Carleton's Journalism program marks the end of an anniversary year
Seventy-five years ago this week, on Oct. 23, 1946, a fledgling and still-homeless institution called Carleton College held its first degree-granting convocation in the auditorium of Glebe Collegiate Institute on First Avenue in Ottawa.
The event marked the first-ever awarding of Bachelor of Journalism degrees in this country as three young women from Western Canada — Elizabeth Cameron and Ellen Lennox from Swan River, Manitoba, and Faith Hutchison from Spalding, Saskatchewan — crossed the stage to receive congratulations from Carleton’s founding president, Henry Marshall Tory, and the scrolled paper signifying their landmark achievement.
From that moment to today, Canada’s first and best-known journalism program has awarded some 6,000 degrees to undergraduate and graduate students who’ve gone on to distinguished careers in print, broadcast and digital news media, as well as a host of other fields: law, politics, communications, publishing, education, advocacy, policy research and much more.
Today, the home of the School of Journalism and Communication is the spectacularly situated, state-of-the-art Richcraft Hall, which overlooks the Rideau River on Carleton’s verdant south-end Ottawa campus near the junction of the river and the Rideau Canal.
The 75th anniversary of the founding of Carleton’s journalism program in October 1945 and the awarding of its first degrees in October ’46 has been celebrated in a year-long series of events that began with a special ceremony last October.
The program was launched just after the end of the Second World War — and only three years after Carleton itself was founded in 1942 — in response to a perceived need to provide journalism training for men and women returning to civilian life following their wartime service.
Seasoned journalists from the two main Ottawa newspapers at the time — the Ottawa Citizen and Ottawa Journal — were recruited as instructors of what was initially a small group of journalism students. The fact that the publishers of the two newspapers — Harry Southam of the Citizen and P.D. Ross of the Journal — were distinguished members of Carleton’s board of governors cemented the close working relationship between Carleton and the local news operations.
Cameron, Lennox and Hutchison were able to complete their journalism training in one year because they already possessed Bachelor of Arts degrees. They made history at the 1946 convocation at Glebe high school alongside three Public Administration students who graduated at the same time — the first six students to be awarded post-secondary degrees by Carleton College, the future Carleton University.
The milestone moment had been heralded a week earlier in an Ottawa Citizen story headlined “Canada’s First Journalism Grads To Get Degrees,” which noted that “the convocation will be honoured by the presence of His Excellency the Viscount Alexander” (Canada’s governor general at the time) and that the ceremony marked an important “forward step in the progress of Carleton College,” founded just four years earlier in June 1942.
Some highlights from the past year
75th Anniversary Kick Off Event
Journalism program head Allan Thompson was joined on Oct. 9, 2020 by Carleton’s president Benoit-Antoine Bacon and the Dean of the Faculty of Public Affairs, Brenda O’Neill, at an event to kick off the journalism school’s 75th anniversary. The event was held in the downtown Ottawa church were Carleton’s first journalism class took place on Oct. 9, 1945. For the event held in the hall at Knox Presbyterian Church, Thompson spoke from a lectern fashioned from a vintage radio cabinet. The event was streamed live via Instagram.
“Seventy-five years ago today, an upstart institution known as Carleton College—the future Carleton University—established Canada’s first journalism school. That moment transformed journalism in this country,” Thompson said at the event.
He stressed the importance of the event in acknowledging the “reckoning” that was long overdue in addressing the “rightful and well-grounded charges of systemic racism” in both the Canadian media and the journalism school specifically.
The They Were Loved Project was launched in summer 2020 and is lead by Katherine Laidlaw, The Future of Journalism Initiative’s (FJI) journalist-in-residence. Over the last year, the project has published over 80 obituaries honoring victims of COVID-19.
Journalism in a Time of Crisis Symposium
Carleton’s journalism program convened the first major international gathering to examine the nexus between journalism and the COVID-19 pandemic through the two-day symposium Journalism In the Time of Crisis held this time last year on Oct. 22-23. The online event established and engaged with a global network of experts to look at the role of journalism during the pandemic in an effort to find lessons for journalism practice in the future.
You can watch the full event here.
The Future of Journalism Initiative is a collaborative research hub where journalists, academics and students work together and independently on innovative research projects that further the collective knowledge and understanding of journalism practice. It has lead a number of projects and events over the past year including an event were journalism students had the chance to network with media entrepreneurs.
Fourth Annual Stursberg Lecture
An African correspondent’s experience covering the US presidential election was the subject of the 2020 Peter Stursberg Foreign Correspondents lecture, redefining the annual event’s traditional focus on conflict reporting. Larry Madowo, then the BBC’s North America Correspondent, took the virtual stage on Dec. 2 from his home in Washington, DC. He discussed his experience covering disputed presidential elections both in his native Kenya and the US and noted the similarities.
“For somebody who grew up in a part of the world where America was seen as the beacon of democracy, as a shining light for what’s right… in many ways, the US has walked away from that role in the world,” he said.
The annual Stursberg lecture, now in its fifth year, was created in honour of legendary Canadian war correspondent Peter Stursberg, who pioneered radio coverage of the Second World War for the CBC. Stursberg passed away at the age of 101 in 2014 and his children Judith Lawrie and Richard Stursberg endowed the talk in his honour.
As part of their 75th anniversary, Carleton’s journalism program has been sharing stories from alumni. Graduates from the 1960s to the present shared their favorite j-school stories here.
