the Quebec government to include interns in its Labour Code, and to send a message to Concordia that they are opposed to mandatory, unpaid internships, specifically, the journalism course JOUR 450.

Of course, striking and protesting against unpaid internships isn’t a radical idea. In November 2018, more than 50,000 Quebec students went on strike against unpaid internships, according to CBC News. The protest highlighted how Quebec’s labour laws don’t protect student interns, who are often exploited and left without remuneration. Those of us who are familiar with unpaid internships are well aware of the many downsides that come with embarking on one. But it seems that there are a lot of students out there who don’t really know about unpaid internships—or more importantly, why they suck.

When news broke of the JSA voting in favour of the strike, many anonymous students took to the Spotted: Concordia Facebook page to vent about how much they disagree with the strike. Specifically, one post mentioned that the university can’t do much about journalism students’ unpaid internships, and that they don’t decide if unpaid internships exist or not. Well, we hate to break it to you, anonymous Spotter, but Concordia actually does have a say in unpaid internships. In the journalism department, students can’t get paid if they’re earning credit for their internship (see JOUR 450 above). This university policy is a hassle to deal with, and leaves students feeling trapped between two daunting choices: exert all of your energy and produce the best work possible without pay, or choose an unrelated job that pays but forever be left behind in the competitive race to the top.

We also need to stress that unpaid internships in general affect a lot of different people, in a lot of different ways. In fields like mechanical and industrial engineering, internships are paid—but 79.3 per cent of students in that field at Concordia are men, according to a poster published by the CSU about unpaid internships across various departments. The same can be said about finance, where 70.12 per cent of students are men, yet that field holds paid internship opportunities. Meanwhile, fields like art education, where 90.0 per cent of students are women, and applied human sciences, where 78.29 per cent of students are women, offer mostly unpaid internships. And it’s noteworthy to remember that women that work full-time still earn 74.2 cents for every dollar earned by a man, according to Maclean’s.

Unpaid internships also affect those who are already struggling financially. People with physical and mental disabilities are twice as likely to live below the poverty line in Canada, and nearly 15 per cent of people with disabilities live in poverty, according to the non-profit organization Canada Without Poverty. One in five racialized families live in poverty in Canada, whereas one in 20 non-racialized families live in poverty. According to the same source, racialized women earn 32 per cent less at work.

These same people, representing these facts and figures, are trying their best as students at Concordia. Not only are they studying hard, they’re also trying to find an opportunity outside of their schooling that lets them add something to their resume. At the same time, they’re juggling numerous responsibilities; some might have children, others might need to pay rent. The last thing they need is an unpaid internship. So, to all of you anonymous Spotted users: try to ditch the misplaced anger, and instead, read up about unpaid internships. Oh, and maybe invest in some sympathy—it seems like you can afford it.

Graphic by @spooky_soda

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Opinions

Confessions of a journalism student

Graphic by Zeze Le Lin

When will the looming doubts go away?

As an undergraduate student, I often find myself second-guessing the program I chose. Before starting university, a journalism degree seemed to be the route I was destined to take; I have always loved writing, photography and film—it seemed like the perfect fit.

I grew up in Grand Falls-Windsor, a small quaint town in Newfoundland. I was excited to move to the trendy city of Montreal and begin my studies. After the first week, I was immediately overcome with doubts about my decision to enter the program. I felt uneasy about my career as a journalist.

I thought I was overreacting, and I told myself I couldn’t judge the program based on one week. Nonetheless, I called my sisters in a panic, both of whom are in the last year of their arts and science degrees, and asked if they felt the same way when they started their programs. Both my sisters assured me that nobody loves every aspect of their program, and that it’s normal to have conflicting thoughts. Many students experience this.

As the semester progressed, my looming doubts didn’t go away. I feared I had made the wrong choice. I realized I couldn’t envision myself working as a reporter—I questioned what career I would pursue after my degree.

