25 Jun RIIC: An Excellent Adventure, Dude
A nice shout-out for RIIC from the enfant terrible of Canadian journalism, Kai Nagata. Here’s his short video, in which he applauds the CBC (my employer) for giving me freedom to explore my journalistic interests outside the CBC for a year, which resulted in me creating www.riic.ca.
In case you’ve never heard of Kai, he created quite a stir last year when he quit his job as a CTV news reporter, and wrote a blog post denouncing the state of TV news. The post went viral. I didn’t agree with everything Kai had to say, but I tweeted my support, because his post was much more than a simple ‘take-this job-and-shove-it,’ and I was impressed with his spirit.
In the weeks that followed, many in the media took Kai to task, calling him naive and egocentric. But he capitalized on the notoriety that blog post generated, popping up here and there, as a lecturer and a media analyst. And I thought, why not? He has bills to pay, like the rest of us.
A couple months ago, I met Kai for the first time, when one of my colleagues invited him to CBC for a news interview. Kai approached me to tell me he was a fan of www.riic.ca. We wound up having a good chat. He struck me as a smart young journalist, not a quitter at all, but someone who recognizes that the media industry is undergoing a seismic shift in the way we deliver content, and that “legacy” media organizations such as CBC and CTV are in many ways behind the times. My opinion? Kai never intended to give up on journalism, but he took a brave step to give up his regular paycheque in the hopes of being a trailblazer in the new media landscape. Again, I say kudos to him.
His video homage to my “excellent adventure” came out of the blue, but I appreciate it. And yes, I find myself agreeing with him again. Newsrooms are surprisingly risk-adverse, and I suppose letting employees think outside-the-box may pose retention issues for the HR dept. But, when I was in the Silicon Valley, I was surprised to learn risk-taking is part of the workplace ethos at many tech companies. I heard this at Google, where employees are encouraged to devote 20% of the work week to projects that aren’t necessarily in their job description, something company-related that interests them personally. Imagine THAT in a newsroom.
So, applaud CBC for supporting the creation of www.riic.ca, and applaud Kai too, on his own excellent adventure.