Tips for budding political journalists going into Parliament Hill

With newspapers in Canada falling in a steady decline, and jobs being cut in newsrooms across the country, it’s not only harder for journalists to find jobs, it’s harder for them to send a message to the public.

Peter Schiefke, Parliamentary Secretary to Justin Trudeau, joined a class of first-year journalism students at Durham College over Skype to discuss the media in Canada.

What role does the media play on Canadian democracy?

I would say that journalists play as an integral role in a healthy democracy. I think that it’s just as important to have a strong and free media and allow for journalists to be able to practice what they practice, as it is to have the senators, the Members of Parliament, and the justices. They play an integral role in ensuring that Members of Parliament, such as myself, all elected officials, anybody who’s appointed, to serve a role in government are held accountable for the actions that they take or don’t take, whether they deliver on promises that we’ve made to Canadians and also to ensure that we’re following the very laws that we helped put in place. I’d like to add on that that I think particularly in 2016, the importance of a free and strong media, and the ability for journalists to do their jobs freely is even more so important.

What do you think the media can do to do a better job informing Canadians, and doing a better job of describing our democracy and the government itself?

I think one of the things that we’re seeing now is that, in order to particularly get the younger generation involved in politics, there has to be some kind of entertainment aspect to it. You know, studies will show that, more people are getting their news now from “The Daily Show” in the United States, for example, than the six o’clock news. And I can tell you — you know, I’m only 37 years old, but when I was in my teens and in my twenties, the vast majority of the news that I received was from watching that six o’clock news for, you know, half an hour and it was all condensed into one. They were pretty reliable news sources, and you build kinda that trust between you and them, and nothing was really as sensationalized as it is now, and you’re seeing more and more now that is, you know, the viewership of that type of media is diminishing.

So we need to make government exciting, we need to make our stories entertaining and try to grab a larger audience?

I think so.

That would be my personal belief. I think that just caters to one demographic. I think that journalism now has and the media in general, I think, have this challenge of really trying to cater to the different ways that people receive their news. And, you know, I can give you personal experience as a Member of Parliament. We have to sit around the table, and it’s no longer as easy as saying, “Let’s take out an ad in the paper to get our message across,” or let something, you know, “Let’s get something out, in the mail and send out, messages, by mail to 80,000 households in my riding of Vaudreuil — Soulanges.” Um, it’s, we’re sitting down now saying, “Okay. We’re gonna be able to reach 20 percent of the population through ads in the paper. We’re gonna be able to receive another 10 percent of those that actually will read what we’re sending them in the mail and not toss it away, throw it in the recycle bin. We’re able to reach another 40 percent who are going to, you know, read what we wanna send them on Facebook, for example.

Would you stress using multiple platforms, social media, Twitter, Facebook as well?

I would suggest using doing all of those, and, you know, having the ability to be able to do that on your own. Understanding how to best use all the social media platforms that exist, which is a challenge for anyone. You know, understanding how now to reach out to people still with print media, understanding which demographics will receive that piece of information. I think that’s key, and also understanding the limited — everybody has limited resources, whether you’re a Member of Parliament or even, you know, media companies that are trying to reach out to people. So it’s understanding that if you’re trying to get a message out to a certain demographic, how can you best spend the limited resources that we have to reach that specific demographic. And so if you’re trying to reach out to seniors, for example, the studies will show you that, still, the majority of seniors will receive their information via print media, so they’re the ones that will read most of the written material that I send out. The younger that you get, the more they’re gonna be more geared towards social media, so if you have a message that is particularly geared towards the younger generation, then you wanna make sure that you’re using platforms that are gonna reach out to them. And as I said, it’s incredibly challenging, but it’s something that’s necessary. You have to be able to do that on multiple levels.

What advice can you give to young students who might want to get into political journalism? What’s changed since the past ten years in the emergence of social media?

I think the speed has changed. You know, if, say 20 years ago, you wanted to get news out, it was always, you know, one time per day. It was either on six o’clock news or it’s going to be in the newspaper the day after, or it was, you know, some big news that had to be conveyed, it was a special edition that went out. Nowadays, you have to be ready to report something on the spot, to be able to get that sound bite, to be able to get that message out as quickly as humanly possible, to get the scoop to people — the new definition of a scoop is really to get it out in the first 30 seconds of it happening, as opposed to, you know, the scoop was, you got it in the next day’s paper. So, I think the best advice would be that you have to really train yourself and get yourself ready for the high-speed pace of journalism that exists now.

So what sort of skills and competencies do you think is required to work in Parliament Hill as a journalist?

Flexibility is key, and I think that, you know, segueing into my job as Parliamentary Secretary, as Member of Parliament as well, I think that flexibility is key, and the understanding that nothing is ever perfect. It doesn’t exist. If you’re looking for perfection, A, you’re gonna miss that scoop, and being able to, to get that out. You’re not always gonna get the best video that you want because there are, you know, a hundred journalists that are trying to stick their microphones — and now their, their phones and their recording trails in the face of whichever Member of Parliament, Minister, or even the Prime Minister. It’s really about being flexible, about, understanding you’re probably not gonna get what you were looking for in terms of perfection, and being okay with that. Just being perseverant, I think. It’s understanding that you need to be there longer than anyone else if you wanna be better than anyone else.

Well, Peter… I’d like to thank you for doing this interview.

Honestly, it was a pleasure for me to do it, and I want to conclude by wishing you all the best in your studies and your future careers, and, I really hope to see some of you on the Hill one day. It’s quite something to be up here, on a daily basis, and, I think the journalists on the Hill would be the first to say that, it’s never boring working on the Hill. So if you get a chance to come up here and find some kind of opportunity to do so, I suggest you do so, and I look forward to seeing you here soon.