The program focuses on teaching traditional journalistic practices. I am confident I will have the practical skills necessary to work for a mainstream media outlet once I finish my degree. However, I did not expect and continue to be disappointed by the lack of emphasis on unconventional career paths in alternative media.

Over the past two semesters, I have considered switching programs many times. I never went through with this decision because I’m afraid I will immediately regret it. Realistically, I will have “problems” with whatever program I’m in—every university student does. As I am only in my first year, I still have a lot to learn and will ride the university wave in the journalism program until I eventually figure out what I’m doing.

Graphic by Zeze Le Lin

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Opinions

Confessions of a journalism student

Graphic by Zeze Le Lin

The boredom of traditional news reporting

Whenever someone asks me why I chose journalism, my answer is comparable to those perfectly iced sugar cookies everyone picks up at the grocery store but puts back before the check-out line—sweet, yet very processed.

I say, “I’ve always loved writing stories, but could never come up with any of my own. With journalism I can still tell stories, they’re just not mine.” While this reasoning remains partly true, I have come to a few crucial realizations since I began studying journalism.

I do love telling stories, just not all of them. Quite frankly, politics and traditional news do not interest me. And if you know the journalism program, you know the first year focuses on establishing the fundamentals through traditional news reporting, which bores me to death. By the end of the first semester, my breathing had slowed significantly. I told my mother that if she chose a solid mahogany casket, I would rise from the dead to make the switch to solid bronze myself.

Also, there’s my gripe with multimedia classes and renting equipment from the depot. I’m technologically inept, so that’s the main struggle. There’s also the fact that I live about an hour away from the Loyola campus via public transit, and I travel all that way for the three minutes it takes to pick up my equipement. It’s a huge inconvenience. I live in Laval, so that’s equivalent to when Kim Kardashian flew to New Orleans for the evening for beignets. Except, I don’t leave with anything that delicious.

But to blame my struggles entirely on my program would be a lie. Truth be told, I’m an insecure writer, constantly invalidating and comparing my work to that of my peers. No matter how many times someone assures me I’m meant to be in journalism or that the talent I don’t think I have is real, I’m always doubtful.

I still love journalism and writing, but more so on my own terms. I’ll have to push through until that’s my reality and I can work on what interests me. Because, honestly, I don’t see myself doing anything else.

Graphic by Zeze Le Lin

Categories
Student Life

Reporting on the European refugee crisis

Refugees bail from an overloaded raft and swim towards the shores of Lesbos, Greece. It is only one leg of the treacherous journey across Europe to reach their final destination, Germany in Another News Story.

Cinema Politica screening of Another News Story followed by panel on media representation of crisis

“Another news story” is a phrase one might use when referencing media coverage of Trump’s latest antics, or the most recent development of a long-standing social issue in another corner of the world. It signifies both a habitual regard for and detachment from the social phenomena that make headlines—a reflex that is all too common among those on the receiving end of the news.

In the last few years, coverage of the European refugee crisis by major news outlets around the world has saturated the media landscape with scenes of the calamity. Yet, the story has never been told from the perspective British director Orban Wallace takes in his debut documentary, Another News Story. Wallace steps away from the sea of tripods and media personnel to instead focus his camera on the journalists themselves as they navigate the working conditions and ethical dilemmas of reporting on a humanitarian crisis. This unconventional take on a widely-reported topic isn’t just another news story; it goes beyond surface-level media criticism to probe the relationship between news subjects, producers and consumers.

In this story, there are no heroes or villains; it quickly becomes apparent that the ethical and moral divisions of right and wrong are not so clear cut. Each journalist Wallace encounters projects the honourable intention of bringing truth to viewers so they can grasp the severity of the crisis and care enough to do something about it. However, under the unflinching gaze of Wallace’s camera, it’s unclear whether the journalists themselves care, whether they are at all invested in the reality they report on.

