St. Clair’s New Program To Graduate More Qualified Students

Hello time traveller!!
This article is 3672 days old.
The information listed below is likely outdated and has been preserved for archival purposes.

St. Clair College Media Convergenge student Hailey Trealout edits video footage on Avid Media Composer, a video editing soft wear each student in Media Convergence learns how to use. (Jolene Perron/windsoriteDOTca)

With newsrooms of the 21^st century demanding more from their reporters, St. Clair College has a new diploma to assist students in polishing their skills.

After completing a diploma in a related field to journalism, such as St. Clair College’s two-year converged journalism program, or by demonstrating knowledge and skills in the journalism field, students are invited to apply to Media Convergence. The program is a one-year diploma, targeted towards polishing students skills in the journalism field. It’s main goal, according to program coordinator Veronique Mandal, is to enforce the converged aspect of the young journalists.

“The very word convergence means the coming together of, in our case, all the platforms of journalism,” said Mandal. “It means students going out on assignment and being able to come back to the newsroom and writing a story for the newspaper, taking a photo, taking video for the television show, collecting audio for the radio show and being able to tweet while they’re out in the field so essentially media convergence means the coming together of all that media. It’s a tall order.”

Mandal refers to the program as a “third year” for journalism students and is pushing for it to be a mandatory year to the current journalism program. The bar of this year is set high for the journalists. There is no more teaching on the job, Mandal said, so it’s very important journalists learn all of these aspects in order for them to be more employable.

Students in Media Convergence will be able to enjoy classes that support each other in such a way that will force them to work in a constant newsroom setting each day. All of their classes relate to one another, building on their current skills and giving them a true polishing result.

“The students who go through our two year program reach a level of competency that allows them to be able to understand how the media works and to be able to manipulate the technology, to be able to write stories,” said Mandal. “The media convergence year allows them to take all of those things that they’ve set as a foundation and polish it.”

The program is currently in the midst of graduating its second year graduates and is consistently improving based on comments from their students.