The New Canadian Media, a digital news hub founded by veteran journalist George Abraham, recently conducted a skills-based workshops geared towards third-language newsrooms. It covered ethnic media using languages other than English or French.
“What we’re trying to do is put out a questionnaire to ethnic media outlets and journalists to find out what professional skills we can help them with to raise professional standards and practices,” Abraham said.
The workshop was held at the Harbour Centre at the downtown campus of Simon Fraser University.
Jenny Uechi, managing editor of Vancouver Observer, presented Civics, Government, Politics and Justice: An introduction to Canada’s Democratic and Legal Systems. The news writing workshop was presented by Jackie Wong, a freelance writer and adjunct instructor at the University of British Columbia. A social media workshop followed. The workshop was facilitated by Vancouver-based Leah Bjornson, special projects editor of NCM.
NCM and Latincouver believes that this type of high-caliber professional development can help journalist who work with ethnic or multicultural media organizations to improve their skills and contribute more fully to the national conversation.
Photos by Bert Morelos
A network of participating journalism schools, including those at SFU, Ryerson University, the University of British Columbia and Carleton University, had developed training workshops that will then be delivered in newsrooms across Canada later in the year.
The workshops, Abraham said, which will be offered free of cost to participants and are meant to bridge training gaps that often exist between ethno cultural and mainstream media outlets.
“We know the sector is volatile and fast growing,” said SFU School of Communication professor Catherine Murray, who is advising on the project. “It’s much larger than official stats in Canada would suggest.”
“We also know the labor force attracted to this sector is more skilled than ever, but the search for credentialization and recognition for their expertise is difficult,” Murray said. “Skill transfer is not as easy as you would think. There are different news cultures, different reporting traditions.”
Almost a decade ago, Murray and two PhD student researchers completed a province-wide study of ethnic media in B.C. that points to some of these differences, which range from structural (staffing teams are often smaller, sometimes volunteer) to practical (the study points to some outlets’ differing practices in using full-face photos in news coverage, for example).
Earlier, The New Canadian Media hosted a roundtable discussion at the 17th Metropolis conference at the Sheraton Wall Center Vancouver.
The Role of Media in Integrating Immigrants roundtable discussion had as participants Jagdeesh Mann, Dr. Catherine Murray, Alisa Choi Darcy, Alden Habacon and Andrew Griffith as resource persons.
