Stephen Cogan is the son of two broadcasters, and has his MA in Journalism from Michigan State University, one of the so-called "Journalism Ivies."

After graduation, Stephen worked as a reporter and editor at the Kingston Whig-Standard during the storied "Davies-Reynolds" era, when the Whig was considered one of Canada's best dailies. After that, he was a writer and editor at NBC News in New York, and then at CBC News in Toronto.

While at the CBC, Stephen began teaching broadcast journalism part-time at both Ryerson University and Centennial. Then he joined Centennial's full-time journalism faculty. He's remained active in journalism since, producing radio documentaries and contributing articles to publications like the United Church Observer, and the Recorder (the journal of the Ontario Music Educators' Association).

Stephen manages the East York edition of the Observer community newspaper, produced by Centennial journalism students under his and fellow faculty's oversight. He also teaches various courses, was a 2003 finalist for the college's "Wicken" teaching award, and a 2007 winner of the college's "Presidents Award of Excellence."

For more information on the Journalism program, contact
Stephen Cogan at:

• email: scogan@centennialcollege.ca
• telephone: (416) 289-5000 ext. 8824

Lindy Oughtred is a former community newspaper reporter and editor who worked for publications in Oakville, Brampton and Mississauga. She specialized in feature and column writing, and won several OCNA and CCNA awards for her articles and layouts. She also collaborated with a psychologist on a book about violent male offenders and researched the history of an innovative educational program in Peel for another book.

Ms. Oughtred is currently incorporating lessons learned during a year-long sabbatical into her courses. During that year, she visited journalism programs at Northwestern University in Illinois and the University of Miami in Florida; observed topnotch reporters and designers at work at the Chicago Tribune and Miami Herald; wrote about health for Homemakers.com; learned how to write lively (and sassy!) headlines and cutlines at the Toronto Sun; and refreshed her copy editing skills at Canadian Living magazine.  

Ms. Oughtred teaches courses in design, interviewing techniques and beat reporting, supervises field placements and is an editor with The East Toronto Observer, the journalism program’s newspaper. She hosts the annual Not-Quite-Ready-For-60-Minutes Interviewing Awards ceremony, which recognizes excellence in interviewing, and last fall organized a day-long design seminar featuring Dr. Pegie Stark Adam from the prestigious Poynter Institute in Florida. Ms. Oughtred and Dr. Stark Adam will be working together this summer on a major redesign of the The East Toronto Observer.

Ted Barris is an accomplished author, journalist and broadcaster. As well as hosting stints on CBC Radio and regular contributions to the Globe and Mail and National Post, Barris has authored 15 non-fiction books, including bestsellers Juno: Canadians at D-Day… Days Of Victory: Canadians Remember 1939-1945… and Behind the Glory: Canada’s Role in the Allied Air War. His most recent book Victory at Vimy explored Canada’s coming of age during the First World War.
 
After completing his Bachelor of Applied Arts at Ryerson in 1971, Barris pursued a freelance career across Canada … his broadcast work heard and seen on CBC Radio & Television, the CTV Network and TVO as well as on National Public Radio in the United States … his writing regularly published in periodicals such as Legion magazine, esprit de corps, 50Plus (CARP) magazine and Masthead. He also writes a weekly newspaper column - the Barris Beat – now available online at barrisbeat.blogspot.com
 
Among the awards Ted Barris has received: the international Billboard Radio Documentary Award, the Yorkton Film Festival’s Golden Sheaf, as well as numerous ACTRA nominations. In 1993, he received the Canada 125 Medal “for service to Canada and community.” In 2006, the renowned 78th Fraser Highlanders (Canadian) Regiment presented its annual excellence award, recognizing his "contribution to the awareness and preservation of Canadian military history and traditions." He was also short-listed for the annual Pierre Berton history writing award.

Ellin Bessner has been a professional journalist since 1981 and has taught journalism at Ryerson, Seneca and now Centennial College. She has worked at CTV in Toronto since 1997, and helped to launch the all news channel CTV Newsnet, first as a news writer, and then as one of the roster of business anchors.

