Goodbye Jim Babbage
I knew something was up when digital imaging and photography professor Jim Babbage walked into the staff meeting last Friday at the CCC. Sure he was still wearing one of his bright red Hawaiian shirts. And shoes with no socks.
But he looked different. He was minus the trademark beard. Wow, I thought – something must have changed in his life. And indeed, it will change in the lives of many journalism students next year.
 |
| Jim Babbage without his beard! |
 |
| With beard, before! |
After 21 years at the helm of the photojournalism courses at Centennial College, and elsewhere, Jim has accepted a full time job with Adobe.
It is a logical step because he has been writing how-to text books for Adobe and training countless people how to use Adobe’s Creative Suite software. Now he will work for Adobe’s education branch with lots of travel involved, but he won’t be in the classrooms of Centennial anymore.
Yes there were a few teary moments when he made the announcement. (We know you had to love what you did here, Jim, because you stayed for two decades of dedication teaching as a part time instructor, always hoping the College would create some more full time faculty positions, which never happened.)
Hello UTSC journalism students
For the first time since the University of Toronto and Centennial College teamed up to provide a joint journalism program, incoming students who will attend Centennial in the fall of 2011 paid a visit to the Centre for Creative Communications Thursday, to see first hand where they will be spending the next 18 months. Coordinator Ted Fairhurst welcomed the group of eager students to the newsroom at the East York campus at Danforth and Pape. You guys are a talented bunch, with your own radio shows on Fusion, the UTSC campus radio station, and editor of the Varsity, Dylan Robertson , who has been nominated for one of the student awards by the Canadian Association of Journalists.
Other students want to go into music journalism, or be a human rights reporter, or politics, or sports. Looking forward to having you with us in September!
Return of the Jedi:
 |
| Steve Cogan, Natalie Samson, Tara Losinski, Alicia Baird, Lindy Oughtred, Courtney Kraik, Laura Granda, Meegan Scanlon, Meri Perra (not shown Dan Heyman, Chris Higgins, Nastasha Alli) |
A dozen graduating students from the three year and fast track journalism programs met in room 149 last week to brief Lindy Oughtred and Steve Cogan about their experiences working on internships from January to April, as required to complete the credits for graduation. It was so exciting to hear all their stories from inside the newsrooms of Toronto’s journalism giants including magazines like “Today’s Parent” and “House and Home”. And to hear where our grads are being hired after their internships.
Chris Higgins will be spending the next six months reporting at the Slave River Journal in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories. The paper is an award winning small circulation weekly serving Northern Alberta and the NWT.
Tara Losinski has been at House and Home where she has been offered a contract position with the magazine run by designer Lynda Reeves.
Courtney Kraik was a digital intern at Canadian Family, (read one of her articles about 20 books for toddlers) where she didn’t take lunch breaks and was the hardest working intern they have ever had.
Laura Grande was at Today’s Parent and spent her internship doing the morning blog and Twitter/Facebook content and will continue to do this 3 days per week there. She will be interviewing Theo Fleury for the September issue. During the election campaign, she used social media to get all 5 political parties to send their platforms to Today’s Parent on behalf of Mom the Vote.
Dan Heyman is now a staff writer at Carpages.ca, where he uses Final Cut Pro to edit the video reports he produces about car test drives.
Nastasha Alli worked at the Canadian Living website during her internship and she has now been hired two days per week there. She edit pictures, uploads links, makes powerpoints, and does interviews such as one she did with cookbook author Trish Magwood (In My Mother’s Kitchen) at the author’s Rosedale home.
Natalie Samson interned at Quill and Quire where she embraced her inner book nerd.
UTSC grad Brad Featherstone interned at Kelly Mason Productions, where they make web commercials and content for clients including Apple, and has now been hired (it’s even on their website!) Watch his video here:
Dancing with the Stars
Graduate Phil Villeneuve, who writes for Chart, saw a You Tube video of himself dancing to Kylie Minogue’s music on the subway, go viral. So much so, that connections at EMI music arranged for the pop star to see the video, and apparently she loved it so much, she invited Phil to Montreal last month to spend some time chilling with her at her recent concert! Now Ke$ha has called him, to make a dance video to one of her tunes!
Thank you, Ellin! I will truly miss the staff, faculty and students at Centennial.
My personal site and blog are live at http://www.jimbabbage.ca. Feel free to drop by.
It was very informative and settling to be able to see the newsroom before classes in Sept. You guys were so nice and pleasant to us, we are looking forward to getting to hands on stuff and working with such awesome people. Thanks for the juice and cookies and swaggy shirts you made us all feel very welcome.
Georgia