By Jena Lynde-Smith
Safiyah Marhnouj and Joy SpearChief-Morris. SpearChief-Morris photo by Natalia Weichsel.
Two Carleton journalism students, Safiyah Marhnouj and Joy SpearChief-Morris, have been selected for the Globe and Mail Mentorship Program for Indigenous and Racialized Journalism Students.
The program was launched in 2020 through a partnership with the Globe and Mail and Carleton’s School of Journalism. It provides students enrolled in the journalism program with mentorship through direct interaction with journalists in the Globe’s Ottawa bureau.
Mentees in the program work closely with Globe and Mail reporters and editors. They are given the opportunity to help with reporting assignments as well as write stories of their own which may be published. Students also get to participate in daily news meetings, cover events, and receive guidance in how to use the access to information system, the lobbyist registry, spending reports and the courts as well as other resources.
Globe and Mail Bureau Chief, Robert Fife, said that the students in the program have been instigating change.
“This initiative is aimed at helping to change the diversity of our newsrooms,” he said. “It’s been a joy for the reporters in the Ottawa Bureau to mentor these students and to get their feedback on how we could do a better job, covering previously unreported subjects.”
Marhnouj, fourth-year Bachelor of Journalism student, and SpearChief-Morris, first-year Master of Journalism student, will start their work with the Globe right away.
Marhnouj said she has a passion for telling stories about local communities, politics and social justice. She said she owes her start in reporting to Carleton’s student paper, the Charlatan, where she published her first article and went on to work as a news editor from 2019 to 2021.
“I’m extremely humbled to be selected for this mentorship program, one that is such an incredible opportunity for students of colour here at Carleton,” Marhnouj said.
“It’s not always easy to see myself represented as a journalist in mainstream media, especially as a woman of colour and visible Muslim. To be given the space to learn from and grow alongside reporters who are doing amazing work at The Globe is something that I’m so looking forward to.”
SpearChief-Morris is an Indigenous Black Canadian writer, advocate, and retired Team Canada athlete from Lethbridge, Alberta. She said she is a proud member of the Kainai Blood tribe.
“I am thankful and excited for to be chosen for the Globe and Mail Mentorship Program with the Ottawa Bureau. This mentorship is an incredible opportunity to be able to learn from journalists at the Bureau and will help me better my skills and abilities as a journalist,” SpearChief-Morris said.
Fife said that an important goal of the program is to help open doors for recent graduates.
“We want the students to get bylines in The Globe and Mail so they can get jobs once they graduate. The two students we mentored last year are now working full-time.”
Two Carleton students, Bachelor of Journalism student Leila El-Shennawy and Master of Journalism student Erika Ibrahim, were the first students selected to take up the mentorship last year.
Learn more about the program here.
Thursday, December 9, 2021 in General, Journalism News
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