Ellin currently freelances for CBC Radio News as a reporter and news announcer in addition to teaching at Centennial College. Previously, she has been a business anchor and writer at CTV News in Toronto, a general assignment reporter at CBC in Toronto (CBLT) and a general assignment reporter (1994-96) at CBC Radio News in Toronto.

From 1989 to 1994 she lived and worked in Rome as a freelance foreign correspondent, mostly for the CBC, the Globe and Mail, Canadian Press, and Deutche Welle Radio.

She also covered civil wars in Africa ( Liberia, Sierre Leone, and Mozambique) In the early 1990s, she worked part time for the World Food Programme of the United Nations in their Information office ( Rome). From 1981 to 1988 she was a television reporter and then radio reporter for CBC in the Maritimes, Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto.

Ellin’s most memorable career moments include interviews with Prince Philip and the Dalai Lama, covering Pope John Paul ll at the Vatican for five years, covering the World Cup of Soccer in 1990, and the 2003 Space Shuttle disaster in Florida.

Jules Elder is a veteran journalist and educator. He also works with OMNI Television, where he is a writer-editor in the News Department, Commentator and associate producer for In the Black. Prior to joining OMNI Television, he was managing editor of Share Newspaper, which he helped to launch. He is a former columnist for the Toronto Sun and freelance contributor for Radio Canada International.

Elder is a member of the Canadian Association of Black Journalists and the Canadian Media Association.

In 20 years of journalism, Andrew Mair has done just about everything there is to do on a newspaper. He has been a reporter, sports editor, entertainment editor, copy editor, travel writer, movie reviewer, photographer, editorial cartoonist, page designer, general manager and the editor-in-chief of three newspapers. Since 1998, he has worked at the Toronto Sun as a copy and layout editor on the news desk. Prior to that, he was with the Toronto Star, editing on the city, entertainment, lifestyle and op-ed desks. He was also the editor-in-chief of three Metroland papers after working his way through several roles. He got his start at his hometown paper, the Elliot Lake Standard, as sports editor.

Mair has won numerous awards from the CCNA, OCNA and SNA as well as for his community involvement through newspapers. He has served on hospital boards, chambers of commerce and community advisory panels. He is also the founder of the Uxbridge Art in the Park festival. In 2006, he was editor-in-chief of ICON, Canada's first multimedia celebrity publication, which was a pilot project produced for the Ontario Ministry of Culture, employing 18 Centennial graduates.

Mair joined Centennial College in 2004 and has taught newspaper design and layout as well as serving as a faculty editor on the East Toronto Observer newspapers at both The Centre for Creative Communications and University of Toronto Scarborough Campus/HP Centre for Technology.

Ted Fairhurst is a former CBC Radio News journalist. He now teaches part-time in all three of the Centennial's journalism programs. He also volunteers on Take5, the live, weekday public affairs program on CIUT 89.5, the campus/community radio station at the University of Toronto. He first joined the CBC in the early 1970s after completing the Radio and Television Arts Program at Ryerson and undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto. He has since obtained an MA in sociology at York University.

Over his 27 years at the CBC, Fairhurst performed several editorial roles as a member of the CBC Toronto local/regional radio newsroom. They included two periods of municipal affairs reporting at Toronto City Hall. He also worked as a general assignment reporter and desk editor. He was involved in the coverage of municipal and provincial elections, political leadership conventions and major stories that included the Mississauga train derailment and the public health hazard of lead pollution in two Toronto neighbourhoods. During the 1990s he was the morning newscast editor and for Metro Morning editor and anchor for Ontario Morning.

Fairhurst's academic interests are focused on the ethics and history of journalism.

Malcolm Kelly has been a sports journalist for 27 years, covering everything from amateur and Olympic-style to high school and professional events. He’s been an NBA writer (Toronto Raptors), NHL writer (Toronto Maple Leafs), Major League Baseball reporter (Toronto Blue Jays) and has worked on the CFL beat.

