4 UNBC Life

Going Over the Edge in Toronto

Monique Gendron & Tierney Watkinson
Team Members

ASH 2016, a student journalism conference, was held in Toronto from January 6 through

10, featuring many panels and some very inspirational journalists. Everything from
coding, to virtual reality in the media, to podcasting was brought forward and shown to the
student journalists from all over Canada. Namely, the journalists from UNBC’s very own Over
The Edge. Monique and Tierney, two contributors, share their experiences with us:

M: Actually, that was really weird. Referring to myself in the third person. I feel like Gollum.

T: As long as this is the friendly Monique I’m working with, I can deal with it.

M: This was really an inspirational event in my life. 1 came away having learned about
virtual reality and how it is coming into the media. I found that particularly interesting, and
I want to apply it in the future. Maybe not just in journalism, but in other fields as well.
Virtual reality videogames are a definite reality. Journalism could take me pretty far.

T: walked into this conference with a mild interest in journalism and left
Toronto seriously considering it as a career. The scale to which journalism
can operate really surprised me; I always imagined journalism as something
with little creative freedom involved. Meaning, you are given an assignment
and have to write a piece according to the wishes of your editor.

M: 1 felt like that too. I definitely never knew the extent to which a
journalist actually could do what they wanted. And I didn’t know that a
political writer could just as easily do a piece about gardening.

T: Or that a sports writer was free to write about fashion. I am absolutely intrigued by
the idea of freelancing, because I am an independent person and am liable to become
frustrated by being shoved into a single niche. Sometimes | like to write about art and
television, sometimes I write about current events, and sometimes I write cryptic poetry.
I’m considering writing a piece about my search for the elusive unicorn. Stay tuned, guys.

M: Speaking about current events, I attended a panel on sourcing from social media. I’m
definitely going to apply that in my future endeavours at Over the Edge. I’ve even started
setting up Tweetdeck to start searching for local events and news to write about, and maybe
I'll even start up with YikYak and Whisper. Best part is, I learned all this from Ishmael

Daro, a guy from Buzzfeed Canada. Who knew Buzzfeed was actually about journalism?

T: Journalism has a much broader career field than any of us realized, especially when you
consider social media. Before the conference, I had tweeted maybe five times in the past six
years. Now I’ve tweeted at least ten times. I’m moving up in the world. I’m so connected.

M: Well, I never tweeted before the
conference. You were already ahead
of me. But I definitely learned the
importance of using social media,
not only for finding stories,
but also for promoting.
(Psst, follow @
OVERtheEDGEunbc

on Twitter!)

= Colin Stark