{"id":70430,"date":"2020-10-22T11:54:08","date_gmt":"2020-10-22T15:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=70430"},"modified":"2025-10-17T11:08:04","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T15:08:04","slug":"journalism-students-virtual-newsroom","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/journalism-students-virtual-newsroom\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Scenes: Students Work in Virtual Newsroom to Cover Journalism Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Behind the Scenes: Students Work in Virtual Newsroom to Cover Journalism Conference\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

Carleton University\u2019s School of Journalism and Communication<\/a>\u2014the oldest in Canada\u2014is renowned for offering ongoing hands-on experiences to students, both inside and outside of the classroom setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To celebrate the school\u2019s establishment and 75th anniversary, Allan Thompson, the head of the journalism program, organized a two-day virtual conference Journalism in the Time of Crisis<\/u><\/em>,<\/u> taking place Oct. 22 and 23.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Allan
Allan Thompson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To further provide a platform for student involvement, Thompson created a multimedia team of 14 senior students from the Bachelor of Journalism and the master\u2019s program to cover the event from gavel to gavel.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cThese journalism students are gaining some invaluable, real-world journalism experience as reporters covering this event,\u201d says Thompson.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The conference is structured into 17 panels featuring 64 panellists and four keynote speakers, including Chief Public Health Officer of Canada Theresa Tam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Carleton master\u2019s of journalism student, Hannah Rivkin, is the newsroom team lead for the two-day conference. She divided the team of 13 students into smaller groups and assigned each group four panels to cover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cConferences go by so fast,\u201d says Rivkin. \u201cThe hope for the newsroom is that people can read and hear some content that will remind them of what was talked about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Diverse Team to Cover Timely Topics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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A diverse group of journalists will be addressing topics at the forefront of the news, including internet conspiracy theories, fake news, mental health, the future of the industry and more.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cWe\u2019re trying to make sure that our team is ready to digest those issues beforehand,\u201d adds Rivkin.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The dedicated multimedia news team will work as a virtual newsroom to cover every keynote and panel discussion with posts on social media, live tweeting, written articles and a dedicated podcast, explains Thompson. The main news site for the event will be hosted on Medium.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Journalism<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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John MacGillis, a fourth-year student and visual lead on the team, says it has been particularly challenging to gather visual content to promote the conference during the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy job is essentially to visualize what the panel looks like, which is an interesting challenge being that it doesn’t actually look like anything because it’s online. We are given so much creative license to try things out so, we\u2019ve really been flexing our creative muscles,\u201d says MacGillis. \u201cI really think that it is impressive to see how quickly everyone’s able to throw together this much content.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Students Exploring the Intersection of Journalism and COVID-19<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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The 14 students have also been involved in creating a social media presence for the conference in advance of the event through posts on Twitter<\/a>, Instagram<\/a> and Facebook<\/a> accounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yasmine Ghania took the lead on the event\u2019s social media presence and media guide to amplify the conference and panellists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is very much a student-run newsroom,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cWe’re taking the things that we’re learning in J-school and applying them on the spot. We’re also quick on our feet and adapting as things happen\u2014panellists being added last minute, others opting out, we just have to roll with it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The conference will explore the intersection of journalism and the COVID-19 crisis to assess both the short and long-term impacts in the industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than 500 people have registered<\/a> for Journalism in the Time of Crisis<\/em> on Oct. 22 and 23.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Carleton University\u2019s School of Journalism and Communication\u2014the oldest in Canada\u2014is renowned for offering ongoing hands-on experiences to students, both inside and outside of the classroom setting. To celebrate the school\u2019s establishment and 75th anniversary, Allan Thompson, the head of the journalism program, organized a two-day virtual conference Journalism in the Time of Crisis, taking place […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":70418,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[25,1592],"cu_story_tag":[1921],"class_list":["post-70430","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-student-experience","cu_story_type-teaching-learning","cu_story_tag-faculty-of-public-and-global-affairs"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/70430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/70430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97891,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/70430\/revisions\/97891"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=70430"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=70430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}