By Brett Popplewell
Three students from Carleton University’s Master of Journalism program have been selected for this year’s coveted Joan Donaldson scholarships.
The scholarships were established in 1999 and have been awarded annually to graduating students from nine Canadian universities. Only a handful of students are selected in any given year, making the scholarship one of the more sought after by early entrants in the industry.
Among those chosen for the scholarship this year are Dexter McMillan, Maan Alhmidi and Menaka Raman-Wilms, each of whom are expected to graduate from Carleton’s MJ program in June.
McMillan (@dexmcmillan) is adept at both written and visual journalism. Born in Victoria, B.C., he graduated from the University of British Columbia in 2012 with a BA in Psychology. Prior to his studies at Carleton, he worked in special education in Vancouver before moving into an administrative role in health care. He has produced work for the Canadian Press, Canadian Geographic, The Tyee and Ottawa Citizen. He has also worked with the Institute for Investigative Journalism to tell a national story about lead-tainted water across Canada. He spent the last year reporting on Canada’s relationship with oil and gas as part of his master’s research project.
Alhmidi (@maan_alhmidi) is a multimedia journalist who was born in Syria where he grew up and studied law. He was completing his master’s degree in law when demonstrations in his home country escalated into all-out war. He began reporting on the uprising from Aleppo and co-founded a magazine where he also served as Managing Editor. He came to Canada in 2017 as a refugee and immediately continued his education in journalism. While at Carleton, he worked for The Chronicle Herald in Halifax, the Canadian Press in Ottawa, The Globe and Mail in Toronto and Winnipeg Free Press in Winnipeg.
Menaka Raman-Wilms @menakarw holds a BA in English and Political Science, as well as an MA in English and Creative Writing, both from the University of Toronto. She worked at a technology startup in Toronto before pursuing her journalism studies at Carleton. While at Carleton, she was awarded a scholarship to produce a radio documentary about Syrian refugees who are living in Berlin and working as tour guides. An ambitious young writer, she has completed a novel and regularly reviews Canadian fiction for the Ottawa Review of Books. Her own fiction has been shortlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize. She has interned at CBC Radio’s As It Happens, and in the CBC London bureau. She has also written for CBC Ottawa.
Scholars are selected after a rigorous interview process. Recipients of the scholarships must be able to “demonstrate strong potential for producing journalism marked by intelligent observation, command of facts, understanding of context and clarity of expression.” Once chosen they receive additional training and are dispatched to one or more locations within the CBC. Past scholars have worked on anything from The National (the network’s flagship nightly newscast) to Front Burner (the CBC’s daily news podcast).
Over the years, scholars have contributed to a variety of CBC programs from across the country. Many former scholars remain with the CBC to this day, working in a variety of roles.
Carleton has a long connection to the scholarship. Daniel Kitts (BJ’99, currently a producer with TVO) was among the first group of scholars. Recent scholars include Olivia Robinson and Levi Garber (MJ’19), Rachel Levy-McLaughlin (MJ’18) — all three continue to work with CBC Radio.
The four-month paid internships carry the name of the late Joan Donaldson, who was the founding Head of Newsworld. Donaldson, who joined the CBC in 1967, was one of the network’s top journalists, serving as Senior Editor of The World at Six, Sunday Morning Magazine and several other news programs. She was also a journalism instructor at what was then known as the Ryerson Polytechnical Institute. Her career was cut short after she was injured in a tragic accident outside CBC offices in Montreal in 1990. She passed away in 2006.
Tuesday, February 25, 2020 in General, Journalism News
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