Thursday Reading & Writing Club

Kudos to my fellow Creative Communications instructor Kenton Larsen, who has started a voluntary Thursday after-class writing club.

Because reading makes anyone a better writer, Kenton wanted to ask students to read something.

To aid the cause, I have donated a few books, good, bad and otherwise. Many contain my comments and questions; I love talking back to writers.

Five of the books are by Mike McIntyre, a grad of our program and a prolific reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press.

Kenton and the students can agree on the rules. But I suggest students take one book at a time and keep it. The following week they would share (or, even better, demonstrate) something they have learned about writing from the book.

If all the books go, I have more.

The most disabling thought

Powerful writing about the horror of Amanda Lindhout’s repeated rape and torture during her 460 days as a hostage in Somalia in 2008 and 2009:

It didn’t matter whether it was the tenth time or the thousandth; enduring their cruelties never became any easier. It always had the same effect, consuming me, putting me in a knotted and unhopeful rage. I’d spent my life believing that people were, at heart, kind and good. This was what the world had shown me, But I couldn’t find anything good about these boys, about any of my captors. If humans could be this monstrous, maybe I’d had everything wrong. If this was the world, I didn’t want to live in it. That was the scariest and most disabling thought of all. (293)

Tortured almost to death, Lindhout feels herself become a disembodied observer.

From above, I could see two men and a woman on the ground. The woman was tied up like an animal, and the men were hurting her, landing blows on her body. I knew all of them, but I also didn’t. I recognized myself down there, but I felt no more connected to the woman than to the men in the room. I’d slipped across some threshold I would never understand. The feeling was both deeply peaceful and deeply sad.
What I saw was three people suffering, the tortured and the torturers alike. (337)

From A House in the Sky by Lindhout and Sara Corbett (Scribner, 2013).

Also see Sara Shyiak's blog about the book.

The best writing about Rob Ford

My nominations for the Top 3 pieces of writing about the crack-smoking, drunken liar who masquerades as the legitimate mayor of Toronto:

No. 3: John Doyle in The Globe and Mail Nov. 6.

Ford represents a triumph of hoser culture over liberal Canadian values, Doyle writes.

A total hoser, Ford talks hoser and acts the hoser lifestyle. He even leads a hoser community, one that’s hardcore suburban, scorns urban sophistication and is well-pleased when Rob Ford and his brother Doug do an achingly close simulation of Bob and Doug McKenzie, on their weekly radio show. “I shouldn’t have got hammered,” as Ford said, is hoserdom defined.

No. 2: John Cruickshank’s elegant, angry and sorrowful column Nov. 1 in the Toronto Star, of which he is publisher.

Cruickshank concludes, “We feel tremendously proud today of our unwavering pursuit of a shocking story about a popular mayor.”

No. 1: Rob Ford on his radio show Nov. 3, jumbling a minimum of insight with a maximum of ignorance about the real problem:

“I shouldn’t have got hammered.”

Winnipeg Metro: Small, with big plans

Two weeks ago Paul Samyn, editor of the Winnipeg Free Press, told Creative Communications students, “Don’t ask me where the newsroom is going to be in 12 months.”

His caution is probably commendable, given that the business in which he has been newly promoted is going through dramatic changes.

Contrast it, though, with the confident one-word assertion today to those same students by Elisha Dacey, editor of Winnipeg Metro.

When I asked what her paper will be like in a year, she said, “Bigger.”

Dacey hopes to increase her full-time reporting staff by 50 per cent next year.

OK, that means growing to three reporters from two.

But it’s still growth, a feature unfortunately absent from many news media business plans these days.

Dacey and Alison Zulyniak, the paper’s advertising sales manager, gave an upbeat presentation about Winnipeg’s year-and-a-half-old newspaper.

Metro Canada, of which Winnipeg Metro is a part, is 90 per cent owned by Torstar Corp., the parent company of the Toronto Star. Stockholm-based Metro International, which originated the international chain, owns 10 per cent.

Key to the success of the Metro papers, in addition to free distribution of the print edition, is small, low-cost staff, lots of short stories, and bright pictures and ads, all designed to appeal to free-spending but time-short 18- to 34-year-olds.

Oh, and the editor writes a ton of stories and takes pictures. “This is the best job I’ve literally ever had,” Dacey said.

Next year we’ll invite her and her colleague Zulyniak back to tell us how much bigger Winnipeg Metro has become.

Story Monday, Story Funday

Yesterday I asked the Creative Communications Journalism majors to propose stories in a traditional “story meeting,” then research and write them the same day.

Story Monday, in CreComm-speak.

I also assigned them to use Twitter in their research or writing, posting at least four tweets during the day.

The resulting topics ranged from curling to polar bears (Canadian, eh?) to senior citizen benefits and International Mother Language Day.

So how did the students use Twitter?

Some used it to seek interviews, successfully or not. Some reported their whereabouts during the day, GPS-like.

Some teased their stories. “Did you ever wonder how teams get seeded for the mens prov. curling champs? I'm finding out today, stay tuned for more,” tweeted Terryn Shiells.

As I followed the students’ Twitter feed I noticed several graduates of our program, now professional journalists, tweeting during their assignments.

As soon as I mentioned them online, I was deluged with “Me, too” tweets from other grads. Naturally, I had to retweet those messages.

Story Funday, student Emily Wessel called it.

The take-away? Work + social media = fun!

The News is dead. Long live the news

“I saw it on The News.”

“Which news?”

“Umm … I don’t remember.”

“CNN? Fox? CBC? CTV? The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Best F#@king News Team Ever?”