Globe and Mail mentorship program for Indigenous and Racialized students
A new mentorship program for Indigenous and Racialized journalism students was established in January by Carleton’s journalism school and the Globe and Mail. The program provides two paid mentorship opportunities for Indigenous and Racialized students enrolled in the journalism program through direct interaction with journalists in the Globe’s Ottawa bureau.
Mentees interact with Globe reporters and editors, participate in daily news meetings, and cover such events as Question Period, committees and news conferences. The Globe and Mail provides students with mentorship through opportunities to interact with Globe reporters and with bureau chief Robert Fife. Students also receive guidance in how to use the access to information system, the lobbyist registry, spending reports and the courts as well as other resources. Students are also given the opportunity to assist Globe reporters with reporting assignments and also to write stories of their own for publication.
The journalism program is made up of a diverse group of impressive journalists. Over the last year, the program has made a note to highlight their work through the Faculty In The News campaign. See more here.
CBC North Internship
A new opportunity for journalism students to work with CBC North through an internship program that is exclusive to Carleton was lauched on Mar. 29. The project is the brainchild of long-time journalism professor Mary McGuire (pictured on the left), who approached the CBC with the original proposal to create the internships and a commitment to establish a special fund at Carleton to help cover the high cost of travel and accommodation for students selected for these internships at CBC North.
Fourth-year journalism student, Meral Jamal, was the first to take up the internship in June. “I applied for this internship because as a migrant student of color, I still have a lot to learn about Canada, it’s difficult history, and the resilience of its Indigenous communities through it all,” Jamal said in a news item posted by the journalism school. “The internship with CBC North gives me the opportunity to do that.”
In future years, it is anticipated that interns will travel north and will be able to make use of funds donated in McGuire’s name to help offset travel and living costs.
Beloved journalism professor, Mary McGuire, retired. McGuire was a full-time member of the Carleton faculty for 31 years and she’s been in the halls at Carleton since the late 1970s, when she was a star student in the Bachelor of Journalism program.
Three new journalists join the journalism faculty
The journalism faculty welcomed three new full-time faculty members on July 1.
Trish Audette-Longo joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor after teaching digital journalism, reporting and graduate seminars as a contract instructor and term instructor in the department since 2018. Her research plans include launching a new lab geared toward exploring journalism across platforms, contributing to journalism education, and developing digital, research and storytelling skills among journalism students.
Nana aba Duncan, an award-winning CBC journalist and leading advocate for underrepresented perspectives in journalism, was hired as the School’s first Carty Chair in Journalism, Diversity and Inclusion Studies. The teaching and research chair is the first of its kind in a journalism school in Canada and focuses on anti-racism, decolonizing journalism and fostering greater equity, diversity and inclusion in journalism education and in the media industry at large.
Adrian Harewood, the CBC-Ottawa anchor, took up his position as Associate Professor on July 1st as well. He teaches a graduate-level seminar called Journalism, Race and Diversity and a capstone course for all of Carleton’s fourth-year journalism undergraduates, called Journalism Now and Next. Harewood has plans for a number of research projects and also hopes to establish a journalism training and mentorship outreach program in high schools to create a gateway to journalism studies for BIPOC students.
Adrian Harewood’s graduate-level seminar, Journalism, Race and Diversity launched in September 2020. The course was a great success and is running again this fall.
Ginella Massa headlines journalism orientation
On Sept. 7, the journalism program welcomed Ginella Massa, host of CBC’s Canada Tonight, to share her story at the first in-person event for students since March of 2020.
The orientation day event was held Tuesday morning in Carleton’s Dominion-Chalmers Centre in front of a live audience of second-year journalism students – all carefully socially distanced – and also for others who joined by Zoom.
Massa, who is Canada’s first hijab-wearing television news reporter, local anchor and national host, took part in a wide-ranging hour-long conversation with Prof. Nana aba Duncan, Carleton’s Carty Chair in Journalism, Diversity and Inclusion Studies. Master of Journalism student Haneen Al-Hassoun provided a note of thanks at the end of the event.
Two veteran journalists, Garvia Bailey and Hannah Sung joined the School as contract instructors and created a fourth-year course, Storytelling: Podcasting. Bailey and Sung, co-founders of Media Girlfriends, have students in their course listen critically to podcasts to understand how this format engages audiences on challenging topics.
Journalists-In-Residence partner with The Walrus on project to advance fact-checking education
On Oct. 7, Carleton journalism announced it’s new project to change the way fact-checking is taught to journalism students.
Allison Baker and Viviane Fairbank have joined Carleton University as the 2021/2022 Journalists-In-Residence at the Future of Journalism Initiative (FJI), a research hub housed in the School of Journalism and Communication.
Baker and Fairbank will lead The Truth in Journalism Project, which aims to create a free and accessible curriculum for fact-checking education, hosted digitally by Carleton University. Their work is funded by the Michener-L. Richard O’Hagan Fellowship for Journalism Education and will be done in partnership with FJI and The Walrus.
Baker and Fairbank have spent the past few years actively participating in conversations about fact-checking practices and ethics in the Canadian journalism industry. Baker is currently head of research at The Walrus, a position that Fairbank previously held from 2017 to 2019. And both have worked for several years as fact-checkers and educators, training the next generation of fact-checkers at postsecondary institutions and media organizations alike.