Featuring....

• Walt Harrington, University of Illinois
• Heather Mallick, The Globe & Mail
• Elizabeth Leonard, PEOPLE Magazine
• Anthony Feinstein, author of Dangerous Lives: War and the Men and Women Who Report It
• Stephen Buckley, St. Petersburg Times
• Linden MacIntyre, the fifth estate
• Juliet O'Neill, The Ottawa Citizen
• Sheldon Rampton, co-author of Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles With Your Future, (2001)
• John Sawatsky, Interviewing specialist
• Mark Achbar, documentary filmmaker and co-producer of The Corporation

Also featuring: Julian Sher, Kirk LaPointe, Kim Bolan, David Sutherland, Justice Wallace Oppal, Stewart Bell, Lynne van Luven, Vivian Smith, Ann Rees, Cecil Rosner, Les Zaitz, Charlie Smith, David Akin, Anna Gebauer, Jane Kokan, Fred Vallance-Jones, Rob Washburn, Janis McKenzie, Andrew McIntosh, Douglas Todd, Brent Mudry, Mark Schneider, Tom Hawthorn, Alicia Priest and many more.

Workshops and Panels

FRIDAY MAY 7: MORNING - Starting at 9 a.m.

THE JOURNALIST'S HAIKU - Narrative journalism has swept through newsrooms in the last decade and generated many fine articles. Yet the "narrative" approach has come to be synonymous with stories that take weeks or months to report and write. Let's distill out the techniques that work so well in these longer narratives and start applying them to quick and short stories -stories that can rightly be called "tone poems." Walt Harrington, University of Illinois.

THE PERIOD IS YOUR FRIEND - Simple sentences and plain English may work best most of the time for broadcast, but rules are made to be broken. Nobody breaks them more often with more success than the CBC's Linden MacIntyre. MacIntyre will teach you how to make your scripts sing while, at the same time, make listening a pleasure for your viewers.

THE BLOG REVOLUTION: How blogs are changing and challenging journalism - Everyone's doing it, including media professionals. Web logs, or blogs, give anyone a platform and a potentially limitless audience. Lately, bloggers have broken news stories, kept other stories alive, created their own celebrities and, oh yeah, helped overthrow the editor of the New York Times.  Previously unknown bloggers have been offered plum jobs in conventional newsrooms, and conventional newsrooms have started blogging. Some prominent journalists have even found themselves paired with "watchblogs" that analyze and critique every story they create. What are the tensions between bloggers and traditional journalists? And what can journalists learn from blogs and bloggers? Is this a new form of media democracy? This panel of tech-savvy journalists, bloggers, and media observers will explore the way blogs are changing and challenging journalism - and where it's all going. The panel includes: David Akin, technology writer for the Globe and Mail and CTV; Emira Mears, co-founder of Raised Eyebrow, web design, media activist and co-editor of soapboxgirls.com; Alan Bass, assistant professor of journalism, University College of the Cariboo; Robert Washburn, professor, e-journalism at Loyalist College in Belleville, Ontario; and Saleem Khan, editor at Toronto Metro News.

INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTER-ASSISTED REPORTING - You've heard about the big investigations exposing police racial profiling, dirty restaurants, dangerous drugs and deteriorating downtowns. What they have in common is computer-assisted reporting. Learn more about this cutting-edge skill and how reporters are using CAR to raise the bar in Canadian journalism. Find out how the reporters do it and about the skills you'll need. Includes an original audiovisual presentation highlighting some of the best CAR stories of the new century. A fast-paced and informative three hours led by Fred Vallance-Jones of The Hamilton Spectator, and David McKie of CBC Radio Ottawa.

RADIO STORYTELLING - Think of a radio documentary as a series of visual scenes. That's how Steve Wadhams crafts his award-winning pieces. In this session, Wadhams will teach techniques to focus those scenes and make them work together and will push journalists to find the most creative way to tell a story. Wadham's career as a radio documentary producer has taken him around the world and spawned an interest in passing his skills along to others. He's now a trainer for CBC and the BBC. Wadhams' work has won him two Nellies, two Major Armstrongs, two B'Nai Briths, a New York, a Gabriel, two CAJs , a Premios Ondas and a Prix Italia.

NEWS AND NATIONAL IDENTITY - While they may not wear a maple leaf on their lapel, Canadians journalists report for international news organizations around the world every day, but what challenges does that pose? Hanson Hosein is an award-winning journalist and producer whose experience includes coverage of the Iraq war as an "embedded" NBC reporter. As a Canadian reporting for an American network in politically and religiously sensitive areas such as Israel and Kosovo, Hosein will discuss the challenges of remaining neutral and reporting the story as you see it. He will also tell us what it takes to do television news overseas as a "solo journalist" - from choice of equipment, travel logistics, editing and feeding technology, to editorial issues and how to convince a skeptical world that solo TV journalism can be just as valid as a more expensive, and often less flexible, reporting "team."

