Month: September 2019

If you haven’t read the course outline which contains the complete schedule as well as readings and details about the course assignments, please do so before reading this post.

This week’s materials:
Story: Who Killed Sharmini? (2019)
Podcast: Who Killed Sharmini? episodes 1&2(2019)
Guantanamo’s Child (2015)

Hong Kong 360 (2019)
Do 360-degree video news stories generate empathy in viewers? (Archer and Finger, 2018)
Exploring the Rise of Live Journalism (Eveleth, 2015)

We’ll have two sets of guests this week, Michelle Shephard from 1:30-2:30 pm and Adrian Ma and Sonya Fatah from 2:30-3:15.

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Interview with Michelle Shephard on CBC News (September 2019)

GUEST SPEAKER MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Our first guest this week is an award-winning journalist, filmmaker and podcaster Michelle Shephard, whose CBC investigative podcast series Who Killed Sharmini? launched last week. In the latest season of CBC’s Uncover, Shephard revisits the unsolved homicide of a Toronto teen two decades after she first covered the case as a cub crime reporter at the Toronto Star.

During her two decades at the Star, she reported from more than 25 countries, including Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Pakistan and went behind the wire at the U.S. Naval prison in Guantanamo Bay more than two dozen times. Shephard was the co-director and producer of the Emmy-nominated documentary about Omar Khadr, Guantanamo’s Child, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2015. She is also the author of Decade of Fear: Reporting From Terrorism’s Grey Zone.

Listen to the podcast and watch the documentary before our class on Wednesday. Please come to class with questions for Michelle about her career and her work.

PECHAKUCHA PRESENTATION: After Adrian and Sonya’s visit, we will be watching examples PechaKucha presentations and coming up with the order for presentations on the day of our last class, Wednesday, Oct. 23.

FRIDAY MEMO: A reminder that your third Friday Memo is due as a 350-400-word post on your individual blog on Friday, Sept. 27 before 5 p.m. You will be writing a weekly reflective blog post updating me, your supervisor and your peer partner on your progress with the production of your MRP. Topics you might want to address include interviews, research, visuals, pivots, challenges and triumphs. You will receive a Pass (10) for each published post and a Fail (0) for each week missed. Each week, I will raise issues that come up for class discussion.

If you haven’t read the course outline which contains the complete schedule as well as readings and details about the course assignments, please do so before reading this post.

This week’s course materials:
The Twibling Project (Anderson, 2016)
Ambient, Sir (Scott, 2018)
A Hard Place for a Wolf  (Segal, 2017)
‘Your doc is great, now shorten it by two minutes’ (Anderson, 2016)

Friday Memo: A reminder that your second Friday Memo is due as a 350-400-word post on your individual blog on Friday, Sept. 20 before 5 p.m. You will be writing a weekly reflective blog post updating me, your supervisor and your peer partner on your progress with the production of your MRP. Topics you might want to address include interviews, research, visuals, pivots, challenges and triumphs. You will receive a Pass (10) for each published post and a Fail (0) for each week missed. Each week, I will raise issues that come up for class discussion.

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RSJ instructor and award-winning audio producer Kalli Anderson is coming to talk to the class on Wednesday, Sept. 25 about how you find the story in your interviews, audio and video footage and in your own editing process. Along a piece that she produced that was nominated for a CAJ award, Kalli has suggested two other radio documentaries to listen to before her visit. She will also be sharing a work in progress, a non-narrated piece that includes tape of an interviewee needed to be kept anonymous for reasons related to incarceration.

The Twiblings Project: Nancy Sinclair had always wanted a big family. But after a particularly devastating loss, she was worried she might have to give up on that dream. Nancy and her husband Lee decided to enlist an acquaintance as a surrogate.  In most cases, people use a surrogate when getting pregnant on their own isn’t an option. But for Nancy and Lee, this surrogacy served a different purpose.

Ambient, Sir: After studying interrogation transcripts from Guantánamo Bay detention camp, Jordan Scott, a poet who stutters, grew interested in how detainees’ stutters were systematically interpreted as signs of their dishonesty. Scott applied to tour the prison to interview interrogators about this, but at the last minute was informed that his interviews wouldn’t be possible. With Guantánamo’s strict censorship policies in mind, Scott changed tactics. He asked to record ambient sound at the prison instead. Gitmo officials, though puzzled, obliged.

