Peter Mansbridge told a room full of young journalism delegates that storytelling is the hardest part of his job.
“It’s hard to have an impact on an audience,” he said. “I’m still working on that skill.”
Mansbridge was the first keynote speaker for the 77th annual NASH journalism conference, which took place in Ottawa from Jan. 14-18. Each year, delegates from student newspapers across the country meet to discuss the future of journalism.
Over the course of five days, around 400 delegates connected in workshops and presentations with well-known members of the journalism industry, including Diana Swain, Lisa LaFlamme, and Justin Ling.
The main theme was media accessibility. Mansbridge defended the status of Canadian media despite the recent controversies at the CBC.
“We have a vigorous media in this country that has toppled governments and supports debate,” he said.
This year’s conference comes at a difficult time for the Canadian University Press (CUP), the organization which normally handles its co-ordination. National CUP executive Jane Lytvynenko said the board had to go through an emergency restructuring in order to pull off the conference, but has since recovered.
The Fulcrum, the University of Ottawa’s student newspaper, received a $120,000 grant to take over the conference.
Mackenzie Gray, national co-ordinator of the event, said most of it went towards booking venues and hotel suites.
Lytvynenko said the conference remains an important event for all young journalists, and was worth the financial struggle.
“Sometimes, sitting in their own newsrooms, student journalists forget the scale and importance of their work,” she said in an e-mail.
Carleton University journalism student Liz Rodriguez said the conference taught her many lessons about the industry from seasoned professionals.
“There is always a hunger for news, so journalism isn’t dying,” she said. “That hunger still exists.”
Despite the opportunities that the conference arranged, Rodriguez said she thinks there is always room for improvement.
“Some of the workshops weren’t strong enough,” she said. “It would be good if they could review the content of the workshops first to see if it’ll actually help journalism students.”
Gray said organizing it was a huge feat.
“The Fulcrum team did some hard work during the summer, crunching numbers late into the morning,” he said. “We even worked in the basement of our newspaper, which is normally condemned on campus.”
Gray said bringing in great speakers ha been a reason for the conference’s continued success.
“We want to show that this conference is still important for student journalism,” he said.
Plans are already in the works for the 2016 conference in Toronto.
