As Vancouver’s Langara College has announced the possible shutdown of its journalism program, professional journalists in B.C. are pushing students to continue to pursue careers in the field.
Langara has confirmed that faculty leadership is reviewing the school’s journalism program and may suspend new student intake for the fall 2026 semester while supporting the current students through to graduation.
Michelle Gamage, a Tyee reporter who graduated from the program in 2013, says she is sad to see the program close its doors, although she understands post-secondary institutions are being heavily hit by the loss of income from international students.
“As someone who went into it with no journalism or post-secondary experience, I graduated two years later a functioning journalist. It was incredible,” said Gamage.
From one journalist to another, Gamage encourages student journalists, despite the challenges the industry is facing.
“If you want to be a journalist, you can be a journalist who makes a living doing journalism,” she says.
She says going out to write stories, asking questions, pitching editors, and building relationships with people will help secure a spot in a newsroom.
“If they’re comfortable freelancing, if they’re comfortable with having multiple jobs where they work at different newsrooms on different days, then you can find full-time work that will sustain you in this industry,” said Gamage, who also freelanced for the Tyee before joining the news outlet.
She says her profession is the best job on the planet, a job that gets you to be curious and ask questions of people.
“You get to find things that are cool and call up the most interesting people and just be like, tell me about this. And they do, because that’s how journalism works.”
Following Langara’s decision, UBC shared how it will attract more students to its Master of Journalism program amid a shifting media landscape.
Dr. Kamal Al-Solaylee, a professor and director at the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media, says the UBC journalism program will include new courses in AI, digital journalism, and visual and audio storytelling.
Al-Solaylee says his school also welcomes international students from all over the world while maintaining a small cohort to provide hands-on training catered to each student.
“Ultimately, I believe journalism education is not going away but is instead morphing and adapting to the realities of media production and consumption,” said Al-Solayee.
Upon hearing the news, Tyler Olsen, director of the Canadian Association of Journalists in B.C., says the shutdown of the beloved journalism program at Langara is another “sad indication” of the state of the journalism industry.
“That program has produced a large portion of the journalists who have provided news information to British Columbians over the last 20, 30, 40 years,” said Olsen, who is also a senior editor at the Tyee. “We’re in that program’s debt when it comes to journalism here.”
To attract more aspiring journalists to post-secondary institutions, Olsen says universities and colleges can create a diploma, certificate, or minor program that caters to the interests of young and mature learners keen to become journalists.
To Langara journalism students who might be the last ones to graduate from the program, he says building your future in the journalism industry is not as “dire as it seems,” given the demand for journalists.
Olsen advised the young journalists to go outside their comfort zone and venture into communities beyond Vancouver, looking for entry-level jobs in communities that badly need journalists.
“The start of journalism, you’re going to be doing a lot of work that can seem rote or boring, or maybe isn’t just what you ideally see yourself doing for the next 20 years,” said Olsen, who also spent years writing for community newspapers in Vernon, Chilliwack, and Abbotsford.
“But it’s in those jobs that you end up learning the tools that will help you thrive.”
Gamage says all one needs to do to become a journalist is to do journalism.
Her recommendation to students is to start writing for a school newspaper, start a blog, and learn how to write better from other journalists by comparing oneself.
“This is really just an industry where you learn by doing. Go do [journalism] and don’t feel like there isn’t a journalism program that you can go to, the doors are closed to you.”