A Hard Place for a Wolf: Wolves have have had a troubled existence in Banff ever since the national park was founded in 1885. In the 1920s, wolves were nearly wiped out of the park, and in the 1950s, they disappeared entirely. It wasn’t until the 1980s that wolves returned to the park. But the area near the town of Banff — filled with cars, trains and hordes of tourists — has always been especially difficult for wolves. There is currently a single wolf pack living near the town of Banff. Locals know them as the Bow Valley pack. They first showed up a few years ago, but things took a bad turn for them last year.

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Focus group feedback: On Wednesday, Sept. 25, from 3-4:15 pm, Ryerson curriculum development consultants Paola Borin and Julia Gingerich will be coming to hold a focus group on the first year of the new MJ curriculum. You will have the opportunity to share your thoughts on what worked and what didn’t, as well as offer suggestions and ideas for change. There will be coffee and snacks for the session. I will not be in attendance.

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One-on-one feedback: I have sent you my feedback on your Expanded Treatments. Over-all, they were great reading and have gotten me very excited to see your completed MRPs in May. I focused on a few key points in most cases and am happy to offer more detailed feedback one-on-one in the last hour of class, with the exception of the week we’re doing focus groups. Of course, you should keep in regular contact with your MRP supervisor, who will help shape your work over the year. You can also send me an email to set up a more convenient time to talk.

This week’s updated materials:
Teaching needs a transformation (Paradkar, 2019)
As a Black student, he was told to dream small (Paradkar, 2019)
‘Your name is too difficult’ (Paradkar, 2019)
‘No one is ashamed to be who they are’ (Paradkar, 2019)

All of this week’s updated readings are from the Toronto Star, which is behind a paywall. However, the Star is currently offering free subscriptions for post-secondary students. So, you can read all of these articles by subscribing for the free period (until Oct. 31) here.

Unfortunately, Michelle Shephard has just had to postpone her visit until our Wednesday, Oct. 2 class. However, the outgoing Atkinson Fellow in Public Policy and Toronto Star columnist Shree Paradkar has kindly agreed to step in at the last minute as our guest speaker on Sept. 18.

For those of you unfamiliar with the fellowship, it offers a working journalist $75,000 honorarium and $25,000 for expenses to explore an issue of public policy for one year and write a series that appears in the Star. John Lorinc is the incoming Atkinson Fellow and is exploring smart cities. Previous fellows have included Tanya Talaga (Seven Fallen Feathers) and, somewhat coincidentally, Michelle Shephard.

Shree’s Atkinson series is rolling out this month in the Star and in it, she is investigating the failure of Canada’s public education system to deliver equitable outcomes for racialized and Indigenous students. Her work is global in scope, and she has travelled to the U.S., India and New Zealand to talk to school boards, experts, educators and students addressing these challenges in innovative ways.

We’ll be talking with Shree about the evolution of her project, where she started and the twists and turns she has taken in between. I’m also interested in exploring her solutions journalism approach to the stories, as well as the challenges she encountered in her interviews and research.

Please read the stories linked to before class if possible. I understand that it’s short notice given the last-minute switch. So, do your best and think of the kinds of experiences you might want to hear Shree talk about in relation to your own work on your MRP.

If you haven’t read the course outline which contains the complete schedule as well as readings and details about the course assignments, please do so before reading this post.

This week’s materials:
Story: Who Killed Sharmini? (2019)
Podcast: Who Killed Sharmini? episodes 1&2(2019)
Guantanamo’s Child (2015)

FRIDAY MEMO: A reminder that your first Friday Memo is due as a 350-400-word post on your individual blog on Friday, Sept. 13 before 5 p.m. You will be writing a weekly reflective blog post updating me, your supervisor and your peer partner on your progress with the production of your MRP. Topics you might want to address include interviews, research, visuals, pivots, challenges and triumphs. You will receive a Pass (100) for each published post and a Fail (0) for each week missed. Each week, I will raise issues that come up for class discussion.

