Fellowship recipient to develop a workshop on entrepreneurial journalism to help journalists market their skills.
Julie Ireton is the recipient of the 2013 Michener-Deacon Fellowship for Journalism Education. The Fellowship was presented during the annual Michener Award ceremony held at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on June 18, 2013.
Julie Ireton had to “create her own job” upon completing her journalism education in 1994. Faced with shrinking job opportunities, she marketed herself and her abilities to radio, television and local newspapers for several years before joining CBC Radio.
Opportunities for young journalists are even more uncertain today, so Ms. Ireton’s proposal to develop a workshop on entrepreneurial journalism is most timely. Her project, which would eventually link Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business and its School of Journalism, is an effective way to assist schools of journalism across Canada and their students. Her own wide-ranging experience demonstrates Ms. Ireton is well equipped to research and create a new course model in journalism education, and to mentor students who wish to apply their writing and critical thinking skills as self-employed business practitioners.
In her acceptance speech, Ms Ireton said that “along with the fundamentals, aspiring reporters need to be innovators, learn how to take risks, maybe create their own ventures or simply just survive in this ever-evolving industry.” (full text)
Update: Julie Ireton’s completed Fellowship report can be viewed here: Start-up Journalism Project.
Julie Ireton is the business and technology reporter at CBC Ottawa where she has worked for more than 16 years. Her reporting covers a wide range of topics – from investigating corporate corruption, to scrutinizing the development industry to highlighting Ottawa’s technology field. She was the first reporter to break the story that the high technology company Nortel Networks was filing for bankruptcy. Her report was the culmination of months of research and her continued coverage of this story earned her the 2010 RTNDA Ron Laidlaw Award. She previously won the Japan Assignment Award from the Asia Pacific Foundation, enabling her to report on a biotechnology partnership between Japanese researchers and Canadian scientists. She was also the recipient of the Registered Nurses Association Award for excellence in health care reporting two years in a row.
Ms Ireton has a B.A. from York University’s Glendon College and a Master of Journalism degree from Carleton University.
Rideau Hall – June 18, 2013
Judges for the 2013 Michener-Deacon Fellowships:
Lindsay Crysler (chair), former managing editor of The Gazette, Montreal, former director, journalism department, Concordia University, Montreal; Clinton Archibald, associate professor, professor of public ethics, St. Paul University, Ottawa; Michael Goldbloom,Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Bishops University, Sherbrooke, Quebec, and former publisher of The Gazette and the Toronto Star; Lynne Van Luven, associate professor of journalism and creative non-fiction, University of Victoria; Erin Steuter, chair of the sociology department, Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB.
The fellowship of the Michener Awards Foundation, introduced in 1987, is known today as the Michener-Deacon Fellowship (named after the late Roland Michener and the late Paul Deacon, a senior media executive and Michener Awards Foundation president). The Michener-Deacon Fellowship for Journalism Education was established to support a journalist-in-residence for a semester in a recognized Canadian journalism department. It is supported by the BMO Financial Group and the long-standing commitment of the Deacon family to promote journalistic excellence in Canada.