SoloJourno

Today, I attended two journalism panels at Ryerson University: “What’s Next for News: A conversation about the Future of Journalism” and “Pre-What’s Next”. These event’s were sponsored by Ryerson’s storied journalism program and its alumni association and were held in the auditorium of the Library Building.

“Pre-What’s Next” (3:30 p.m.): Mary Sheppard, the Executive Producer at CBCNews.ca, moderated a panel was made up of Amber MacArthur (new media journalist and web strategist), Adrian Ma (a freelancer and recent Ryerson Master’s grad), Romina Maurino (The Canadian Press), Bryan Borzykowki (Rogers Media - Canadian Business Magazine, MoneySense and Canadian Profit) and Marissa Nelson (Toronto Star - Senior Editor, Digital News). The lively conversation was interesting and centered around how this ‘younger generation’ of journalists are doing their jobs and what they see happening to the industry.

There was definitely a tense moment when Lise Lareau, the current National President of the Canadian Media Guild stepped up to the microphone to ask some of the managers on the panel about the working conditions and compensation of their employees, one of whom had been described as incredibly active on Raptor game days. I spoke with Lisa afterwards about the new union looking to sign up part-timers and freelancers and she indicated that that sort of organizing presented special challenges but whatever union endded representing workers in that category, it could only be a good thing for them.

“What’s Next for News: A conversation about the Future of Journalism” (5:30 p.m.): This panel was moderated by The Globe and Mail’s Communities Editor, Mathew Ingram. There were only two panelists: new media futurist Clay Shirky and agent provocateur/author Andrew Keen. The event was liveblogged. Although it was interesting, the discussion was theoretical, and not really that practical.

Journalist and author, Joe Clark, who seems to take pride in being brash to the point of rudeness, marched to the microphone and aggressively demanded to know whether or not Andrew had gained American citizenship. When Andrew asked why, Joe demanded that he answer the question. Andrew responded that he was a British citizen. Joe then loudly remarked that an American and a Brit came to Canada to tell us how to conduct our newspaper business. He ranted about colonial domination, perhaps forgetting that America was a British colony at one time.

I’ve known Joe peripherally for a long time, but we rarely see each other - the last time was probably a decade ago - so I was suprised that he not only remembered me, but also my first and last name. After insulting me (”I remember you as taller”), he launched into something of a diatribe - other countries telling us what to do, his not getting hired by the sort of people who on the panel - which I took in stride.

Here’s Mathew’s post, entitled “Be an agent of change in the newsroom”. He notes the feedback was positive, but several students expressed a concern “that Shirky and Keen didn’t provide much in the way of concrete suggestions for those entering the field”. I rather liked Bill Doskoch’s take on the panel.

Photo credit: Wayne MacPhail.