The Loyalist e-journalism program

I don't know that I've been much help so far, but I'm on the advisory board for a new and, I think, exciting e-journalism program at Loyalist College in Belleville, Ont. Rob Washburn is the driving force behind this initiative. I met Rob very early in my career. He was at the Cobourg Daily Star Belleville Intelligencer and I was at the Orillia Packet & Times as the city hall reporter. Rob was really into spreadsheet and database software, convinced that these software tools could be put to good use by reporters to crack open data and unearth new and exciting stories. He organized a workshop at Loyalist and brought in some pioneers of what we would call computer-assisted reporting or CAR from the U.S. Rob's initiative got me fired up about using these tools and I've been a big fan of using the spreadsheet as much as the word processor in my daily reportage ever since.
Rob is still writing and reporting but, today, he is at Loyalist teaching new generations of journalists. The e-journalism program he's developing will be — he and and his advisory board hope — a kind of sandbox for journalists old and new to experiment with new methods of newsgathering and storytelling. It's called e-journalism because it meshes traditional journalism skills and techniques with some new electronic opportunities — everything from blogs to streaming audio and video to Flash content.
I'm happy to report that Samantha Israel, a Ryerson University student, visited Rob at Loyalist and had good things to say about Rob and the program. Samantha (when she isn't saying absolutely silly things about me) is putting together a piece for the Ryerson Review about blogging and journalism in Canada. If you read the blog she's got going as part of her homework for that subject, I'm sure you'll be able to spot some writing which sounds like it's just about to ready to hop into a magazine piece.