When 16-year-old Ros Guggi first walked into the St. Catherine’s Standard newsroom in St. Catherine’s, Ontario, she fell in love with journalism. Guggi began working a summer job as a clerk at the paper while she was in high school. When she first began working for the paper Guggi was doing wedding write-ups, obituaries, and some soft features. However, her talent and passion for journalism advanced her career. By her third summer she was in the newsroom covering hard news.
After formally studying journalism at Ryerson University, Guggi has worked in seven newsrooms across Canada before ending her career at The Province, a newspaper in Vancouver, almost two years ago. This year, Guggi has been named the Irving Chair in Journalism at St. Thomas University.
“I don’t know that if I hadn’t had that clerk’s job, if I would’ve gravitated towards journalism,” said Guggi. “I walked into that newsroom and that was the end for me, this is what I had to do. I felt that way everyday until my very last day.”
Each year St. Thomas University receives an endowment from the Irving family to bring a journalist or writer to the university. This year, as the Irving Chair, Guggi will spend January and February at St. Thomas University. She will be teaching workshops and giving a public lecture.
“I am eager to meet and help as many students as I can. I’m going to have office hours and I hope people will drop in to meet me. I’m happy to talk about journalism, happy to talk about your latest story, look at your resume. I just want to be as helpful as I possibly can. My door is going to be open and I hope to meet as many people as I can.”
Guggi’s vast experience all over Canada will serve St. Thomas’ students well. After working for the St. Catherine’s Standard and the Globe and Mail while she was in high school and university, Guggi moved on to the Kitchener Record, Ottawa Citizen, Southam News, and then finally, The Province, where she stayed for 18 years. For the final 10 years at The Province, Guggi worked as deputy editor.
“I think I’m proudest of the work that I did at The Province. I was able to do a number of very in depth public service projects that took acres and acres of newsprint and many hours of time from our talented reporters and designers. I think that some of the projects really made a difference which is what, at the end of the day, most journalists go into the business hoping that they can make a difference.”
Some of the things Guggi will be teaching students in her workshops include: interview skills, how to engage an audience, and discussion around of the public service projects Guggi has worked on. After doing all the hiring for The Province for 10 years, Guggi has plenty of expertise on the other side of the hiring process. She wants to use her knowledge in this area, and hopes it will help St. Thomas students ace their applications, interviews, and avoid simple mistakes. Also, Guggi says she has always been big on audience engagement. She believes today’s technology makes it much easier for journalists to engage their audience. She plans to teach students the importance of this engagement and how they can be more engaging journalists.
“I’m going to be talking to students about how to do that and how crucial that is because I really think in today’s world, the audience wants to be part of the story, wants to be part of the conversation. The journalism that you get when you get contributions from readers is just so much more powerful.”
Guggi’s public lecture will focus on the quickly changing world of journalism, she wants to discuss both the journalists and the readers. Guggi will speak about what tomorrow’s journalists need to know in order to be successful in today’s world of rapidly changing multi-media journalism. The lecture will also touch on the readers and what they need to know about the the journalism world today.
Guggi’s long and successful career in journalism and her expertise will benefit St. Thomas’ journalism students during the two months that she is here. Guggi mentioned how starting at a small, local newspaper in St. Catherine’s really set the tone for the rest of her career. Seeing how important the work was to the community is something she took with her everywhere she went and this is part of the knowledge she hopes to share with St. Thomas students this winter.
“I think that certainly starting at that local, small daily newspaper was such a privilege for me to be able to do that at the age of 16. It was kind of an accidental job in a way. That newspaper was so important to that community and I think I never lost sight of that, of how important that local newspaper is or local news organization, in print, online, on the radio, they’re crucial to the health of that community. You have a privilege working for such a place but you always have a responsibility to use the power that you have in media to make things better for that community.”