”Umm …”

(In an Instructor Voice) “There is no The News. Maybe there was, once, somewhere. Now there is just news.”

Living and dying for journalism

For their first blogging assignment, the Journalism majors in Creative Communications are asking: What is journalism?

To take only two examples of their thoughtful answers:

“Journalism isn’t chained to a format.  It will always be helping people make sense of their world,” says Erica Johnson.

“Journalism is getting your hands dirty. Journalism is accuracy, accountability and a desire to share information,” is part of Dani Finch’s inclusive definition.

But this topic is important not only to students doing an assignment.

Jeff Jarvis in his blog BuzzMachine asks the same question, with some not-so-different answers, but interesting new examples.

Meanwhile, two journalists have been found slain in Mexico City. Their deaths follow a pattern of violence by organized criminals, The Guardian reports.

And in Russia, a former police colonel has finally been charged in the notorious 2006 murder of the investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya.

So, while we debate “What is journalism?” let’s remember the journalists Ana Marcela Yarce Viveros, Rocio González Trapaga and Anna Politkovskaya.

These three women answered the question with their lives.

Unpaid 'internships' = exploitation

Here’s hoping you can tear yourself away from the efforts of Rebekah Brooks and her enablers, Rupert and James Murdoch, to destroy the reputations of all journalists.

Let’s discuss another disgraceful topic: unpaid internships at profit-making companies for graduates of journalism schools and other professional programs. They’re very popular these days. There’s even one in Winnipeg journalism.

As my colleague Melanie Lee Lockhart explains, there are good reasons to volunteer for organizations that you support, where you can make a difference.

And many post-secondary educational programs include brief unpaid work placements or internships. These are actually courses for which students receive credit.

Creative Communications, the Red River College program where I teach journalism (damn the Murdochs!), includes two three-week work placements. Instructors match students with employers and survey both sides after each placement to ensure that everyone involved receives value from the experience.

Then the students graduate and look for paying jobs. Paying jobs, just like the ones held by their employers.

Unfortunately, there is a growing trend in Canada toward unpaid internships for students who have graduated.

We pay ’em in experience and networking, these companies say.

Well, pay ’em in money, I say. The experience and networking already are important elements of these traditionally low-paying jobs.

Have the bosses of these students renounced their pay cheques? Are they giving away their entire product at no charge?

Didn’t think so.

Companies engaging in this abusive practice are extremely short-sighted. In a rapidly changing world where workers already exhibit little loyalty to employers and where skills are easily transferable, why would they want to alienate the smart young people on whom their success depends?

The only answer I can see is, “Because we can.”

So that’s why I don’t recommend that a student take an unpaid job on graduation, or even for the summer between school years.

It’s exploitation.

Ad, Journalism instructors wanted

Red River College in Winnipeg, Canada is hiring two instructors in the Creative Arts department, one for Advertising and one for Journalism.

Application deadline is June 21.

What is journalism?

Check out the blog list on the right side of this page. You will find 16 posts by second-year Journalism major students in my Creative Communications class on the topic What is Journalism?

Their opinions and examples will give you a perspective on the huge range of journalism today -- all sorts of journalism in all sorts of media.

Yes, some media are declining. Think of print-only newspapers or traditional hour-long television newscasts. But even those "old" media are sprouting vibrant new online growth.

In short, it's a great business today for smart, curious, energetic young people, people such as these bloggers.

Bloggers = journalists = PR and ad people

An article in the June 1, 2010 issue of The Uniter, Winnipeg's Weekly Urban Journal, allows a mainstream journalist to perpetuate a misconception about bloggers.

The article quotes Geoff Kirbyson, a Winnipeg Free Press reporter, criticizing bloggers as inferior to writers of his ilk.

“Journalists went to school and studied the craft. Bloggers are not trained,” he said. “They don’t do the work or attend events. They just comment on what they’ve read. If they started showing up at things and doing the work, then I wouldn’t have a problem with it. A lot of blogging is second-hand reporting.”

But bloggers actually are trained.

All Creative Communications students at Red River College are required to blog weekly. Instructors guide their efforts and grade them. Instructors blog, too.

CreComm instructors and students understand that being able to blog and to use social media such as Facebook and Twitter effectively are essential skills for our graduates, whether they specialize in advertising, journalism, media production or public relations. A recent survey of employers in our fields endorses this view.

And it's not just college instructors who are promoting blogging. Policy Frog on June 1, 2010 comments on Kirbyson's statement and argues persuasively for the validity of blogging as a journalistic tool.

A privileged witness to history

Dawna Friesen (left) talks journalism

with student Emily Baron Cadloff

 (John Pura, Red River College)

Journalists are privileged observers of troubling events, an Emmy award winner told students at Red River College on Nov. 20, 2009.

Reporting from the Gaza Strip and Iraq reminded Dawna Friesen, London correspondent for NBC News, just how privileged reporters are. As she was covering stories in those violent areas, citizens would beg her to help them leave, she said.

Friesen, a graduate of the Creative Communications program, was honoured by the college as a distinguished alumna. 

Before the alumni dinner, Friesen recounted highlights of her career and dropped some nuggets of advice for current students in the program.

Double-check your work, she said -- especially when you are taking information from unverified sources such as Twitter. Postings on social media from people on the scene provided vital information during recent post-election unrest in Iran, whose government severely restricted reporting and even arrested and tortured journalists.

Friesen's bottom line on her job as an international television journalist? "It's not a glamorous life."

She told a vivid story about getting sick after eating lousy food in one unpleasant corner of the world.

But it's worth it Friesen said.

"You're witnessing history."