Ann Rauhala retires

After 23 years teaching at the School of Journalism, Ann Rauhala is retiring. 

An alumna of the school, she spent 16 years at The Globe and Mail, where she worked as a copy editor, assignment editor, beat reporter, foreign editor and featured columnist before making the jump to television. At the CBC, she worked as a television reporter, making documentaries and as senior editor of CounterSpin on CBC Newsworld. 

During her tenure at the school, she served as Associate Chair, Teaching Chair for the Faculty of Communication and Design and won the Faculty of Communication and Design’s Dean’s Award for Teaching. Among a number of initiatives, she led programs to improve the mental health of students and instructors.

She taught hundreds of students. Erin James-Abra, MJ ‘12, wrote about what it was like to be one of Ann’s students. 

Letter for Ann

Midway through my graduate career at Ryerson, I wanted to drop out. I was working toward a Master of Journalism and found the program grueling. Having enrolled with hopes of attaining a life-long dream — to be a long-form journalist — I felt stymied by the industry’s increased emphasis on the 24-hour news cycle. I move slowly. Journalists generally don’t. 

Ann Rauhala, however, suggested I stay. “Suggested” may actually be too soft a word to describe Ann’s manner of speech… she insisted, rather, in her characteristically blunt and opinionated manner, that there was in fact a place for people like me in the profession. Ever in awe of this woman, with her commanding presence and immaculately bobbed hair, I listened, completing my degree in the fall of 2012. 

In my first year, Ann taught me the basics of reporting. In an assignment likely familiar to other MJ grads, I wandered around my “beat” — Toronto’s St. Clair West neighbourhood — finding and covering that community’s news. I remember the careful way Ann workshopped these stories with us as a class, with snippets of the good and not-so-good writing compiled anonymously then studied collectively. If ours was the millionth weak lede she had corrected in her career we never knew. Her love for the mechanics of good reporting and writing was infectious. Her belief in the value of straightforward journalism was palpable.  

If Ann’s course on reporting rooted me in the basics of the profession, her course on health and science journalism put the trajectory of my career in motion. The class was an elective in my second year, and looking back, I figure the only reason I enrolled was because I loved Ann. I had no demonstrable interest in science up until that point. I imagined I would one day cover politics, or perhaps the arts. Ann changed my mind. I fell in love with translating complex ideas and discovered the drama a microscopic virus could incite (something I now know I would rather write about than live). Again, Ann’s passion was contagious, buoying me through the program’s busiest stretches. 

In reflecting on Ann’s teaching career and its influence on my life, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention her feminism. For anyone who knows Ann, to say she’s a feminist is as obvious as saying she wears glasses or has white hair. And, given the privileges afforded women of my generation as compared to hers, it’s perhaps surprising that Ann’s feminism felt revolutionary, but it did. In particular, it guided my pursuit of two desires that often seemed at odds with one another: to be both a journalist and a mother. Ann mothered me through my confusion, profoundly influencing my decision to start my family when I did. 

With my son now securely by my side, I am still in many ways carving out my place as a journalist (did I mention I move slowly?). As I do this, Ann’s wisdom remains close to my heart. There are the usual reminders recited ad nauseam by every journalism professor — Don’t bury the lede! Show, don’t tell! — but perhaps most importantly I will remember not to drop out. As Ann so stubbornly insisted, there is room for me here.