News & Events

Writing is about bringing out your own voice.

That's the lesson 26 youth from some of Toronto's disadvantaged neighbourhoods learned during Ryerson's Verse City journalism camp, a five-day workshop at the University where students learned the basics of multimedia reporting using the latest digital technologies.

Founded by School of Journalism assistant professor Vinita Srivastava in 2004 (with the Young People's Press), the program is currently partnered with Scarborough-based East Metro Youth Services and aims to encourage marginalized youth, ages 13 to 24, to consider journalism as a career. Srivastava says she wanted to create Verse City as a way to strive for more diversity in newsrooms.

"The personal motivation is there to open the doors as much as possible. The other thing to remember is that there is a sense of hopelessness amongst youth from at-risk communities," Srivastava explained. "They think the media is all negative but they don't necessarily read it or watch it so they're just disengaged from it. We have to counter that by starting as young as possible to help them be leaders and they may start to think that it is possible to sit in a university classroom."

During the camp, Ryerson journalism professors and students, who acted as mentors, taught the aspiring journalists how to put together a compelling news story using cutting-edge multimedia technologies in the classroom and "in the field" reporting. The youth worked in groups and were free to cover any topic they liked, including the Pride parade, street performers, fashion and religion. They were required to write the story, create a photo slideshow and edit a short video based on their written piece.

Recent graduate from Senator O'Connor high school in Scarborough, Matthew Cox-Saunders found the experience helpful and eye-opening. His group wrote a story on visible minorities who face discrimination from their own culture because they're homosexual.

"It was something new [to cover]. I never thought about how homosexuality could clash with ethnicity and culture," Cox-Saunders said. "It was a really fun program and if I have the chance to do it again, I definitely will."

On the final day of the camp, the student groups presented their news stories to the class, received a certificate for completing the workshop and were offered critiques from four Ryerson professors. It was agreed that the students conveyed emotion in their stories, followed the fundamentals of journalism and used their street smarts to determine how and which people to talk to for their articles.

"I have so much respect for the students because they were pushed hard," Srivastava said.

The articles can be seen on the journalism portal page and Ryerson students and camp participants also blogged about their report experiences, which were posted on the National Film Board's Citizen Shift blog site.

-With files from Suelan Toye