INTIMATE JOURNALISM: The art and craft of reporting everyday life - In-depth reporting about how ordinary people live and what they value should be at the heart of every fine newspaper. Too often it is not. This is a failure of vision and skill. At a time when newspapers are desperately trying to reach people and keep them reading, we too often think of our human interest coverage as light feature pieces rather than as a kind of popular ethnographic chronicle of the everyday lives of the people in our communities. Walt Harrington, University of Illinois.

CO-DEPENDENT NO MORE - Journalists need PR people for stories; PR types need us to get their message out. But do time and financial constraints in the modern newsroom result in too many PR-friendly stories getting into the media? We ask our three-member panel: Sheldon Rampton, co-author of Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles With Your Future, (2001); Jim Hoggan, President of James Hoggan and Associates, one of Canada's leading PR firms, and Alicia Priest, a reporter specializing in medical and science issues who's written for The Vancouver Sun and Province , The Georgia Straight and CBC Radio's national science show, Quirks and Quarks.

AFTERNOON:THE BEST BEAT IN JOURNALISM - Award-winning Vancouver Sun writer Douglas Todd will explain how to navigate the contentious terrain of the religion and ethics beat - source of some of the hottest stories of the past decade, from terrorism to gay rights, cult scandals to politics. Todd will show where to go for crucial background, how to scratch up the best quotes and who to trust. The beat also gives journalists fabulous opportunities to stretch their storytelling muscles on features, trend stories, think pieces, investigations and analyses. **Presented by the Centre for Faith and the Media.

ARTFUL REPORTING WITHOUT LYING - Narrative non-fiction wins Pulitzer prizes, but it can also land newspapers in hot water. University of Victoria writing professor Lynne van Luven and instructor Vivian Smith will dissect some models of this kind of reportage and discuss how to keep the truth in true stories. We'll also look at the ethical and editorial ramifications when reporters try their hands at such work.

WARM MILK AND A COLUMN AT BEDTIME: Why Canadian column-writing needs a shake-up - The Globe and Mail's Heather Mallick believes writing columns is the second-hardest job in newspapers, after investigative reporting. Oddly though, column writing is regarded as a cushy job for the easily categorized. A good column must be interesting and unpredictable. Dull columns are a waste of the reader's time. Columnists must fight the tendency to favour a tidy package of beliefs and should sometimes risk upsetting loyal readers by saying the unexpected.

DISSECTING AN ORGANIZATION: How to break and enter - Since the best stories are told through people, the tough job of reporting often involves cracking the associations they form. Find out how to dissect an organization: who the players are, what the rules are, how things are done, where mistakes are recorded. An invaluable session for investigative journalism. Panelists will include Brent Mudry, Stockwatch; Charlie Smith, The Georgia Straight; and investigative journalist Les Zaitz, The Oregonian.

MANUFACTURING RISK - Should one case of mad cow disease create a stampede away from the meat counter? Or are reporters being manipulated by various stakeholders in medical or health issues to minimize risk in their coverage?  Join us for an examination of the role of the journalist in explaining medical healthy or safety risk stories. Panelist Lisa Johnson, a UBC School of Journalism grad student, has analyzed mad cow coverage and will talk about how the media let BSE risk coverage become a "beef-is-safe" campaign. Joining Johnson will be Dr. John Blatherwick, Vancouver's chief medical health officer. Blatherwick was on the front lines of the SARS scare, calling it Canada's "first internet epidemic." CBC correspondent Eve Savory and CTV network correspondent Todd Battis will round out the panel with Savory discussing the controversy over farmed fish and Battis looking at network news coverage of these issues. The panel will be moderated by Stephen Ward, associate professor at the UBC School of Journalism.

THE STACKS AND BEYOND - Before Google, there was the library. Vancouver Public Library research specialist Janis McKenzie and Debbie Millward, manager of editorial services for the Pacific Newspaper Group, will take you back to your researching roots in this session. In addition to the printed work, they'll also delve into what's available free and online in most libraries across the country, as well as discuss the availability of other informative sources.

SURVEILLANCE OF THE RIGHT TO KNOW - Government spin doctors routinely monitor, divert and interfere with Access and Freedom of Information requests which might cause political embarrassment. Media requests are automatically flagged with code words such as Amber Light and Red Files, alerting the political advisors and sending a signal to bureaucrats to proceed with caution. We'll explore the implications of right-to-know surveillance systems in Ottawa, B.C. and Ontario. B.C. provincial FOI  specialist and former Province reporter Ann Rees and federal Access to Information specialist and National Post reporter Andrew McIntosh will consider the issue. Darrell Evans, executive director of the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, to moderate.

BLOGGING 101- They've played key roles in the combative U.S. presidential campaign. Academics say they'll revolutionize mainstream journalism. But what do blogs have to do with the daily lives of journalists in Canada? What do journalists need to know about this new source of views and information?  David Akin, who is National Business and Technology Correspondent for CTV News, a contributing writer for The Globe and Mail, and a blogger himself, leads a workshop for journalists who may one day want to start their own blog and for all those who wish to learn how blogs fit into daily news gathering. Blogs - short for Web logs - are a new kind of online publication that are quickly becoming as important to journalists as e-mail and the World Wide Web. Akin will run through some of the popular blog publishing tools; take participants on a brief tour of the blogosphere; and lead a discussion of the relationship of blogs to mainstream working journalists.  Designed for those with little or no knowledge of blogs or blogging, this workshop will focus primarily on giving working journalists real-world skills they can put to use right away in their newsroom.

FRIDAY NIGHT KEYNOTE: War and its Effects on Journalists - War is hell...just ask the journalists who report on it. That anecdotal theory has been expanded upon by University of Toronto professor Anthony Feinstein in his just-published book, Dangerous Lives: War and the Men and Women Who Report It.  As a contract psychologist for CNN, Feinstein has had the opportunity to study the impact of war reporting first-hand. While war reporters' stories may be gripping, the effect of their work has far-reaching personal consequences.

SATURDAY, MAY 8:

CAJ/CIDA SATURDAY BREAKFAST: Join us as we listen to a short presentation by the winners of the CAJ/CIDA Fellowships to Africa.  Hear them describe their trip to Africa, how they found their way off the beaten path and followed it to find a story.

7:45 a.m.

MORNING SESSIONS- Starting at 9 a.m.

THE JOURNALIST'S HAIKU - Narrative journalism has swept through newsrooms in the last decade and generated many fine articles. Yet the "narrative" approach has come to be synonymous with stories that take weeks or months to report and write. Let's distill out the techniques that work so well in these longer narratives and start applying them to quick and short stories -stories that can rightly be called "tone poems." Walt Harrington, University of Illinois.

INVESTIGATIONS ON A ZERO BUDGET - Wouldn't we all like to have endless time and money to spend on "the big story." Fact is, most newsrooms are strapped for cash these days but still expect reporters to break news quickly and on budget. Well, that can be done. This workshop offers concrete guidance for investigative journalism...all on a shoestring budget. Cecil Rosner, senior producer CBC Disclosure and Les Zaitz, prize-winning investigative reporter from The Oregonian will show you how.

WHAT TO DO WHEN THE POLICE COME CALLING: Search warrants, confidential sources and the newsroom - More and more it seems, journalists can wind up in deep legal trouble simply for doing their jobs. This workshop will look at recent legal cases involving journalists and police, and offer reporter survival tips. Hear firsthand from reporters who've experienced the legal chill when police come calling. Participants will include Andrew McIntosh, National Post; Juliet O'Neill, The Ottawa Citizen; and media lawyer David Sutherland.  **Presented by the B.C. Law Society and the Jack Webster Foundation**

ART OF THE INTERVIEW - Why can one reporter work on a story, and get nowhere, while another reporter working on exactly the same story manages to get all the answers? Some people just have the magic touch, right? Wrong. Uncovering stories has nothing to do with magic and everything to do with good methodology. Everything starts with the questions we ask. Author and investigative journalist John Sawatsky will give a half-day version of his globally acclaimed interviewing methodology in use at newspapers and TV stations around the globe. Have you been "Sawatskyed" yet? **This workshop is sponsored by The Toronto Star**

THE CORPORATION: Anatomy of a long-form documentary - Join the filmmakers who created The Corporation for a workshop on the methods and madness of making a long-form documentary. Winner of the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, The Corporation is part of a new wave of non-fiction films reaching a wide audience. Find out how they did it. Subjects to be explored:  getting access, aesthetics, money, stock shot use and legal considerations, stories and structure, who was interviewed, and the cutting- room floor.  This three-hour workshop will include film clips and a question period.

KEEPING THE NON IN NON-FICTION - The Jayson Blair fiasco has once again raised the issue of truth in journalism. Such blatant lying, though, is only one of the challenges facing the journalistic belief that truth is knowable. From reality TV shows to fictionalized nonfiction, the culture is imbuing people with the idea that fact and fiction can't be separated. News people, who take so much heat for inaccuracies, must be a powerful voice reminding the culture that "facts" still matter - and that graceful writing can be beautiful and accurate at once. Walt Harrington, University of Illinois.

CHEERLEADER OR CHASTIZER? - The role of a beat reporter covering and professional sports team can be precarious at best. Not only do they need to build relationships with the players, but also provide an honest perspective to the public. Admonish a million-dollar player and they run the risk of being denied the next time around. The job becomes all the more difficult as athletes are increasingly well schooled in the art of rhetoric and cliche. The role of this panel is to open the doors of dialogue between reporters and sports franchises. Moderator Greg Douglas, aka Dr. Sport, has straddled both sides of the fence as a sports journalist and PR director with the Vancouver Canucks. He'll toss around the issue with panelists Bob Ackles, president and CEO of the B.C. Lions; Province sports columnist Kent Gilchrist and others.

YOU CAN'T PRINT THAT - In the so-called Age of Information, courts in Canada are more than ever granting and upholding publication bans of greater and wider scope. How is the public interest served as lawyers seek and receive seemingly unjustified or unenforceable bans and justify secret hearings?  Panelists include investigative journalist Julian Sher, Vancouver media lawyer David Sutherland and B.C. Court of Appeals Justice Wallace Oppal.

AFTERNOON:PIERCING PROFILES - Elizabeth Leonard, deputy bureau chief for PEOPLE Magazine's Los Angeles bureau, will guide journalists through PEOPLE Magazine's popular formula for profile writing, from the first gleam of an idea and the research, to the writing, editing, even the photography leading to the finished product on the newsstands. Leonard will also look at the magazine's style book and how it's used to write short, informative and ultimately, readable stories about people - celebrities and non-celebrities alike.

STORYVILLE - Feature writers and investigative reporters are newsroom glamour pusses. To free them from daily drudgery, the rest of us drown in predictable stories: a squib on the weather; an obituary of a notable fish biologist; a colour piece on the bridal show at the convention centre. Such tired assignments can be soul-destroying to veteran reporters and career-destroying to rookies. They need not be. The Storyville workshop will look at how one reporter won a Pulitzer with pieces on an ordinary rainy day and a sunny Easter Sunday. We'll examine the dying art of obituary writing and review how others have successfully tackled stories on trade shows, summer fairs, Christmas hampers, Boxing Day sales and other chestnuts. All this will be followed by a freewheeling discussion, so bring your war stories. The workshop's goal is to have you begging your editors for these assignments. Trust me, they'll love you for it..

TOP SECRET - National Insecurity - In the name of anti-terrorism, security agencies are choking the media's public right to information, including revelations about how insecure we may be and whose rights are being abused. Security specialist and author Stewart Bell of the National Post; national security reporter Les Zaitz of The Oregonian, and intelligence-security-rights experts Martin Rudner of Carleton University; Reg Whitaker of the University of Victoria and Patrick Smith of Simon Fraser University examine transparency versus terrorism.

BUILDING THE BETTER STANDUP - For many reporters, convergence means they must be as comfortable in front of a computer as they are in front of a TV camera. Anna Gebauer of BCTV news and Bill Amos from BCIT's school of broadcast will show you how stand-ups are made, and will include tips and tricks of reporting live from the scene.

WHY REPORTING FROM THE "BURBS" IS LIKE BEING A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT - We've all heard it, and maybe we've even said it ourselves: Covering the suburbs is boring. Well, maybe not. In fact, covering the suburbs with distinction takes guts, creativity, vision, perseverance and a sense of humour - all the same elements you need to be a great foreign correspondent. Stephen Buckley, assistant managing editor/world at the St. Petersburg Times, will look at how to use all those traits to write the kinds of stories that'll fascinate, entertain and enlighten your readers.

JOURNALISTS AND POLICE: Gaining access, protecting boundaries - Some of the biggest stories come from developing contacts with police. But how to do that? And why should they trust you? This workshop explores the difficulties of cracking the blue wall, while maintaining impartiality. Participants include Kim Bolan, Vancouver Sun; Cecil Rosner, Sr. Producer CBC Disclosure; Julian Sher, investigative documentary producer/author; and RCMP Sgt. John Ward.

ALONE IN THE FIELD - From undercover work to in-depth visual storytelling, Jane Kokan's work has appeared on numerous North American and European networks, including the BBC and PBS. As a freelance videographer who's covered Balkan wars, middle eastern conflicts, and other politically motivated goings-on across the globe, Kokan has learned to use a variety of reporting tools in her work as a one-woman band. In this workshop, Kokan will look at more than just how to get the story on tape. She'll also discuss logistics of pitching foreign assignments from regions which have disappeared from the public's radar, types of equipment used, health issues when operating from tropical or high-risk zones, and the hostile environment training courses that every reporter with overseas desires should take.

THE SPIN CYCLE - Public relations people: we need them but they can drive us crazy. How do you cut through the spin and get to the truth? Sheldon Rampton, co-author of Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry (1995) and Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles With Your Future (2001), offers some secrets on how the public relations industry uses you to get its message across, and how to avoid getting sucked into the spin cycle.

WILL CULTURAL COVERAGE SAVE BIG NEWS OUTLETS, OR DOOM THEM? News media want younger audiences - especially younger women - but struggle to get them. They have long looked to better cultural coverage in general and entertainment content in particular as the keys to rectify the problem. Broadcasters such as CHUM, alternative weeklies, and now the Internet are providing increasingly serious competition. Can old-school media in general and metro papers in particular rise to the challenge? Or should we simply ask "What will replace daily newspapers when all the Marmaduke readers die off?" There has been no shortage of innovation. The National Post took a fresh approach when it launched, the Globe and Mail has shifted its focus, the CBC seems obsessed with the issue, and most metro papers have repackaged their content. But the results are decidedly mixed. Are female audiences seen simply as market opportunities? Are too many entertainment reporters simply art snobs unwilling to reflect the public's real interests? Is management out of touch with what younger people want? Is there a lack of commitment to changes that work? Vancouver Sun managing editor Kirk LaPointe, former Georgia Straight editor and Sun entertainment editor Charles Campbell, and Globe and Mail entertainment editor Elizabeth Renzetti will discuss the issues.

SUNDAY, MAY 9:MORNING - Starting at 10 a.m.

LIFE AFTER THE NEWSROOM - The members of this panel are proof that there is life after the newsroom. Those who have traded the security of a newsroom job for new careers often find that the skills they developed in the newsroom have equipped them to do more than write daily news stories. For anyone who is currently on staff at a news organization and is contemplating taking that great leap into the unknown, this panel will look at the pros and cons of leaving the newsroom, the kinds of work that are available to journalists beyond the newsroom, and what you should know before you leave. Former journalist Tom Barrett will moderate the discussion with other former reporters and editors - Don Hauka, Ross Howard, Anne Mullens, and Vivian Smith - to provide tips and advice on preparing for the big transition.

ARE YOU A MEDIA BULLY? : Being an aggressive reporter often pays big dividends. Mark Schneider, former Vancouver Bureau Chief for CTV National News, was called "the worst of the kneecappers" by former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney; MP Svend Robinson and former Bloc leader Lucien Bouchard demanded his parliamentary credentials be revoked. With every attack his career prospered. But how do you know when you've crossed the line? Schneider is proposing a "hippocratic oath" for journalists that would supersede organizational Codes of Ethics.

Speaker's Notes

**Presented by the Centre for Faith and the Media.**

SHELL SHOCKED - University of Toronto professor Anthony Feinstein's new book, Dangerous Lives: War and the Men and Women Who Report It, has created a stir in the world or war correspondents. While Feinstein maintains such coverage has far-reaching personal impact on reporters, some who have lived through such an assignment disagree. Come here the debate.

THE SUCCESSFUL FREELANCER: Not an oxymoron - Most magazines and many newspapers and radio broadcasts rely on freelance contributors, yet the words of Thomas Hobbes have been applied to their profession: "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." What does it take to be a successful freelancer? Join an expert panel composed of some of Canada's top freelancers to discuss pitching strategies, editorial relationships, financial issues, motivation, networking, and idea generation-and why these hardy professionals won't trade their independence for a staff job. The panel will also explore some of the major dilemmas affecting freelancers, such as pay rates that have stagnated for decades, opposition from unionized staffers, why government magazine funding doesn't trickle down, contractual issues, the negative impact of market concentration and the ethics of non-journalism writing assignments. Moderator and freelancer Deborah Campbell will be joined by novelist and columnist Lynn Coady; author and uber-freelancer Daniel Wood; Vancouver Magazine editor Matthew Mallon; Time and Agence France-Presse freelancer Deborah Jones; and Elle Canada contributor and Saturday Night columnist Guy Saddy.

SUNDAY BRUNCH: Ottawa Citizen reporter Juliet O'Neill's work was recently interrupted by the RCMP in their search of her home for allegedly leaked documents. Come hear what O'Neill has to say and what she has learned about keeping her sources safe from the prying eyes of government and the police.