Students’ spontaneous decision leads to 18k followers on TikTok

Third-year students Sania Ali and Dana Masamra started their passion project AskToronto in the winter semester of their second year, and since then, they have grown to more than 18 thousand followers on TikTok (external link)  and Instagram (external link)  combined. These co-hosts also had the opportunity to work with McDonald’s Canada for National French Fry Day (external link) .

Ali and Masamra go around the city to ask Torontonians about trending local news and controversial topics they know people will have opinions on.

Masamra says, “As journalism students, we really wanted to practice our reporting skills and a big part of that is reporting on timely topics or ‘breaking news’ and covering things like that not only helps us become better journalists, but it also almost always gets an engaging response from people we interview.”

After finding similar video concepts on TikTok’s For You Page, Ali and Masamra met up on campus to discuss the logistics of creating AskToronto.

“We knew we wanted to include ‘ask’ in the name since the entire premise of our account was going to be interviewing and asking questions. Even though we began interviewing on the TMU campus because it was comfortable and convenient, we knew we didn’t just want to restrict ourselves to ‘ask Ryerson*’ for example, but rather all of Toronto so we could expand and interview throughout the city.”

Their first time interviewing people was on campus after one of their classes, where they used a mic they had borrowed from the EDC.

Ali says AskToronto helped push her out of her comfort zone when it came to reporting and interviewing strangers.

“It’s taught me about streeter interviews and being confident, just asking people, talking to different types of people. I could just go up to someone and ask them any question, and I wouldn’t be able to do that before.”

In J-School, Masamra finds her courses and practice interviews have helped her when creating content for AskToronto.

“I learned everything about interviewing from J-School, and also gained my confidence through the practice work I’ve done over the semesters, both of which have helped me extremely with being a host for AskToronto.”

These skills helped them when they received an email from PR company Weber Shandwick, who reached out on behalf of McDonald’s Canada to collaborate with AskToronto for their National French Fry Day campaign.

After an initial meeting with the team, Ali and Masamra met with the filming crew the following week to shoot for the whole day.

“It was a whole crew and everything, which was not really what we’re used to. It’s usually Dana filming and then me standing there [interviewing] and vice versa. It was much like the style of videos we normally do, which was fun,” Ali said.

Masamra commented on the experience and said, “It was something we had never done before and really out of our comfort zone, but it was life-changing. It felt as if our hard work over the past few months was being recognized, and everything was coming together.”

Although the duo wasn’t able to see the final product until they were released by McDonald’s on National French Fry Day, they were both happy and satisfied with the final result and say it was one of the greatest experiences they’ve had through AskToronto.

To Masamra, AskToronto will always be something that she and Ali share a passion for and enjoy doing as friends.

Ali still can’t believe she is doing these things.

 “I feel like if you’re just working hard and pursuing your goals, the sky’s the limit; you can really accomplish anything,” she said.

“As a visible Muslim, I have been really nervous about doing something like this, and I do get comments sometimes that are kind of resistant, but at the end of the day, pushing against those and knowing that I’m working hard and I’m in this position because I worked hard to get here is a really great thing to always keep in your head because it’s easy to kind of slow down because of the negative comments. Don’t let that stop you from doing what you want.”

*In April 2022, the university announced our new name of Toronto Metropolitan University, which will be implemented in a phased approach. Learn more about our next chapter.