Malcolm is also a best-selling author of four books, including The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Canadian Sports History and Hanging it Out on Camera Three: Canadian Sports in the Media Era. Malcolm has worked for the CBC, National Post, Ottawa Citizen, Southam Newspapers, Canadian Press, Associated Press, Canwest Newspapers and Thomson Newspapers, plus spent some time in pro basketball as a public relations professional. He teaches in the Centennial College journalism programs.

Christina Blizzard is Queen's Park columnist for the Toronto Sun and for Sun Media — the largest chain of newspapers in Canada. She writes four columns a week from Queen's Park on provincial politics for newspapers across the province — from Kenora to Cornwall, Niagara Falls to Peterborough and Kingston. She has been at Queen's Park since 1994 and her coverage has included four provincial elections. She is the author of Right Turn: How the Tories Took Ontario, a book that documents the Conservative upset victory in the 1995 election.

Prior to covering Queen's Park, Blizzard spent four years as City Hall columnist for the Toronto Sun, and she covered education for three years prior to that. She was one of the 64 Toronto Telegram employees who started the Toronto Sun after the Telegram went out of business in 1971. She spent 11 years as assistant to the Toronto Sun's first editor, Peter Worthington. She helped produce the editorial pages and wrote many of those pesky little comments at the bottom of letters to the editor. She has also worked for the Guardian, one of Britain's foremost newspapers.

Blizzard is a former president of the Legislative Press Gallery at Queen's Park and still sits on the executive of that organization.

Veteran magazine editor Peter Carter started his career at the Elliot Lake Standard. Since then, he has worked for some of Canada’s smallest publications — and for some of its largest.

The Manitoulin Island Expositor under Peter’s watch was the first weekly newspaper to win the coveted Michener Award for Meritorious Public Service Journalism. When he was a staff editor and writer at Chatelaine, his Family Room column was one of the magazine’s must reads. Under Peter’s editorial leadership, the Metro Toronto Business Journal was named ‘Best Little Magazine’ in Canada by the Canadian Society of Magazine Editors. He was also editor in chief of Harrowsmith Country Life.

Currently, Peter edits Today’s Trucking, Canada’s pre-eminent business magazine for the trucking industry. He is quick to say that the students he meets while teaching magazine and freelance journalism at Centennial fill him with optimism about the future of Canada and its journalism.

Jeffrey Dvorkin has been a reporter, editor, producer and news manager — starting as the overnight copy clerk for the London bureau of CBS News in the 1970s while he attended graduate school. A graduate of the Universities of Alberta, Toronto and the London School of Economics, he began his daily news career with CBC Television News in Montreal, working his way to Toronto via the Ottawa bureau of the CBC. In Toronto, he was part of the team on CBC’s The National when it moved into prime time in 1981. In 1984, he moved to the network’s National Radio News division and eventually became CBC Radio’s Managing Editor and Chief Journalist in 1991. In 1997, Jeffrey became Vice-President of News and Information for National Public Radio, based in Washington, D.C. In 2000, he was asked to be NPR’s first news ombudsman — the first network broadcast ombudsman in the United States, and a position he held for the next six and half years.

Jeffrey also taught at Georgetown University in Washington, and was the first executive director of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, a mid-career training organization based in the U.S. capital that was co-sponsored by the Knight Foundation and the Missouri School of Journalism.

He returned to Toronto in 2008 to become the Rogers Distinguished Visiting Professor at Ryerson University. In 2010, he began teaching at Centennial College and the University of Toronto’s Scarborough Campus.

Since 2000, Jeffrey has been involved as a member and on the executive of the Organization of News Ombudsmen (ONO), which has more than 70 members in 26 countries. He was named the ONO’s first executive director in 2009 and he has overseen a dramatic growth in ONO membership. He is involved in frequent journalism training missions overseas.