Journalists are essential to society, yet the profession’s nobility is questioned as Wallace follows reporters who seemingly go through the motions, setting up tripods on the shambles of people’s lives without enduring the emotional weight of the situation. At one point in the journey, Wallace finds out a refugee has been injured in an aggressive confrontation with police. When Wallace questions the bystanders, one journalist observes that the man is now swarmed with cameras but hasn’t actually been offered aid. It was one of many instances in which the journalistic imperative to “get the shot” overrides the human instinct to help someone in need.

The documentary does not seek to champion the virtues of journalism, nor does it take a hostile view on the news media. Another News Story simply poses the question: If the news media holds the government accountable, who holds the media accountable? The answer places Wallace in a new, unfamiliar position—the watchdog’s watchdog.

A journalist captures the last shots of a refugee-packed train before it pulls out of the station enroute to Germany in Another News Story.

Though he stays closely attuned to the lives of the journalists, Wallace doesn’t ignore the emotional intensity of the refugees’ journey. He travels alongside Mahasen, a Syrian refugee, and a group of others who have embarked on the perilous journey to Germany, to experience the bureaucratic minefield and physical stress firsthand. Wallace juxtaposes the sanitized broadcast news coverage of his colleagues with his own intimate, handheld footage from the field, effectively widening the audience’s field of vision beyond the CNN news desk to see all that lies in the periphery.

The group of refugees is seemingly always being pursued, either by journalists or authorities, to be tokenized or victimized. Wallace, with his camera and valid passport, is not excluded from the hoards of news media personnel and the security his press pass permits him. In this story, the roles can only be defined by power—who stands on either side of the camera, and subsequently, the television screen.

Towards the end of the film, a reporter Wallace encountered offers an observation: “The story is over from a news point of view.” Yet life goes on for Mahasen and thousands of other refugees who will begin a new life in Europe. Only, now, the cameras have stopped rolling.

Cinema Politica’s screening of Another News Story on March 19 was followed by a panel discussion moderated by filmmaker Muhammad El-Khairy, in which activists Fatima Azzahra Banane, Dalila Awada and Houda Asal addressed the residual questions posed by the film: With no end to the crisis in sight, where do we go from here? What kind of news coverage is needed?

Awada suggested journalists need to be increasingly aware of the language they use when identifying vulnerable people, and how these prescribed labels are then represented in the news media. Language poses the unique threat of unconsciously alienating individuals and groups, as it’s used carelessly in public discourse, she said. The most subtle linguistic divides—in this case, the interchangeable use of the terms “refugee,” “foreign person” and “illegal immigrant”—can erode any common ground between the vulnerable group and the audience.

Azzahra Banane stressed the need for context, to make both journalists and viewers aware of the social, political and cultural roots of the issues they are witnessing. When context is limited to what is considered breaking news, viewers fail to comprehend the extent of the problems and are not compelled to solve them, she said.

In the same way Wallace held a mirror to the frontline of journalists, the film calls for self-reflection among media consumers as well. News producers and consumers maintain a symbiotic relationship; the interests and preferences of the audience directly inform the nature and content of the news. If we are to honestly criticize the journalist’s vulture-like scavenging of the remains of human lives, then we must also acknowledge the North American appetite for superficial, sensationalized news coverage.

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Opinions

Objecting to objective reporting

Graphic by Alexa Hawksworth.

When people think of journalism, they might think of gathering information and disseminating objective, balanced news stories to the public. Or, at least, that’s what they used to think. It’s unrealistic to assume that something as fast-paced as the journalism industry would never experience change. History shows that it has—and that it will. We at The Concordian think it is time to embrace a new change: the fact that objectivity in journalism does not exist. It has never existed.

To be objective means to not be influenced by personal feelings or opinions when considering and representing facts. To do so is not humanly possible. We are all shaped and influenced by our identity—our culture, our community, our lived experiences. These things inevitably affect how we see the world.

What has long been referred to as objectivity in journalism is simply the perception of the world through the eyes of the people who dominated newsrooms: straight, cisgender, white men. Objective reporting did not mean feelings or opinions did not influence the way stories were analyzed and told. It simply meant that stories were solely analyzed and told using a historically dominant lens. This is not acceptable.

