“The need for quality and accurate reporting will never go away,” says Lillian Roy, BA 22 | Photo credit: Bell Media
The morning after police used tear gas on protesters at McGill University, Lillian Roy, BA 22, was reliving a moment of reporting triumph. The Montreal Gazette’s rookie news editor says her team “nailed” the story.
The Gazette journalists were some of the first on the scene, which meant the paper was one of the first outlets to break the news.
“That felt really good, and it keeps me going,” says Roy.
Reporting stories first and well is what’s kept the Concordia journalism grad going for a few years now.
Before joining the English daily in March, Roy spent four years as a reporter with CTV News Montreal, where she wrote about everything from COVID-19 vaccines to Canadiens goalie Carey Price’s stance on firearms regulation.
Now, she’s relishing her new role as an editor at The Gazette.
“It was a grind to file five or six stories a week [at CTV],” she admits. “Super great for developing your instincts and honing your skills as a writer and a reporter, but when this Gazette opportunity was presented to me, I just thought, ‘How cool would it be to now take a step back and get some experience with the back end of journalism?’”
Five months later, the new role has also given Roy a fresh perspective on the future of news. A bit of skepticism comes with the territory, but overall, her take is hopeful.
The short of it: “The need for quality and accurate reporting will never go away.”
A knack for journalism
Roy hasn’t always had such a passion for journalism. In fact, growing up in Fort McMurray, Alberta, reporting never interested her “in the slightest,” she says.
But that started to change after she dropped out of university in Vancouver and found herself working in retail.
“I had to ask myself, ‘Okay, what are you doing?’” she remembers. “And I literally wrote down all of my skills on a Post-it, and two of them were writing and talking to people.”
A few Google searches later, Roy landed on journalism and Concordia. Even if she didn’t make a career out of it, she thought, the skills she would learn would make her a way better communicator.
Looking back at her time at Concordia, Roy says the journalism program was huge for developing a wide range of practical skills — from properly using audio equipment to writing more efficiently to learning the intricacies of Canadian Press style and fact-checking from professors Wayne Larsen and Elyse Amend.
But it was when Roy joined the staff of The Concordian that the call to a career in journalism came loud and clear. “That’s where the gears really started to turn,” she says.
She started as an assistant life editor with the student-run weekly. A year later, she was editor-in-chief.
“In my opinion, that was the best way to learn because it’s a sample of what it’s actually like,” says Roy. “You’re collaborating with people and making decisions together and, honestly, making mistakes together, which is really helpful.”
Print isn’t dead
Now at The Gazette, Roy is still learning.
She was a web reporter at CTV, so the digital side of journalism wasn’t completely foreign to her. But as a news editor, she is going much deeper on all things SEO, engagement, social media and the looming behemoth that is AI.
Print isn’t dead, though, she says.
“Print is never going to be what it used to be, but the skills you learn in print are the foundation for what we do in digital journalism just as they were the foundation when radio and TV became things. It will always be at the core of journalism.”
Real journalism isn’t dead either, says Roy, despite the proliferation of “alternative” news sources and the barrage of harassment that journalists face online and off.
“Obviously in Canada with the Meta blockage, it sort of feels like the cards are stacked against journalists who are just trying to get accurate and timely information out to the public,” she says. “But there will always be a demand for quality reporting, and we will find a way to meet that demand one way or another.”