There is so much that a school can’t teach their students, or doesn’t want to, and that is why getting to work at a paper like the Mercury and Lifestyles is important.
I feel there is a growing divide between what students learn in school and what actually goes on in their job.
Job is the key word and throughout my time in post-secondary education, especially now having worked in a full-time position instead of freelancing or contracting, it is clear that a lot of the courses and functions of post-secondary education would be to provide teachers with a job.
That may sound harsh but people in the current generation who are coming into the job market, unlike their parents, really struggle to find good full-time work and anything that is not pointed towards job specific training or education should not be part of a curriculum.
In journalism, what you do inside the classroom is either just as important or more important as what you do outside of the classroom.
Finding good stores, building a good portfolio, networking and volunteering are paramount to the success of a journalist when starting out.
In Ontario, freelancing or even doing contract wok for some media outlets is like traversing a frozen lake in the spring time, you just don’t when you’re going to fall through the ice, and if that happens, you don’t know if you can climb your way back onto the ice to continue your journey.
Papers like the Mercury and Lifestyles provide experience in a traditional journalist setting and that is important. This is because moving in and out of your parents’ house and showing up to work only when there is work that you have been contracted to do is not an educational setting that would prepare a young journalist for becoming more serious in their career.
Certain media outlets cling to their antiquated business models, and the day that they break up and all their papers can go their own way, evolve with times and customize themselves for the community they’re in, is the day journalists will have jobs in Ontario again.
It also would be a huge help if the government privatized the CBC because companies of all sizes should not have to compete with the government and its endless supply of taxpayer money.
Generally I also believe it is a good idea to not have any state funded media because that is undemocratic.
As for me personally, in an era where free speech is under attack, I was happy to work for a legitimate newspaper and exercise my right to free speech with my never ending political columns.
It might sound insane and foreign to people in Saskatchewan, count yourselves lucky, but in Toronto and all over the country, there are a great many things, whether fact or opinion, that if written, published or said, will result in a criminal charge or a large fine by the Human Rights Council.
In Saskatchewan I felt safe that the people here are rational enough and generally good hearted to not go on a witch-hunt if a reporter wrote something that offended a person or group of people.
I firmly believe that rights don’t come from a government but are inalienable; it doesn’t make sense that a group of people can only be free if a portion of that group allows it.
Going back to Ontario, I will be returning to school, which will be useful for getting into the next chapter in storytelling, being digital media studies.
Marshall McLuhan said that the medium is the message and for the future the medium, digital is going to have a growing share.
There may always be a place for a quality print product like National Geographic and they are still a storytelling medium. However, in an uncertain future with everything moving towards digital it is important to have the skills that a lot of employers, whether a food magazine, car publication or so on, are expecting their applicants to have.
Given the sporadic employment associated with being a journalist in Ontario and also having to filter everything one says, does or writes, I am looking forward to a more technical field being videography and video editing, which is something I also enjoy and am comfortable doing.