It is time for journalists to acknowledge the factors that influence their storytelling. And to realize that these influences are not necessarily bad things. Allowing writers from various marginalized communities—be they women, people of colour, members of the LGBTQ+ community—to draw on their knowledge and experiences opens up inclusive dialogues and brings different perspectives to the table. It would allow journalists to tell stories everyone can relate to—not just some people.

Of course, that isn’t to say that facts and truth don’t exist. Journalism—or at least good journalism—should always be truthful and accurate. However, we must realize that even good journalism will never be completely objective. The way we place our quotes in a story, the people we interview, the headlines we choose and the way we edit all come from a subjective place in ourselves. Our thoughts affect the way we choose to tell a story, regardless of our efforts to remain objective. The truth is, no story is objective—and neither are we.

We at The Concordian think it’s time to approach journalism and research in a different way. It is time that we call out the injustices in the media industry and outline the ways we can begin to improve. Journalism schools around the world should begin to implement courses that discard the notion of objectivity as a defining element of journalism. The current standards of “equitable” reporting that we are being taught in school are not sufficient. Completely excluding our subjective experiences is not only wrong, it is impossible.

Research and reporting are human activities, therefore, they are messy and complicated. Most of the time, you cannot generalize research. The world is not an exact science. While there is truth and fact, there is no such thing as objectivity or neutrality in the way we see the world. To be better journalists and better people, we must take individual experiences into account. We must look to marginalized communities. We should seek to challenge the power structures in our societies rather than support them. We must use our research and reporting as a medium for social change, rather than social control.

Graphic by Alexa Hawksworth 

Categories
Sports

Jonah Keri talks about sports reporting and Expos

Jonah Keri returned to his alma mater, Concordia University, to talk about sports journalism and the Montreal Expos. Photo by Matthew Coyte.

Accomplished Concordia graduate says storytelling is the root of journalism

Jonah Keri believes journalism hasn’t changed since cavemen started sharing stories thousands of years ago.

“There were cavemen putting sketches of killings on the wall, telling stories, and nothing of that has changed,” he told a crowd at the D.B. Clarke Theatre on Nov. 16. “We always want to consume our news no matter through which medium.”

Keri and Arpon Basu, two graduates from the journalism program, returned to Concordia University last Thursday to host a talk called “Up, up, and away: A journey into sports journalism.” Both are accomplished sports writers, with Keri covering baseball for CBS Sports and Sports Illustrated as well as hosting his self-titled podcast. Basu is the current editor-in-chief of The Athletic Montreal and Athlétique Montréal, and has covered the Montreal Canadiens for over a decade.

Keri said his favourite part about being a journalist is storytelling. “For me, as a journalist, it’s about telling stories and bringing people along for a ride,” he said while gesturing as if he were dragging somebody across the stage.

A baseball article Jonah Keri wrote for The Concordian, when he was sports editor in 1995-96. Photo by Nicholas Di Giovanni.

Keri, a former sports editor at The Concordian, has written three books on baseball, with his latest titled Up, Up, and Away. It covers the history of the Montreal Expos, from the team’s beginning in Major League Baseball (MLB) in 1969 to their death in 2004, when the franchise moved to Washington, D.C. He published the book 10 years after the Expos left, but was reluctant to write it at first.

“[In 2011] my editor told me we should do a collab on a book on the Expos,” Keri explained. “I said, ‘Who cares about the Expos? They left a number of years ago.’” But in February 2012, former Expos catcher and Hall of Famer Gary Carter died, and that’s when talk about the Expos started to heat up again, according to Keri.

“When Gary Carter passed, it was so sad, but it was that light that clicked and linked to the Expos, and people said, ‘Oh yeah, I miss the Expos,’” Keri said. That’s when he started writing the book, and a week after it was published in March 2014, nearly 100,000 fans filled the Olympic Stadium, the Expos’ former home, to watch preseason games between the Toronto Blue Jays and New York Mets. Basu said talk of the Expos has grown considerably since they left Montreal.

