J-Source

Journalists sans j-school

Glen McGregor, Stephen Maher, Kady O'Malley, Paul Wells and Chantal Hébert are all journalists who have contributed to Canadian journalism in a variety of ways. They are all also journalists who never attended journalism school, based on a Twitter discussion late last week.  "You're conscripted!" read a Sun News Network post that was soliciting applicants…

Glen McGregor, Stephen Maher, Kady O'Malley, Paul Wells and Chantal Hébert are all journalists who have contributed to Canadian journalism in a variety of ways. They are all also journalists who never attended journalism school, based on a Twitter discussion late last week. 

"You're conscripted!" read a Sun News Network post that was soliciting applicants for a number of job vacancies at the network.

In Sun News Network fashion, the posting blasted both the CBC and the Lamestream Media Party, but also picked a relatively new foe: journalism schools.

No need to have a journalism degree (in fact, we'll view it with a healthy dose of skepticism). Journalism 101 isn't where you learn to find the truth.

Coming up with the right stories for Ezra, Adler and Brian isn't rocket science…but you can bet your average CBC producer wouldn't be able to deliver that magic.

Sun News Network might be surprised to find out then, that a number of the journalists it may consider to be part of what it describes as the “group think therapy sessions” — the types of journalists it says it doesn't want — never actually went to j-school.

The Ottawa Citizen’s Glen McGregor sent a tongue-in-cheek tweet about the posting:

Which prompted a number of journalists for large media organizations on prominent beats — McGregor included — to talk about the value of journalism school, seeing as how they had not attended themselves.

Despite this, many journalism job postings now require applicants to have a journalism degree. One reason, as given by Canadian University Press national bureau chief Arshy Mann:

A sentiment seconded by The Citizen’s Stephen Maher.

And while these are examples of a number of journalists who have contributed much to the industry, they do make note of areas where j-school is valuable:

Melanie Coulson, a senior online editor for The Citizen and a journalism instructor at Carleton went so far as to write an open cover letter for the Sun News Network job, but posted on Twitter yesterday that alas, she has not yet received a call for an interview.