Disadvantage for Canadians

Sirs, Madames,

Malcolm Gladwell at NYer seems to have done okay for a lowly Ontario champion miler with dubious hair. Guy I worked with at a Toronto liquor store, Ian Austen, helped me get into j-school (yeah, thanks) and is now at NYT. (He's a great guy, great talent.)

Played pick-up ball against Mark Jones. Years later slow pitch in media league.

John Colapinto is the guy at RS whom Jones was trying to come up with (I presume).

Adam Gopnick.

Morley Safer is my favorite Canadian of all time. Lorne Michaels my least. Loved when JD Roberts was smoking on air with too-tight leather jacket and mullet.

Back in the day, Tim Ryan.

YHS, etc

 

I would rank Ryerson's program as better than Carleton's. Also, Western in London used to be the only Canadian university to offer an MA in journalism (although I think it may have discontinued the program and an MA in journalism is now unattainable anywhere in this country).

 

Congratulations to those who took the over. It's been more than 24 hours and still no JR.

 

And congrats to Ellis for achieving leet with the above post.

 

He's achieved leet on multiple occasions. He goes back and deletes posts so he can reattain the honor. . . .LOOSER

 

His very first broadcasting job was at the AM radio station in my hometown in the early 1970s.

 

Be like leaving the Yankees to play for the Royals.

 

Yes, Western still does have a masters program, though I think it has a confusing title like communications and media studies or something. The Western Gazette is one of Canada's few daily campus papers too, and a fairly good read still.

And yes, as a past Carleton student who has taken a few workshops with Ryerson faculty, I do like Ryerson's approach. I think it may be a little more practical, and a bit more broad too.

 

The practicality is invaluable, which is why so many Canadian university grads end up taking journalism courses at community college.

 

True enough. I'm thankful every day that I did a co-op at a good community newspaper when I was in high school. It set me up very well to be a leader in my classes and campus papers while many at Carleton had the theory but not the practice — and that put me in a good position when job-finding time arrived.

 

Forget Carleton if you want sports. Think Ryerson. Toronto is the centre of the Canadian sports universe and if you are at Rye-High (especially its post-grad program), you are good and you are ambitious you can probably get a freelance look. I know of two recent Ryerson grads that have landed good gigs quick (one at the Globe and one as a play-by-play guy in the CFL).

But it's hard. As someone has mentioned already, there are few cities in canada with populations of more than a million (Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Edmonton. Just a million in Edmonton's case.) Additionally, there are only five cities in the 500,000-999,999 range (Calgary, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Mississauga and Ottawa--Mississauga being a suburb of Toronto).

Bottom line when it comes to newspapers, there are 16 metro dailies in English Canada (for the record---Vancouver X2, Calgary X2, Edmonton X2, Winnipeg X2, Hamilton X1, Toronto X4, Ottawa X2 and Montreal X1). Not a lot of jobs, eh (<-- sorry). And the lack of metro dailies means that the secondary daily market (think KW Record, Regina Leader-Post, London Free Press, Halifax Daily News, etc) is hyper competitive too.

Making thinks even bleaker...the 5,000-20,000 circ daily market in Ontario is dominated by Osprey, who has bled editorial dry during the past decade. If there are 200 daily sports writing positions in the whole damn country I'd be shocked.

It sucks.

However, if you are good, dedicated and a little bit lucky...

As for the "can I work in America" question. If I were you, I'd start working my charms on Myspace. See if you can't hook yourself a nice girl from Alabama.

 

I'm pretty sure you can still get a MA at UWO and maybe at King's College in Halifax too...could be wrong though as I didn't go that route...

As I said above...Ryerson is the way to go (and, no, I didn't).