“Today, [MLB commissioner] Rob Manfred talks about expansion and the Expos, and it’s just crazy to see the commissioner of the MLB talk about the Expos,” Basu said.

Former Montreal mayor Denis Coderre was a big advocate of bringing the Expos back and building the new stadium the team would need in order to return. Current Mayor Valérie Plante has said she would not use public money to build a new ballpark, unless Montrealers voted in favour of it in a referendum, according to CTV News. Keri said that doesn’t mean the dream of an Expos return is dead.

“Whether I live in ville St-Laurent or on the moon, I wouldn’t want public funds to go to a baseball stadium and help out billionaires,” Keri said. “So with the new mayor, it doesn’t mean the baseball dream is dead, but it’s a different approach.”

Main photo by Matthew Coyte

Categories
Opinions

Why Concordia’s journalism program needs updating—again

Graphic by Alexa Hawksworth.

Change can definitely be a good thing. While it’s great to stick to a certain niche, it’s really important to evolve your ideas and abilities so that you can keep up with this fast-paced world.

Take Concordia’s journalism program, for example. It’s no secret that journalism has shifted from a traditional print platform to a digital one. Now, reporters are expected to know not only how to write, but also how to take photos, edit sound clips and record video. It’s a great shift, since it encompasses where our society is going in terms of technological advances. But we at The Concordian feel that, although the journalism program has changed for the better since its upgrade in 2016, there is still room for improvement.

It’s understandable that change had to come to a program like journalism—a field that’s always transforming and adapting. To be honest, though, the changes seem better in theory than in practice.

For example, under the old program, students had the option of choosing between a major in textual or audiovisual (AV) journalism. Regardless of which path students chose, though, all were required to spend a semester learning the basics of radio journalism, and another semester focusing on an introduction to video. Later on in their degree, students were offered a semester-long course on photojournalism.

Under the new program, however, students are expected to learn the basics of radio, video and photojournalism in just 15 weeks. That’s about four or five weeks per subject—simply not enough time to familiarize yourself with the basics let alone prepare you for more advanced radio and video courses.

While we at The Concordian agree with the department’s attempt to better prepare students for a work environment that requires journalists to be jacks-of-all-trades, the changes seem to go too far in the other direction. In trying to teach students so much material in so little time, many j-schoolers risk finishing courses with less knowledge than they would have under the old curriculum.

But the changes aren’t all negative. It’s extremely important to highlight the program’s necessary shift from traditional to digital media and its implications on young journalists. Writing, of course, is always going to be a critical tool for journalists. But video, radio and photography have also become necessary skills for a career in this field.

While the new program does offer in-depth audiovisual courses at the 300 and 400-level, we hope the department acknowledges that the overly condensed format of the program’s first year hinders rather than helps prepare students for the rest of their degree.

Another change that has been made to the program is that the course “Radio Newsroom” is no longer required for second-year AV students. Especially given the limited time spent acquiring radio skills in year one, we at The Concordian believe the department should create more of an opportunity for students to develop their broadcasting skills in a hands-on environment.

Ultimately, we believe the changes made to the journalism program show potential, even though they remain far from ideal. The fact that the department was willing to adapt to a shifting work environment gives us confidence that we haven’t seen the end of the department’s attempts to make adjustments for the sake of its students’ education.

Graphic by Alexa Hawksworth

Categories
News

Concordia department of journalism chair David Secko discusses new program

Concordia journalism department chair David Secko discusses the new journalism program. Photo by Alex Hutchins

Chair responds to student criticism and needs of contemporary media

Gone are the year-long classes and the opportunity to graduate with a 72-credit specialization from Concordia’s journalism department. Since 2016, all journalism students are enrolled in the department’s new 45-credit major.

A year after the change, department chair David Secko said the objective of the new format was to fully integrate all aspects of journalism––written, audio and video––into the program. As of next year, new students will also wrap up their degree with a digital magazine course where they will bring “all their skills together,” Secko said.

