Janice Neil

“So, you want to be a reporter? Here’s some advice about this racket. Don’t ever change your mind. It may not be the oldest profession, but it’s the best.”

– Ed Hutcheson, newspaper editor, Deadline U.S.A. (1952)

Janice Neil is an Associate Professor at the School of Journalism. After more than two decades working as a news reporter and producer, Janice Neil decided there is one thing better than working as a full-time journalist: teaching. She joined the Ryerson faculty in 2007, teaching television news and radio journalism for students in the Bachelor of Journalism and Master of Journalism programs. (A decade earlier, she was on the journalism faculty at Carleton University – from 1998 to 2003 – teaching broadcast journalism and professional practices.)

Her career as a reporter was mostly with CBC Radio and CBC TV in the London bureau, Toronto and Regina through the 1980s and early 1990s.

Then she went behind the scenes, as a producer: From 1993-1998, Janice was the Ottawa bureau chief and senior editor of TVOntario’s Studio 2, producing documentaries, studio discussion panels and interviews. In 1992, she created and produced a weekly program about Ontario politics (4th Reading). She moved into radio again in 2004, at CBC Radio in Toronto, as senior producer of Metro Morning and in the newsroom as an editor, writer and reader, before coming to Ryerson.

Janice has also been the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journalism Project (J-Source.ca), a national website providing information, commentary and resources related to the achievement of, and challenges to, excellence.

She appears as a commentator and gives presentations to professional and non-journalistic groups about aspects of the journalistic process such as interviewing, broadcast practices, and contemporary issues in the profession.

Janice’s academic research includes foreign news on Canadian television and, media coverage of election night. She has also immersed herself in film and prime-time TV, admiring how fictional newshounds such as Hildy Johnson, Henry Hackett and Murphy Brown risk their lives to expose the truth and save the world.