School of Journalism partners with University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health on Media Day

Master of Journalism students put their skills into practice during their Media Day, partnering with students from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. The annual Media Day focuses on media training, allowing Journalism students to practice interviewing to help prepare them for media appearances they may encounter in their careers. This year, Journalism professors Janice Neil and Adrian Ma coordinated the event. 

Media Day is an entirely comprehensive experience, complete with background research, pre-interviews, radio segments, and TV interviews to finish off the day. Each Public Health resident is partnered with a Journalism student, and each pair spends the day together learning the ins and outs of interviewing and being interviewed. 

“The Media Day exercise gives journalism students the rare opportunity to get constructive feedback from the people they interview as well as journalism faculty and public health faculty. It helps students learn about the art of interviewing,” Neil said. “It also introduces them to the next generation of public health professionals/doctors, to learn about the crucial role of public health communications, how they think about shaping their messages to land on a public that needs to know, for instance, about measles.”

Honing essential skills

For students in the Master of Journalism program, learning how to prepare for and conduct interviews is a skill that they learn early on. For many graduate students, this program is their first time trying their hand at interviewing, specifically in a broadcast setting. First-year graduate student Alexa Difrancesco says that Media Day challenged her to take ownership of her interviews and ensure her interviewee feels comfortable; an essential aspect of being a journalist.

“It's been really challenging to figure out how we can put our own personal spin on those questions and how we can make our interview subjects familiar and comfortable in the setting because it's only us and them in this four-minute interview,” she said. “We're just trying to get the most thorough answers out of them and make them feel comfortable in this space. This exercise definitely helped my public speaking and helped me think on the fly.”

First-year graduate student Kiera Osborne said this experience helped both her and her partner from Public Health get more accustomed to the process. “I think this experience is really about us learning from each other because we both don’t have a ton of experience in interviewing or being interviewed,” she said. 

Bridging the classroom with the industry 

Getting feedback on interviews in a more practical exercise was the most beneficial part of the experience for first-year graduate student Andrew Roberts. He says that getting out of traditional classroom learning helped him envision how life would be as a working journalist conducting real interviews with professionals. 

“It’s good to get out of the classroom and apply the skills we learn in our courses. Media Day is a really great opportunity to experience what life will be like as a working journalist in the real world,” said Roberts. “Even if you’re not interested in going into broadcasting, as a journalist you never know when you’ll be called into a scenario when you have to conduct an interview with a professional from another field.”

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