Rally gives students experience on the ground
Two Journalism students offer their impressions on the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear:
Joëlle Pouliot
My experience covering the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington gave me good taste of the challenges that come with multi-platform journalism. I now joke that it was the Rally to Test My Sanity and/or Will to Become a Journalist.
As a group of rookie journalists from the Advanced TV class of the Journalism program at Concordia, we went to Washington with a concrete plan to shoot footage and conduct interviews. Once there we soon realized our plan was laughable, impossible to implement in a dense crowd of 200 000 people. We could barely move, and had to go on instinct to get the job done.
I was wearing two hats that day, also seeking a Quebec angle to write an article for my part-time employer, a French-language media agency. In between shooting the news show I had to take pictures, and squeeze my way through the populace to find and interview fellow Quebecers. I scribbled on a piece of cardboard and held it up: “Anyone from Quebec?”
University prepares a journalist for the outside the world the way a parachute instructor warns a student about what could happen and how to be ready for it. Real life shoves you off the plane backwards while you aren’t looking. I could not have asked for a better first hands-on experience.
Employers today are on the lookout for bilingual multi-taskers who are able to produce material for newspapers, websites, radio and television. What they really should ask is: “Ever covered a rally?”
Emily White
I entered the National Mall at 8 a.m. eager to acquire the university press pass that would give me the special access I needed to film my report. It was four hours before the rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear and despite having never brought a video camera further than the Mile End, I felt prepared.
Within minutes, it was clear that no amount of planning was going to help me and my team. Press passes were rejected, interviews fell through and technical difficulties ensued.
Yet, even as our team’s confidence was tested, one could not help but feel completely lucky for being able to be part of the more than 200 000 people at the Rally that day.
Having driven the 11 hours from Montreal, Quebec to Washington, D.C. one might expect to feel like an outsider but this could not be less true. Amidst the signs boasting U.S. politically driven messages and costumes were the Canadians who had come to show their support for their neighbours and were doing so with pride.
Attending this event as a journalism student was overwhelmingly rewarding and incomparable to anything I had ever done before. Everyone, from the man dressed as Where’s Waldo to the young adults rallying for the Coffee Party, wanted to talk to me.
Hearing so many interesting stories was surely the weekend’s highpoint, making the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear not only a learning experience but also a memorable life experience.
ConcordiaBroadcast is the news and current affairs program from the Journalism Department of Concordia.
The two following broadcasts were shot on location in Washington, D.C., on the weekend for the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear:
Related links:
• Concordia's Department of Journalism
• Department of Journalism on YouTube
• Concordia Journal article