Ryerson University’s venerable School of Journalism will celebrate its 60th anniversary this weekend in Toronto, with a reception Friday evening and a conference of panel sessions on Saturday.
The Friday event, called Journalism on the Rocks, will honour 12 alumni of the journalism program, including 3-time National Magazine Award winner and longtime Ryerson faculty member Don Obe. Other inductees into what the school is calling its Journalism Headliners include the late sports journalist Randy Starkman, Zarqa Nawaz, creator of the TV series Little Mosque on the Prairie, and Shelley Ambrose, co-publisher of The Walrus.
Saturday’s panel sessions will focus on Ryerson and Journalism: The Next 60 Years, featuring National Magazine Award-winning Ryerson alums Julia Belluz and Elizabeth Renzetti, as well as a number of other remarkable journalists.
It would be almost impossible to calculate how many Ryerson alumni and faculty have won National Magazine Awards or edited NMA-winning stories, but there’s no doubt the program has had a deep and meaninful impact on the Canadian magazine industry. Its highly regarded, student-run Ryerson Review of Journalism has won 6 National Magazine Awards from 30 nominations since it was founded in 1984.
Congratulations Ryerson School of Journalism on 60 great years and many more to come.
