Media Releases

Canadian Journalism Foundation and Rotman School of Management revamp media management executive education program

August 17, 2010

TORONTO, ON — Vet­er­an media pro­fes­sion­als and U.S.-based guest pan­elists will aug­ment this year’s Media Man­age­ment Exec­u­tive Edu­ca­tion Pro­gram (MMEEP), an inten­sive three-day pro­gram tai­lored to meet the needs of Canada’s media man­agers, joint­ly pro­duced by the Cana­di­an Jour­nal­ism Foun­da­tion (CJF) and the Rot­man School of Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to.

Richard Sik­los, a Los Ange­les-based colum­nist, reporter and for­mer edi­tor-at-large at For­tune mag­a­zine; Chrys­tia Free­land, the glob­al edi­tor-at-large at Thom­son Reuters; and Jonathan Good­man, a senior part­ner of the Mon­i­tor Group busi­ness con­sult­ing firm, will form a guest pan­el to dis­cuss crit­i­cal issues fac­ing the indus­try. Addi­tion­al guest speak­ers will be announced in the com­ing weeks.

Some of Canada’s most senior media pro­fes­sion­als, includ­ing atten­dees of last year’s pro­gram, will act as “experts in res­i­dence” and pro­vide insight into how lessons learned can be applied in the work­place. Also new this year, reg­is­trants are encour­aged to sub­mit their own man­age­ment issues ahead of time, pro­vid­ing liv­ing case stud­ies for fac­ul­ty and par­tic­i­pants to exam­ine togeth­er.

The first pro­gram of its kind in Cana­da, the 2009 MMEEP drew par­tic­i­pants from across the coun­try and housed them at the Bank of Mon­tre­al’s Insti­tute for Learn­ing in Toron­to, a state-of-the-art train­ing facil­i­ty and res­i­dence. By the end of the three-day peri­od, par­tic­i­pants had not only become bet­ter acquaint­ed with core busi­ness con­cepts such as finance and oper­a­tions; they had made valu­able allies with­in their indus­try.

Scott White, edi­tor-in-chief of The Cana­di­an Press, found the expe­ri­ence to be incred­i­bly reward­ing.

“Giv­en the tumul­tuous changes hap­pen­ing in our busi­ness, news­room man­agers need to be smarter and more inno­v­a­tive when decid­ing where we’re going and how we’ll get there,” he said. “The stuff you learn here isn’t the usu­al things you take away from an indus­try con­ven­tion. This is real knowl­edge by real experts, in a set­ting that is chal­leng­ing and even fun. There is no oth­er jour­nal­ism train­ing course like it in Cana­da.”

This year’s pro­gram will be held again at the Insti­tute for Learn­ing, from Octo­ber 15–17. The fee is $3,500, which includes tuition, res­i­den­tial fees, all pro­gram mate­ri­als, sup­plies and most class-day meals. The reg­is­tra­tion dead­line is Sep­tem­ber 30, 2010.

For more infor­ma­tion and to reg­is­ter, vis­it http://rotmanexecutive.com/mmeep.

About the Media Man­age­ment Exec­u­tive Edu­ca­tion Pro­gram (MMEEP)

The MMEEP was launched in 2009 after John Mac­far­lane, edi­tor of The Wal­rus and chair of the CJF’s board of direc­tors, approached the Rot­man School with the idea of devel­op­ing a pro­gram tar­get­ed to media man­agers. He had observed that jour­nal­ists are often pro­mot­ed to man­age­r­i­al posi­tions with­out sub­stan­tial busi­ness train­ing and edu­ca­tion. The Rot­man School is inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized for its inno­va­tion approach to busi­ness edu­ca­tion and is a leader in the design and deliv­ery of exec­u­tive pro­grams tai­lored to the unique needs of spe­cif­ic indus­tries. The MMEEP is intend­ed for news media exec­u­tives with a min­i­mum of 8 to 10 years of expe­ri­ence work­ing in print, broad­cast and online out­lets who need to man­age across depart­ments or media plat­forms. It pro­vides invalu­able learn­ing in core busi­ness con­cepts includ­ing lead­er­ship, strat­e­gy, finance, oper­a­tions, nego­ti­a­tion and deci­sion-mak­ing. The fac­ul­ty is aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly world renowned and ground­ed in real-world exper­tise.

The MMEEP takes place at the Bank of Mon­tre­al’s Insti­tute for Learn­ing (IFL) at 3550 Phar­ma­cy Avenue in Toron­to. IFL is a pur­pose built train­ing facil­i­ty with class­rooms, break-out rooms, role play rooms and oth­er state-of-the-art facil­i­ties. It also has a res­i­den­tial wing where there are sin­gle occu­pan­cy rooms avail­able for par­tic­i­pants along with a gym, swim­ming pool, com­fort­able lounges and numer­ous din­ing and study areas. IFL offers an ide­al atmos­phere for peer group learn­ing and infor­mal inter­ac­tion along with all the ben­e­fits of hav­ing accom­mo­da­tions with­in the same area.

About the Cana­di­an Jour­nal­ism Foun­da­tion

The Cana­di­an Jour­nal­ism Foun­da­tion (CJF) is a not-for-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that pro­motes excel­lence in jour­nal­ism by cel­e­brat­ing out­stand­ing jour­nal­is­tic achieve­ment through an annu­al awards pro­gram; by oper­at­ing jour­nal­ism web­sites, J‑Source.ca (Eng­lish) and ProjetJ.ca (French), in coop­er­a­tion with the coun­try’s lead­ing jour­nal­ism schools; and by orga­niz­ing events that facil­i­tate dia­logue among jour­nal­ists, busi­ness peo­ple, politi­cians, gov­ern­ment offi­cials and aca­d­e­mics about the role of the media in Cana­di­an soci­ety.

About the Rot­man School of Man­age­ment

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to is redesign­ing busi­ness edu­ca­tion for the 21st cen­tu­ry with a cur­ricu­lum based on Inte­gra­tive Think­ing. Locat­ed in the world’s most diverse city, the Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables the design of cre­ative busi­ness solu­tions. The School is cur­rent­ly rais­ing $200 mil­lion to ensure Cana­da has the world-class busi­ness school it deserves.

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For more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact:

Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Voice: (416) 946‑3818
E‑mail: mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca