As a student journalist hunting for my first job, itโs just a teensy bit stressful that I have to compete with the thousands of senior reporters with decades of experience who were just laid off.
Being a student journalist makes me a lot less motivated to write essays for classes.
I'll definitely spend more time on an article that 5,000 people will read than an essay that an underpaid TA will spend 30 seconds skimming.
We're thrilled to welcome
@RhythmSachdeva
&
@maeveellis_
as the latest IJB/Unifor summer interns. Funded by
@UniforTheUnion
, they'll spend four months delving into public-interest investigations, honing their skills under IJB staff guidance. Read more:
โ23 years ago, U of T committed to ethical working conditions for its merchandise. Has this promise since unravelled?โ
My months-long
#investigation
into
@UofT
โs labour standards for their merchandise is up on
@TheVarsity
. Its biggest findings below: +
imo generative ai will liberate/force the journalism industry to increase the quality of articles. there is no longer any point in outlets pumping out low-quality content since we will never be able to compete with the speed of chatgpt. Writers' only competitive edge is quality.
I was on
@CP24
to discuss the ongoing issue of voyeurism at
#UofT
. I'd like to thank
@BakariSavage
for taking the time to speak with me during my first time on live tv.
I havenโt seen a single American media person tweet about the Canadian news layoffs. Itโs just an eeiry reminder that we basically donโt exist to the country weโre consumed by.
@VeryBadLlama
I've seen on Reddit that people sometimes read out these AI obituaries in low-effort youtube videos for clicks from confused mourning family members.
Very trippy to see Google News recommend one of my articles to myself. But very cool that
@TheVarsity
is able to compete against non-student-journalism outlets!
Five years after Health Canada lowered the maximum acceptable lead levels in drinking water to five parts per billion, Ontario continues to allow twice the amount of lead in the province's drinking water.
Image source: Wikimedia Commons and Pexels
#Ontario
#Canada
#cdnpolitics
At a time when the CDN media sector faces job cuts, news deserts and struggle for supports to save local news, Unifor is proud to fund theย Investigative Journalism Bureau at the
@UofT
& welcomes the work of its two interns in this yearโs summer program.
@artcrimeprof
As someone who's reached out to eight academics this week alone, thank you for making this. So far, I've tried not to be too specific on purpose, out of wanting to have enough to talk about, but I get that being more detailed shows a better understanding of their work/the topic.
I have just heard the exciting news that one of my articles โ "Experts, advocates warn against blaming international students for the housing crisis" โ was
@TheVarsity
's most-read piece in September.
#cdnpoli
#HousingCrisis
#canada
A thread: 1/7
A semi-viral post on my school's reddit page is publically shaming a *specific* minimum-wage worker from a campus food place.
Imagine going through a rough time in your life and seeing dozens of preppy students joking about your job performance.
Why are so many young people blocked from attending medical school when there's currently a doctor shortage?
My article for
@TheVarsity
aims to answer why. (1/8)
#cdnpoli
#ontpoli
.
I'm so, so proud of
@TheVarsity
for producing our first-ever mini-documentary!
Really fun reporting on camera along with
@Jambull26
. Many thanks to Genevieve Sugrue for producing it!
On May 27,
#UofT
announced that it's seeking an injunction from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to end its ongoing student encampment.
The Varsity presents the inside story behind the court's ruling.
#Gaza
#cdnpolitics
My last piece was covering a sports day hosted by
@HartHouse
and
@The519
, which had friendly competition for LGBTQ+ refugees from Africa.
โSports brings everybody together,โ said one participant who had fled from Kenya.
A friend wants me to work on his indie film set for free a couple days this summer. Is there a role i can take on the set that would transfer to journalism?
@winkyj
if we had more affordable housing in dt toronto then people wouldn't need to be commuting with their bikes in the first place and could just live there
On August 29, U of T announced that it would return a controversial donation from Amazon of approximately $600,000 that the university did not originally disclose to the public.
Read more below! ๐๐ผ
Unfortunately, we've made the difficult decision that when Bill C-18 takes effect, we will remove Canadian news links from our Search, News and Discover products.