Despite the changes, some former students, like Salim Valji and Noëlle Solange Didierjean, are voicing their discontent with the program. In March, Valji and Didierjean sat down with Secko and the department’s undergraduate program director, Andrea Hunter, to discuss ways to improve the program.

Among their concerns were the department’s cutting of the radio newsroom course—a class where students are asked to produce a 15-minute newscast in two and a half hours—from two classes per week to one.

“The university is in deficit, and there are just not enough course sections to hold that many courses,” Secko told The Concordian when asked about the reduced number of radio newsroom classes. “It was obvious we [were] going to need to change some things because the university wasn’t going to allow us to have that many courses.” The chair said he turned to professor Paul Gott to “make the class as good as before, or as close as before, with less sections.”

Valji and Didierjean were also critical of the method by which the department selected students to be part of a class with Patti Sonntag, a Concordia alumna and the managing editor of The New York Times’s news services division. Sonntag, Concordia’s former journalist-in-residence, taught an independent study course in the Winter 2017 semester.

The students who were part of the class collaborated on an investigative journalism project published in the Canadian magazine The Walrus.

According to Secko, the students were chosen “based on criteria” set by former chair Brian Gabrial and “those sets of students had to go through an application with [Sonntag].”

Valji and Didierjean were also critical of the attendance selection process for a conference given by CBC foreign correspondent Nahlah Ayed in February 2017. In that case, the department invited students “that excelled in certain classes,” according to Secko. The chair said he received negative feedback from students following the closed session, but pointed out that when Ayed was invited in the fall to speak for a conference, and only nine students showed up.

“More [journalism] students should be interested, and they should be more engaged,” Secko said. “We try the best we can to engage students to think how journalism is. In the end, that passion and that fire has to come [from them].”

The department has written to journalism students about their lack of attendance at events in the past. In an email dated Sept. 28, 2015 obtained by The Concordian, Gabrial wrote: “The biggest question I received from our alumni at our 40th anniversary […] was, ‘Where are the students?’”

“I want to remind you that, just as our department will do whatever it can to support you, sometimes you need to support the department,” the email read.

Secko said the department intends to start micro-teaching courses where a journalist will give a two- or three-hour course on a subject they’re specialized in to combine the benefits of lectures and journalism practice.

Listening to students

Feedback and comments on the program currently come in many informal ways such as interactions between students and professors, debriefs with Hunter and course evaluations at the end of the year.

“Should we be doing more ‘active focus group-style’ [conversations] or things like that to [fix] holes? That’s going to take me a little bit of time to think through,” Secko said.

“Now in my own mind,” he added, “whether we’ll do it or not, [we have to] think where it will go, and I don’t want to distract people. I do think there’s space to formalize that even more.”

Despite not having any formal ways for students to suggest changes yet, Secko said students have come forward with ideas for classes.

For one, he said the idea of a “business of journalism” course has been “reflected a lot.”

“I couldn’t pick the brain of an instructor on how to pitch myself or my stories,” Valji told The Concordian. “Most of them had never worked as journalists in the digital media era. They had no experience in writing pitch emails and negotiating with editors.”

“Often, those elements of entrepreneurism are built into many of the classes,” Secko said. “Whether or not they need to all come out and get put into a specific class is something we often look at.”

Secko explained that new classes first have to be designed by a curriculum committee, then sent to the office of the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science, André Roy.

“If the dean likes it, it would go up,” Secko said. Following the approval of the dean’s office, the course needs to be approved by the Concordia Senate.

“It takes, if you’re lucky, about a year,” according to Secko.

Before the beginning of the semester, the department chairs and instructors also met with representatives from Quebec and Montreal-based media. According to CBC Montreal managing editor Helen Evans, who attended the meeting, the department asked questions such as: “What do you need from our journalism graduates?”

Secko said conversations with media representatives have changed in focus from the need for national and international coverage “towards the need to understand what Montreal needs [and] what Quebec needs.”

