NCM - The Walrus Professional Development Series for Immigrant Journalists

Are you new to Canada and interested in journalism?

New Canadian Media is offering free workshops on how to publish your work in Canadian news outlets

Canada’s media industry continues to be a world in flux. Newspapers are going digital, cable is battling streaming, and new mediums like podcasts have given independent voices a chance to be heard.

And meanwhile, Canada’s demographics continue to rapidly change. One in five Canadians today was born abroad.

We are – as much as ever – a nation of immigrants.

Our media industry is beginning to embrace that reality by seeking better coverage of diverse communities. Over the past decade, leading multicultural news outlet New Canadian Media (NCM) and its Member Collective of immigrant journalists have helped fill some of this shortfall. In continuation of these efforts, NCM will be offering free journalism workshops to new immigrants interested in learning how their stories can be published in Canada’s ethnic and mainstream media outlets.

These free professional development workshops will be offered in Ottawa (Feb 15), Toronto (Feb 29), and

Vancouver (March 14). Leading journalists reporting on the Canadian immigrant landscape will share their best practices and expertise during these day-long information and mentoring sessions. They will help you learn how to effectively pitch your ideas and write engaging stories that resonate with readers across communities in multicultural Canada.

You will learn best-practices for generating and pitching story ideas, polishing them into unique perspectives, and honing their storytelling skills to take their reporting on immigrant experiences to the next level. Each workshop will feature three sessions facilitated by seasoned journalists from an immigrant background and will consist of a lecture combined with class discussion and an opportunity to get some mentoring.

The lectures will focus on the following topics:

• What Makes Canadian Journalism Different

• Giving Voice to the Voiceless: Advanced Reporting

• Moving the needle through commentary: Advanced Opinion

writing

As part of the registration process, you will be required to submit a story pitch on one of the following themes, examining them through an immigrant lens:

Family reunification Political engagement Canada: Preserving bilingualism + advancing multiculturalism Settlement agencies/ integration

Foreign credential recognition

For enquiries, please email events@newcanadianmedia.com