In an open letter to our students, posted on June 11, 2020, we made a number of commitments – including being clear about the actions we are undertaking as we try to address the very real concerns about the lack of diversity and inclusion in our program.
The changes we commit to below aim to address racism against Black, Indigenous and People of Colour as well as intolerance based on ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation and ability.
Please check back here regularly.
Plan
We will start recruiting for our newly mandated academic post – the Carty Chair in Journalism, Diversity and Inclusion Studies.
Our goal is to hire a new faculty member for this endowed chair by July 2021.
The successful applicant will create new course offerings, establish a program of research and bring a focus to the Journalism program’s efforts to foster an environment that cultivates diverse journalists and fully recognizes and engages with all members of Canadian society.
We won’t stop there – we commit to more diversity in the people we hire to teach you and work with you.
We will redesign our first-year introductory undergraduate courses and ensure they have a strong central focus on diversity and inclusion.
For example, the winter term course will be renamed “Foundations: Practising Journalism in a Diverse Society” and will be anchored firmly in the belief that real change starts with a clear understanding of how to cover communities that have long been marginalized. It will provide our first-year students with the means to approach and practice journalism from varying perspectives. We will make the same curricular changes in courses in other years of the program.
At the graduate level, we ensure our foundational courses reflect the same focus.
We will launch our new Master’s course on journalism, race and diversity in September.
We will give clear guidance to instructors to be mindful of diversity and inclusion issues in course design and delivery and in interactions with you.
To ensure we have real change in course content throughout our program, including the selection of topics, readings, assignments, examples and guest speakers, we will continually assess our curriculum and provide a Diversity and Inclusion checklist to assist instructors as they build their courses.
And to support the use of that checklist – to ensure you and your story ideas are truly heard, understood and welcomed – we will ask everyone who teaches you to participate in unconscious bias training in preparation for this coming fall and beyond.
We will make it mandatory for all of our students to complete a course in Indigenous history in order to meet our responsibilities more fully as a journalism program under the Truth and Reconciliation’s Call to Action 86.
Several years ago, we created one course that probes the historical and present-day relationship between journalists and Indigenous peoples in Canada and another that took students to Indigenous communities in Canada’s North. We made a calendar change to add an option from Indigenous Studies to our required history credit. But we know there’s more to it than optional offerings. That is why we will commit to this more fundamental change.
We will continue to support the work of the Journalism program’s student-led Association for Equity and Inclusion in Journalism as well as its efforts to engage with all of you.
In 2019, after discussions with current and former students, we hired an expert journalist with lived experience to conduct a consultation with our faculty and staff on issues of diversity. This expert then organized a “story circle” for students to share their experiences in our program and suggest changes.
Out of that process emerged the student-led group, which includes faculty members as liaisons (the group adopted the name Association for Equity and Inclusion in Journalism in August 2020). The group gathered and presented student concerns to us, along with specific recommendations for how we could make progress. It began examining how students could comfortably raise their complaints and have them addressed. It offered to provide feedback to us as we worked to improve the scope of our teaching practices and materials.
With financial support from the Journalism program and the Faculty of Public Affairs (FPA), the Committee scheduled a second story circle – this one to bring students and instructors face-to-face so that we could listen to the hard truths and then together explore ways of making our program better. This initiative was cut short by COVID-19, as was the committee’s planned public event that would have brought in journalists of colour and from other marginalized groups to discuss challenges in modern newsrooms.
The committee plans to hold the story circle online in August, 2020. It also hopes to mount further online programming, and will reschedule the journalists’ panel in the fall term.
Progress
August 24, 2021: Annual report on the journalism program’s commitments to EDI released
In addition to acknowledging the role the journalism program has played in the perpetuation of systemic racism in the education of young journalists, the leaders of Carleton’s journalism program set out an action plan to begin to address the very real concerns about the lack of diversity and inclusion in our program. An important aspect of that work is a commitment to release an annual report of our progress – where we achieved positive change, what we still need to do. The first such annual report revisits the original action plan commitments and reports chronologically on the efforts to fulfill those pledges and other steps taken. This report concludes by looking at the way forward, with a focus on new commitments for the year ahead.
March 25, 2021: Nana aba Duncan appointed Carty Chair in Journalism, Diversity and Inclusion Studies
Award-winning journalist, podcaster, entrepreneur and longtime CBC Radio host Nana aba Duncan’s teaching and research role is part of a constellation of efforts to enhance equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) at Carleton and is central to the transformation underway within the journalism program. In addition to teaching and creating a new course for third-year students on decolonizing Canadian journalism, Duncan will conduct research, continuing the work she started in fall 2020 as a Southam Fellow at Massey College in Toronto.
February 25, 2021: Racialized in the Newsroom, AEIJ panel discussion held
Hosted by the student-led Association for Equity and Inclusion in Journalism, with support from the Faculty of Public Affairs and the Journalism program, this event brought Pacinthe Mattar and Kyle Edwards to the school for a panel discussion on the experiences of BIPOC journalists. It was open to journalism students from all years of the program.