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GUEST SPEAKER MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Our guest this week is an award-winning journalist, filmmaker and podcaster Michelle Shephard, whose CBC investigative podcast series Who Killed Sharmini? launched last week. In the latest season of CBC’s Uncover, Shephard revisits the unsolved homicide of a Toronto teen two decades after she first covered the case as a cub crime reporter at the Toronto Star.

During her two decades at the Star, she reported from more than 25 countries, including Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Pakistan and went behind the wire at the U.S. Naval prison in Guantanamo Bay more than two dozen times. Shephard was the co-director and producer of the Emmy-nominated documentary about Omar Khadr, Guantanamo’s Child, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2015. She is also the author of Decade of Fear: Reporting From Terrorism’s Grey Zone.

Listen to the podcast and watch the documentary before our class on Wednesday, Sept. 18. Please come to class with questions for Michelle about her career and her work.

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MEET WITH YOUR SUPERVISOR: Please send your Expanded Treatment to your advisor as soon as possible and arrange a time to meet before Friday, Sept. 26. While I will help keep you on track to complete your first draft by Dec. 13, your MRP supervisor is your go-to person to advise you on the over-all vision and direction of your project. Use your time wisely and check-in with your MRP supervisor regularly throughout the semester. 

This week’s materials:
Course outline: JN8502 MRP II: Storytelling Seminar

Welcome back!I hope you’ve all enjoyed your first week at the Ryersonian and Ryerson Review of Journalism. As you know by now, our first class meets on Wednesday, Sept. 11 from 1-4 p.m. in RCC-223. Ahead of Wednesday’s class, you can find the course outline above. I’ve also posted it to the course D2L shell.

During this six-week, hands-on course, you will work in smaller groups to develop and produce your Major Research Project. The key methods of instruction for this course will be blog posts, talks with guest speakers, peer feedback and support, in-class discussions and presentations.

INSTRUCTOR’S BLOG: Here you will find a new blog post every Wednesday from Sept. 11 to Oct. 23. It will contain links to the following week’s reading, listening and viewing materials as well as background information on guest speakers. I’ll also share examples of exceptional features in the news. All course readings are also linked to from the outline and from the D2L course shell.

INDIVIDUAL BLOG: You will be posting most of your assignments to the same individual blog you started for JN8501, you can also use it for your own notes and reflections on your MRP.

PEER PARTNERS: Peer learning is an essential part of this workshop class. Each student will be paired with a classmate whose MRP complements their own project’s themes and/or approaches. For the first 20 minutes of each class, beginning the second week, you will be making comments on each other’s latest blog posts. You will also be meeting with each other for the last 15 minutes of each class to discuss your plans for the week ahead. You will be assigned your partner during our first class. You can find your peer partner on this spreadsheet.

PEER LEARNING AND CLASS ATTENDANCE: This is a workshop course and your individual progress relies on the feedback you receive not only from your instructor, but from your fellow students. To be successful in this course and to be a meaningful part of the support network at the core of this workshop, you must endeavour to attend each class. Be aware that regular unexcused absences will have a negative effect not only on your work, but on your classmates’. This course only meets in person for six weeks, so each week counts.

You can find details about the assignments, guest speakers, class format and attendance guidelines on the course outline.

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You will be receiving your marks on your Expanded Treatment via email before the end of the week. During class, we’ll go over some common challenges experienced by your classmates and creative approaches to tackle them.

As always, if you have any questions, please email me at asmaa.malik@ryerson.ca.

Have a great weekend,
Asmaa

Due to an unforeseen scheduling conflict, we will be delaying the start of our Fall course, JN8502 MRP II: Storytelling Seminar to Wednesday, Sept. 11 from 1-4 pm in RCC-223. The course will still run for six weeks. Our last in-person class will be after Reading Week, on Wednesday, Oct. 23.

So, there will be no class this upcoming Wednesday, Sept. 4. Please share this information widely with your classmates and post on your Facebook group page. Let me know if you have any concerns or questions.

Also, thanks for submitting your Expanded Treatments. I will have them marked and back to you before our first class. You will then have two weeks to meet with your supervisor to discuss your reporting and production plans for the semester.

Just a reminder that our MJ1/MJ2 Mixer is at the Imperial Pub on Tuesday, Sept. 10 from 5-7 p.m. A heads up to those of you in TV Documentary, Marsha is aware of the mixer and will be bringing your class over.