As the final exam in the SOJ’s first-ever Arts and Culture Journalism class, 14 students collaborated to produce Junos by Journos, a site dedicated to live coverage of the 2012 Canadian music awards show. Beyond the initial assignment by Canwest Visiting Professors Diane Nottle and Steve Pratt, the coverage was devised entirely by the students. For six weeks, they met regularly outside class to strategize their assignments before, during and after Juno night. The website went live two weeks in advance with features, Q&A’s, quizzes and other Juno previews. On the afternoon of April 1, the class convened in the journalism school’s newsroom to produce a red carpet photo gallery, report the awards as they unfolded, review the evening’s performances and engage the audience through social media.
Arts and Culture Journalism gave first- and second-year students a chance to apply the lessons of Integrated Journalism to a specialty beat using a variety of platforms. From news and feature assignments, they extended their skills to opinion pieces, producing blogs and reviews of the cultural events they were required to attend weekly. In the process, they often ranged well beyond traditional definitions of “the arts.”
