The Northern Journalism Training Initiative (NJTI) hosted an open house at Sundog Trading Post this past Tuesday. The organization is a non-profit that aims to train more Northerners and Indigenous people in the media industry.
The event was an opportunity for the public to learn more about NJTI’s vision, activities, and achievements, as well as to get involved with the initiative as either participants or board members.
“We’re just kind of thinking ‘How do we get more Northerners, how do we get more Indigenous Northerners into our Northern newsrooms?’ That’s kind of what our conversations always kept coming back to,” said Kaila Jefferd-Moore, program lead for NJTI.
She added that the initiative was born out of a desire to diversify and strengthen the Northern news ecosystem.
NJTI partnered with Journalists for Human Rights, an international journalism organization, and Google News initiative, to launch its first training program earlier this year, which happened in Inuvik over a four-week period.
Jefferd-Moore said the program was a success as some of the trainees have gone on to pursue careers or projects in journalism and media.
“One has gone on to work at CBC — she’s now in the Indigenous Pathways Program — and another is the communications coordinator for the Western Arctic Youth Collective,” said Jefferd-Moore. “Another has gone on to work with CKLB to work on a health podcast.”
NJTI is planning to deliver more traning programs in the future in different regions outside of Yellowknife to reach more potential journalists and media makers in the North, she added.
Jefferd-Moore also expressed her gratitude to local media and appreciated for the help that has provided.
“CBC has been very supportive of us, Cabin Radio, NNSL Media, everyone has always said if there were trained locals we can hire, we would hire them first,” she said.
Monica Loreen Dillon, one of the participants in the first training program, said she learned so much about multimedia.
She’ll be the host of an upcoming podcast called A Minute with Monica, a program centred around empowerment self love and healing. The first season focuses on Indigenous women in business and how they take care of themselves.
“I mostly focused on (the) podcast, so I have a podcast that’s about to launch, and they helped me do the outline,” she said. “They helped me become educated on how to create a podcast.”