Wrote a piece for
@UofT_ijb
that detailed the history behind Dead Wrong, an award-winning investigation into the funeral home industry that was supported by the IJB network.
Not to feed into anyoneโs delulu about a Twitter crush but my guy friend just told me he makes tweets specifically to get this one girlโs attention.
Vancouver people REALLY like to sit on busses to the point where theyโll jam between two strangers. In Toronto people stand for hours on shaky highway terrains before they have to sit next to others.
So
@UofT
held a press conference which wasnโt open to their own campus media?!
Reporters at
@TheVarsity
have been doing an amazing job covering the encampment (and have a track record of excellent campus coverage)
This disrespect to student media is despicable.
@CanUniPress
As the person running
@TheVarsity
's Twitter account, I'm trying a new approach of posting more short-form video.
Does anyone have any thoughts or experiences with managing a news outlet's Twitter?
With
@UofT
online again, the student body will rely on social media, specifically the schoolโs
#Reddit
page, r/UofT, for any sense of community. Whether the platform can live up to the challenge remains to be seen. My latest for
@TheVarsity
:
โThe U of T subreddit is essentially the only U of T-specific place where people can congregate online,โ Jane*, a member of the subredditโs moderating team, told The Varsity.
Can it build community?
Has anyone else found that LinkedIn is oddly effective for getting in touch with people for stories? Like even better than email? Idk maybe that's just the case for other uni students.
@RM_Transit
I bike there everyday and I wish that kings college circle was car free (especially as there are no sidewalks). I also with St. George st was pedestrian-only bc itโs apocalyptic how squished everyone is between classes.
Budding Journalists: You don't need to take down an institution to make a difference in the lives of readers. Impact comes in all sizes. Don't underestimate the influence a short feature, or a 600-word news story, or a well-done Q.& A. or even a brief, can have on someone's life.
If the government actually wanted them to succeed it would let them move here with on a normal status and with a path to citizenship, and not just as an underclass of second class citizens that does the jobs that Canadians donโt want to.
Marc Miller แ แญแซแแงแ แแธแแงแคแแจแฃ
We need to welcome temporary residents at a sustainable pace, so they can succeed. As such, we are targeting a reduction of temporary residents to 5% of Canadaโs population over the next three years, meaning an overall 19% reduction within the temporary resident population.
I donโt think thereโs enough anger and attention that the taliban have put tens of millions of women and girls have been forced into a real life hands maid tale
Travelling across Canada from Toronto to Edmonton = 4 hours.
Travelling just from the Edmonton airport to downtown = 2 hours.
So far this public transit is not it.
Looking to speak with
#UofT
international students who received their visas to enter Canada after the start of the school year, or not at all. DM me or reach me at maeveellis
@thevarsity
.ca.
#journorequest
My latest for
@TheVarsity
:
โA different level of painโ:
#UofT
and
#TMU
students hold vigil for
#Gaza
โs casualties
Photos commemorated child victims of the Israeli governmentโs bombings and speakers include someone who said she's lost 30 family members.
It's funny that the same online metrics that judge the financial viability for tiny regional newspapers, are the same as those for giant internet click-bait farms that repost millions of videos of water balloons blowing up above people's heads.
@uoftsu
is considering changing its
mental health plan to cover more than 15 therapy sessions.
I wrote about this and other meeting points for
@TheVarsity
Bc of continued student pressure & restless organizing from those involved in
@occupyuoft
& the broader Palestinian liberation movement at
@UofT
, we have secured a meeting tomorrow at 3PM w/
@UofT
Pres Gertler to begin addressing our demands. As such, we are ending our occupaiton
I had a lot of fun last weekend producing and filming my first-ever TikTok news story for
@TheVarsity
. along with
@MekhiQuarshie
! Our video informed almost 3000 viewers about a small fire that occurred in
#UofT
's Sidney Smith building last week.
So far in pandemic elections, voters have been quick to re-elect governing parties out of a desire for stability. I argue in
@DecorumNow
that in a crisis itโs actually more important than in normal times to consider changing leaders.
#onpoli
#cdnpoli