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<\/p>\nPublic health restrictions are being loosened across the country as COVID-19 cases fall and more Canadians are fully vaccinated. But as Carleton journalism instructors heard in a recent briefing with newsroom managers, for many reporters, it\u2019s not yet time to return to normal or to newsrooms.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere in Alberta, as of (July 1) all health restrictions are being lifted, there will be no masking, there will be no physical distancing, everything is being lifted,\u201d Stephanie Coombs, CBC Edmonton\u2019s director of journalism and programming, told Carleton instructors.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to keep a cautious approach.\u201d<\/p>\n
That means, for now, continuing to report remotely and, when that\u00a0can\u2019t be done,\u00a0keeping\u00a0a distance of two metres between reporters and the people they are interviewing\u00a0when possible, aiming to stay outside and not inviting guests into studios.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe safety of our staff remains paramount, the safety of the people that we\u2019re interviewing, and our ability to serve the public, so all of the decisions that we\u2019ve made around gathering (news) and around publishing are rooted in those principles,\u201d\u00a0Coombs said.<\/p>\n
Last week\u00a0Coombs, Ottawa Citizen and Sun editor in chief\u00a0Nicole\u00a0MacAdam\u00a0and Global Press\u2019s Washington, D.C.-based chief operating officer Laxmi Parthasarathy were part of a discussion about reporting safely through COVID-19 that was organized by faculty members Trish Audette-Longo and Christine Crowther.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThis session was a really important opportunity for us to connect with newsrooms to\u00a0find out more about a year of change\u00a0and get a better understanding what is happening with industry standards as\u00a0public health guidance changes,\u201d said Allan Thompson, the journalism program\u00a0head.<\/p>\n
MacAdam\u00a0said safety is still the top priority for newsroom managers.<\/p>\n
\u201cMoving into the summer and the fall, it\u2019s just making sure that we are being cautious in order to kind of keep people safe,\u201d said\u00a0MacAdam.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf and when the mask mandate (is) lifted for vaccinated people for example, I think I would probably still encourage staff to wear a mask themselves and at least ask their sources to comply as well. These are conversations that we\u2019re just starting to get into now as things are starting to shift.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parthasarathy, whose organization includes\u00a0more than\u00a040\u00a0bureaus\u00a0in 12 countries\u00a0including Nepal, Mongolia, Zimbabwe and Argentina, said she does not expect significant changes to\u00a0health safety\u00a0protocols that\u00a0had\u00a0reporters\u00a0shifting\u00a0to conduct remote\u00a0rather than in-person\u00a0interviews.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot that I think newsrooms can do to continue to keep reporters safe regardless of where they are in the world, because vaccinated or not I don\u2019t think we\u2019re out of this\u2026\u201d said Parthasarathy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t see a dramatic shift in our response happening for at least another year\u2026\u00a0given that we are seeing a third wave in many of these countries, and nowhere near the kind of vaccination rates that we have in Canada and the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the last year,\u00a0with university\u00a0classes moved entirely online, students in Carleton\u2019s journalism program have learned to report and work remotely, producing innovative audio, video and multimedia story packages from their homes all over the world.<\/p>\n
For some, as professor Dave Tait pointed out during the discussion, that means there are new questions about what it might be like to do in-person on-the-ground reporting when they finally get to work in a newsroom.<\/p>\n
Coombs said journalists in newsrooms know the circumstances under which students have been training, and they will be ready to help them adjust to in-person reporting.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve all managed to adapt to this (video conferencing and remote reporting), and I\u2019d never done this for 20 years, and then had to do it. I think that we all very much understand that it will be new for those folks joining our newsrooms too,\u201d Coombs said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had to be more flexible, and I think that if that results in us being more flexible about what skills students or young people are bringing into our newsrooms when they come, that probably is a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
All of the news leaders who met with Carleton\u2019s journalism school talked about how newsroom\u00a0conversations\u00a0have changed through the pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has not been an easy 16 months with all of the restrictions and the fear and the anxiety around COVID, and then a number of really challenging stories to report on,\u201d Coombs said. \u201cThis has prompted a much bigger conversation around mental health within our newsrooms and normalizing conversations about it, normalizing conversations that news might affect you.\u201d<\/p>\n
MacAdam\u00a0said there have been more conversations and check-ins with reporters about how they are faring. \u201cWe\u2019ve had a lot more conversations I would say in our newsroom than any newsroom that I\u2019ve ever worked in about work-life balance, and mental health, and how important down-time is to kind of relieving pressure and stress.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parthasarathy said she has seen a shift in the last year toward more explicit care: more newsrooms asking how to support their employees, more funders asking newsrooms what they are doing to take care of their teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really excited about this moment of reflection that a lot of news organizations are finally doing around safety, security, and not just safety and security,\u201d or just hostile environment training, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is holistic, and so I think that\u2019s something I\u2019m excited about, I\u2019m excited that there is a moment for people to really learn from this pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Public health restrictions are being loosened across the country as COVID-19 cases fall and more Canadians are fully vaccinated. But as Carleton journalism instructors heard in a recent briefing with newsroom managers, for many reporters, it\u2019s not yet time to return to normal or to newsrooms. \u201cHere in Alberta, as of (July 1) all health […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,38],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n