It may be the most fun anyone has ever had taking a final exam.
This Sunday, 14 students in the Arts and Culture Journalism class will be posting live coverage of the Juno Awards on the website they created, Junos by Journos. From the first celebrities on the red carpet to the last tearful acceptance speech and beyond, they’ll be producing news, reviews, photo galleries, performance blogs, live chats and social media from the J-school’s newsroom – all as part of their final exam.
In fact, they’ve already started, posting features, reviews, Q&As, quizzes and other material in the week leading up to the awards. This final may be one of the longest on record: planning, done entirely by the students, began in earnest just after reading break. For weeks they’ve been meeting regularly outside their Monday afternoon class slot to strategize, assigning themselves stories and roles.
Steve Pratt and Diane Nottle began designing the course — the journalism school’s first venture into arts and culture — by phone last summer. When they discovered that the Junos were scheduled for the night before the last class, the opportunity seemed too good to pass up. They had been hoping to do some sort of newsroom simulation; what could be better than Juno night?
Simulation quickly turned into real, live reporting. In the first half of the semester, students produced breaking news stories, features, reviews and blogs on the arts. On Sunday, in an exam that counts for 20 percent of their grade, they will test their skills in a real-time news event. Among the assignments:
- Golnaz Fakhari and Gudrun Jonsdottir will write the breaking news story, to be updated throughout the ceremony
- Laura Kane and Beth Hong will provide live chat
- Mohamed Algarf will focus on reaction to the Junos abroad
- Vinnie Yuen will be on red-carpet fashion watch
- Irina Seduvona and Suzanne Ahearne will curate the social-media conversation in photos and videos
- Julia Kalinina will focus on Twitter and live chat
- Jennifer Giesbrecht and Jordan Wade will review the performances
- Nichole Jankowski will be on general assignment, pitching in as the news demands
- Kate Adach and Sam Eifling will be steering the coverage as editors
Supervising the night’s coverage will be Professors Pratt and Nottle, who have both covered countless awards shows — Pratt at the CBC, and Nottle at The New York Times.
So why wait for CTV’s delayed west-coast broadcast on Sunday night? Look for live coverage of the Junos starting at 3 p.m. PT at junosbyjournos.com.