February 22, 2021: New one-on-one mentorship program launched
In partnership with the university’s Alumni Mentors program, the Journalism program joined forces with the student-led Association for Equity and Inclusion in Journalism to develop and launch a project that pairs BIPOC students with BIPOC mentors working in journalism. This new mentorship program, currently in its pilot phase, is being administered by Alumni Relations.
February 1, 2021: Research launched on relationship between news media and BIPOC communities
Students and faculty have begun working together on a research project to examine issues related to the relationship between news media and BIPOC communities. Working as paid researchers, two students are collaborating with prof. Aneurin Bosley to look at the perceptions that local BIPOC communities have towards journalism and the role that local alternative media might play in supporting these communities. The goal of this research is to help inform journalism teaching practice.
January 29, 2021: Globe and Mail Mentorship Program for Indigenous and Racialized Journalism Students
The Journalism program launched a partnership with the Globe and Mail to provide two paid mentorship opportunities in the Globe’s Ottawa bureau for Indigenous and Racialized journalism students. Mentees will interact with Globe reporters and editors, participate in daily news meetings, and cover such events as Question Period, committees and news conferences. They will receive guidance on how to use the access to information system, the lobbyist registry, spending reports and the courts as well as other resources. Students will also have the opportunity to assist Globe reporters with reporting assignments and to write stories of their own that could be considered for publication.
January 14, 2021: First-year journalism courses implement curricular changes
As outlined in “An open letter to our students” the program has made alterations to its first-year courses to ensure that students begin their studies with instruction that is anchored firmly in the belief that real change starts with a clear understanding of how to cover communities that have long been marginalized. The changes are intended to provide first-year students with the means to approach and practice journalism from varying perspectives. This includes a deconstruction of objectivity in journalism as well as analysis of the Canadian media’s role in perpetuating stereotypes and in supporting colonial ideologies.
December 9, 2020: Overcoming Unconscious Bias training continued
Again facilitated by Lisa Khoo, contract instructors scheduled to teach during the winter term received professional training on how to overcome unconscious bias. These discussion-based sessions looked at how implicit bias is formed and how it can affect our work and workplace. Attendees were also given tools and training on how to counter such biases
September 14, 2020: New graduate course on Journalism, Race and Diversity launched
CBC Ottawa News anchor and adjunct professor Adrian Harewood launched a new course for Master of Journalism students. JOUR 5508 – Journalism, Race and Diversity connects our graduate students with prominent journalists working on a variety of media platforms, including web, television, podcasts and print publishing.
August 27, 2020: Unconscious bias training sessions held
Facilitated by Lisa Khoo, Journalism faculty, staff and contract instructors received professional training on how to overcome unconscious bias. These discussion-based sessions looked at how implicit bias is formed and how it can affect our work and workplace. Attendees were also given tools and training on how to counter such biases.
August 24, 2020: Student-faculty story circle held
Facilitated by Anita Li and organized by the student-led Association for Equity and Inclusion in Journalism, the story circle brought journalism students and faculty members together to share their experiences and talk about how the program and university can improve anti-racism efforts in journalism education.
August 17, 2020: Call for applications for Carty Chair in Journalism, Diversity and Inclusion Studies posted
The Journalism program issued a public call for applications for the Carty Chair in Journalism, Diversity and Inclusion Studies. Consideration of complete applications will begin November 20, 2020 and the start date for the successful candidate will be July 1, 2021.
August 15, 2020: Updated version of the Equity Checklist is posted
As part of our plan to ensure lasting change in course content throughout our program, including the selection of topics, readings, assignments, examples and guest speakers, we committed to the creation of a checklist to assist instructors as they build their courses. This is a living document that will be updated as necessary.
Download the Equity Checklist for Journalism Courses here.
August 4, 2020: Permanent Working Group on Anti-Racism and Inclusion finalizes official mandate
Carleton’s Journalism program is committed to creating a welcoming, stimulating, professional and creative environment for our increasingly diverse student body. We are committed to eliminating racism against Racialized and Indigenous people as well as inequities or other barriers based on ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender expression, sexual orientation or ability. We hope our program’s commitment to anti-racism and anti-oppression practices will benefit all of our students while they are here and that it will foster a wider culture of equity and inclusion in newsrooms of the future as they respond to and report on an increasingly diverse society.
The Permanent Working Group was established in order to help keep the Journalism school on track with structural changes that aim to make the school a safe and welcoming environment for all students. The group also provides specific direction and advice to the Journalism Program Committee and Program Head on matters pertaining to equity and inclusion. Students wishing to propose programmatic ideas or who have concerns may contact us directly here. Students with complaints may direct them to the Department of Equity and Inclusive Communities.
June 26, 2020: Permanent Working Group on Anti-Racism and Inclusion is established
The Journalism program’s new Permanent Working Group on Anti-Racism and Inclusion includes faculty members as well as an external advisor who is a racialized journalist. It is chaired by one of the faculty liaisons attached to the student-led Association for Equity and Inclusion in Journalism. The chair also represents the Working Group on the Journalism Program’s Program Committee, which functions much like the federal cabinet. It is a crucial change in program governance and among other things will ensure the initiatives we have committed to in our plan of action will be carried out in a timely and thoughtful way.