Gavin Adamson is an assistant professor in the Ryerson University School of Journalism, where he teaches first-year undergraduate students and final-year students in the Ryersonian newsroom. His current research concerns mental-health news coverage and digital news dissemination. Gene Allen is a professor and holder of the Velma Rogers Research Chair in the School of Journalism at Ryerson University, and a faculty member in the Joint Graduate Program in Communication & Culture. His book Making National News: A History of Canadian Press was a finalist for the Canada Prize for the Humanities in 2015. Email: gene.allen@ryerson.ca Paul Benedetti teaches journalism in the…

Moderator: Gene Allen Participants:             Derek Chezzi, Editor-in-Chief, Yahoo Canada Steve Ladurantaye, Twitter Canada Jonathan Whitten, Executive Director of news content, CBC News It’s no longer news to anyone that journalism is facing a crisis; nor is it news that this presents opportunities for those who are willing to reimagine what journalism is, or might be. Every week brings new evidence of both trends: continuing declines in advertising revenue for newspapers, along with newsroom layoffs; and the emergence of new, mostly Web-based journalistic ventures and methods. Sometimes the two go on simultaneously under the same organizational roof, but often not.…

Moderator: Gene Allen Participants: Marissa Nelson, Senior Director of Digital Media, CBC News[1] Erika Tustin, Digital Editor, Toronto Star Kenny Yum, Managing Editor, AOL Canada, Huffington Post Canada Introduction The rapid and profound changes affecting journalism make it difficult for journalism educators – many of whom have not worked regularly in newsrooms for several years – to keep up with new developments. In the continuing digital transformation of journalism, one of the most important recent changes has been the ability to receive rapid and essentially constant information about audience response. Using measures known as “analytics” or “Web metrics,” journalists (and…

Gavin Adamson                                                 Introduction This study is inspired by the results of an experimental approach to reporting live in a student newsroom. On 16 November 2012, two fourth-year undergraduate students at Ryerson University’s School of Journalism ventured to the University of Toronto to cover a men’s rights activist’s speech. There they would produce, by some measures, the most successful editorial content published by ryersonian.ca (Lagerquist 2013) to date. The reporters arrived at the scene with notebooks but also with smartphones. They were reporting in a live blog, a relatively new platform that digital newsrooms have used for breaking news events (Buttry…