Inclusive Journalism Microcredential - Cohort #1

Completed: March 16, 2023 – May 11, 2023

The debut cohort of the Inclusive Journalism Microcredential saw leading journalists turn instructors, sharing their insights and experience in making Canadian newsrooms more inclusive.

Cohort #1 Participants: 10 editors – reporters from Village Media titles and 10 members of the NCM Collective.

Other Cohorts:

Inclusive Journalism Microcredential – Cohort #2 (Oct. 5, 2023 – Nov. 30, 2023)
Inclusive Journalism Microcredential – Cohort #3 (February 8, 2024 – March 28, 2024)

For more details on the microcredential and future cohorts, visit this link: Inclusive Journalism Microcredential. )

Below are the guest speakers who led the sessions in Cohort #1.

Kathy English is a veteran journalist and Chair, Canadian Journalism Foundation Board that fosters diversity in Canadian newsrooms through its Indigenous and Black Journalist Fellowship programs. In her last role, she was responsible to create bias-free content and policies for inclusivity across brands of Dotdash Merdith – America’s largest digital and print publisher. Between 2007 and 2020, Kathy served as the public editor of The Toronto Star. In 2020, she was a journalism fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, where she produced a research paper on the potential role of the public editor in holding newsrooms to account for diversity, equity and inclusion imperatives.

**Amar Sodhi** is the News Director responsible for OMNI news, CityNews operations in Edmonton, Montreal, Winnipeg and the Parliamentary Bureau. He also leads Inclusion and Diversity initiatives for all news platforms. Over the last two years, CityNews has created a specialized diversity training program focused specifically for journalists and created an inclusive coverage guide, which provides editorial guidelines for covering equity-deserving groups; a national diverse experts list to improve representation of BIPOC voices and content audits to track and measure performance in covering diversity related content.

**Nazim Baksh** has been producing news, feature reports and investigative documentaries for multiple CBC platforms from May 1990 to present. He has covered a range of subjects but has distinguished himself by cultivating a niche of his own in the national security space. Nazim has produced stories pertaining to violent religious extremism and right-wing ideologically motivated hate and racism, and more recently, the plight of international Indian students in Canada who were “Sold a Lie,” a Fifth Estate episode that aired on September 29, 2022. As an unofficial CBC resident “expert” on Islam, Muslims and the Middle East, Nazim has become adept at informing story selection and production so as to avoid bias, stereotypes and racism.

**Eden Fineday** is a nehiyaw iskwew (Cree woman) from the Sweetgrass First Nation in Treaty 6 Territory and the publisher at IndigiNews. She writes the weekly newsletter for subscribers and a regular column on www.indiginews.com. She endeavours to be a good relation as an uninvited guest on the territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqeum), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Peoples.

**Cara Sabatini** is the director of dispute resolution. She received a certificate in alternative dispute resolution from York University, and completed a program in data journalism from the University of King’s.

**Brent Jolly** is the managing director of the National NewsMedia Council of Canada (NNC). Brent worked as a journalist with a variety of news outlets as both a writer and editor. In addition to his work with the NNC, Brent also serves the national president of the Canadian Association of Journalists. He is a co-author of the study ‘Good News, Bad News, a snapshot of conditions at small market newspapers in Canada’.

**Rita Trichur** is an award-winning journalist. Her title is senior business writer and columnist with The Globe and Mail. In her current role, she writes about a variety of business issues, including corporate Canada’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. She previously served as the newspaper’s Financial Services Editor. Rita has also worked for The Wall Street Journal, the Toronto Star, the Canadian Press and the Ottawa Sun.

**Donovan Vincent** is the Star’s Public Editor. Formerly a reporter on the housing beat, Donovan has extensive experience covering municipal politics, having worked for several years out of the Toronto Star’s city hall bureau during then-mayor David Miller’s time in office. Donovan has also covered crime and justice issues for the paper as well as health and education and has written numerous long form features on a variety of topics. He studied journalism at Ryerson University earning a degree in the school’s graduate journalism program.

**Andree Lau** oversees CBC News Network, CBCNews.ca, CBC News App, and the CBC News Explore FAST channel. She was editor-in-chief of HuffPost Canada, where she helped build one of the country’s most diverse and young newsrooms. She’s worked as a TV reporter, video journalist, online writer, producer, lineup editor, and radio food columnist in nine CBC newsrooms across Canada. Andree was born and raised in Vancouver, B.C. where her parents ran a Chinese-language radio station.

**Paul Bucci** is an award-winning journalist and editor who has worked in senior management positions in some of Canada’s largest media companies, including Postmedia, Black Press Media and Brunswick News. Accomplishments at Postmedia included establishing Tai Yang Bao, a Chinese-language online news publication and Vancouver Desi, a publication for South Asian audiences. A former legislature journalist with reporting stints in Somalia and Bosnia, Bucci has been an editor and strategist with New Canadian Media since 2022.

Linked below are some stories produced by participants in line with concepts taught in this microcredential:

Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot expands, paving the way for skilled refugees to find employment and settle in Canada – Tazeen Inam and Brenda Jefferies
Experts urge policy change to get internationally trained nurses on the job faster in Ontario – Tazeen Inam and Brenda Jefferies
New Canadian babies born via birth tourism less than one per cent of all births – Santana Bellantoni
Flood our educational system with the beauty, joy, and brilliance of Indigenous knowledge and contributions, says education leader – Minu Mathew and Amanda Rabski-McColl
‘Star Guy’ and NASA Helping Restore the Sense of Identity in Indigenous Youth – Minu Mathew
Canada lacks research, policy protections for temporary foreign workers, according to U of G researchers – Talyor Pace

Some feedback:

“This course made me think about the kinds of stories we aren’t doing, and the voices that can be too easily overlooked. This course gave me an insight I didn’t have before into how to change that.” – Michael Purvis, Managing Editor, Village Media

“The diversity of speakers was the best part! Often in the quest for diversity there is a danger of tokenism. But in this case it was clear that the speakers were the best in their field/beat.” – Minu Mathew, New Canadian Media

Completed: March 16, 2023 – May 11, 2023

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