The journalism department also plans to introduce a sports journalism class funded by a $650,000 donation made by Sportsnet in December 2015. Secko said the money––which has already been used for various scholarships––will pay for the professor “and any other thing” needed to run the course.

Valji, who has contributed to ESPN, The New York Times and most-recently started working for TSN, said Secko “really has to think about what the department’s identity is.”

“Are we a journalism school or a school that studies journalism?” the Concordia alumnus asked, referring to the department’s need to emphasize practical journalism.

“All of us need to really think very carefully about what is journalism in 2017,” Evans said. “The context has changed drastically and any journalism program at any point needs to be thinking about the exact time it’s offering that program.”

Secko’s vision is one where students are able to think critically and for themselves—a program where students have the “ability to be entrepreneurs […] and find new ways to interact with the constantly evolving media environment.”

“Part of what we need to do in thinking of the perfect program is to always interact with students, alums, with as many people as we can get through,” Secko said.

Photo by Alex Hutchins

Categories
Opinions

Why I value my journalism degree

Graphic by Florence Yee

My response to the large amount of hate on my program of study

I have come to the realization that having to defend journalism on a daily basis comes with the territory of studying journalism.

“Good luck getting a job” and “What do you plan on doing with that?” are things I hear regularly. I can handle that. But perhaps the comment I get the most, and the comment that irks me the most, is “You’re studying journalism? That’s kind of a useless degree.” Or even, “Just be a journalist, you don’t need a degree for that.”

Society seems increasingly distrustful of “the media.” I put “the media” in quotation marks because the term, although commonly used, doesn’t really mean anything. As senior editor for The Atlantic James Hamblin wrote last month, “the term has been weaponized.”

The Atlantic senior editor Derek Thompson writes, “‘the media,’ like ‘technology,’ is not a single, tangible object but rather an information galaxy, a vast and complex star system composed of diverse and opposing organizations, which are themselves composed of a motley group of people, each of whom are neither all good nor all bad, but mostly flawed media merchants with individual strengths, weaknesses, biases and blindspots.”

To summarize briefly, “the media” is too much of an all-encompassing term that muddles the individuality of journalists and organizations.

I believe this homogenizing of individual journalists and news organizations is toxic for the understanding of a complex industry and profession. Being a journalist is no less important than it was two decades ago—it is just easier to mimic today.

A distrust in news organizations is understandable. With the ever-increasing importance of social media and speed in people’s lives, clickbait and fake news weasel their way to the top of our newsfeeds.

But as renowned journalist Christiane Amanpour said at the 2016 meeting for the Committee to Protect Journalists, “we must fight for the truth in a post-truth world.” I am grateful for my journalism degree because I believe a good, balanced training, including lessons on ethics, law, image, sound, writing and history, is an important part of succeeding in the fight for “truth in a post-truth world.” I believe journalism schools are the light of hope for the next generation of aspiring journalists, who are being increasingly exposed to lazy publishing and public relations painted as journalism.

Concordia has one of the best journalism schools in the country. The program is known for training honest and professional journalists who have moved on to work for reputable organizations like the Montreal Gazette, the Globe and Mail, CBC, CTV and the New York Times.

The hands-on training I have been receiving since the beginning of my studies blows me away. Our teachers have us going out, conducting interviews, gathering sound and images—the same way producers or editors at CBC expect their journalists to gather a story. Professors have been throwing us into scrums, crowds, conferences, courtrooms, protests, and expect excellence from us in return.

Journalism school has consistently ranked at the top of “Most Useless Major” lists on blogs and websites like Business Insider and the Huffington Post. Its value has also been questioned in articles from The Guardian, Complex magazine and Forbes. While the hate or disdain for journalism school has been discussed over the years, there is simultaneously a common desire for more truthful, honest journalism.

CBC’s The Sunday Edition host Michael Enright once said, “citizen journalism is like citizen dentists… I’d rather not.”  So for those who complain or criticize this “useless degree,” but also complain about “sloppy journalism,” it may be time to think about the importance of proper journalistic training for the next generation of storytellers and for the future of news.

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