By: Maya Barillas Mohan, Staff Writer

Interest in student journalism has faced a steep decline, journalism instructor Barry Link told CTV News. Steep enough that Langara’s journalism program is in danger of closing after 60 years of running. The Peak reached out to Link, who chairs the program, to learn more.

The Langara Voice is produced by the journalism program with responsibilities split in two courses: the reporter course, and the editor course. These courses are trim, with enrollment between 12 and 25 students per class. “We set The Voice up as a real, working newspaper,” Link tells The Peak. Covering the Langara and South Vancouver communities, The Voice narrates going-ons in “a whole range” of geographical areas across the campus and beyond.

“The Voice reflects storytelling done by students.”

– Barry Link, journalism program instructor and chair at Langara College

“The Voice itself represents the diversity of the campus.” 

Students in the program are trained to be working journalists, developing teamwork, responsibility, and accountability. They also develop practical skills for the industry like reporting, interviewing, and fact-checking. Link expresses that digging into stories, going places, and taking interviews is part of the essential effort journalists take to parse facts and report to the public.

Journalism and entertainment may overlap, but Link remarks that nothing is fictional in journalism. “We aren’t cherry picking facts, we aren’t distorting reality,” Link says. He observes there are “changes in what people regard as journalism,” and “the industry has not kept up with how society processes and shares information.” He continues that “what journalism has not figured out is how to pay for itself,” and further, the advertising that kept broadcast stations afloat disappeared because of the internet, replacing the media landscape of 30 years ago. 

There is “less reporting than we had 20, 30 years ago,” Link reflects. He identifies a reduction in newspapers and radio outlets, supplanted by an influx of influencers without media training. Link laments that efforts to “make it work as best we can” are overruled by the college’s belief that “there’s no room” for the journalism program. 

According to Link, Langara has been concerned with enrollment and financial challenges for some time. “The biggest change for the college is the pretty big financial difficulties it’s having now, which most post-secondary institutions are having now, and that’s directly tied to the drop off in international student enrollment,” says Link. He shares that the lack of income from tuition means program cuts inevitably follow. 

“Journalism still has value in our society, and I think that’s an important role for post-secondary institutions to fulfill,” Link says. Supplemented by recent media attention, Link also notes that there are a lot of people “very concerned” about what this closure means for journalism. Optimistically, “there is public concern about this, and that reflects public demand and need for a solution.”