Master storyteller: Algonquin College launched Michael O’Byrne’s journalism career

Posted on Wednesday, January 10th, 2018

Any number of graduates could say they owe their careers to the lessons they learned, but how many are able to pinpoint a single assignment that changed their lives?

Well, prominent Ottawa CTV news anchor Michael O’Byrne for one.

O’Byrne was in the first year of Algonquin College’s print journalism program in 1979 when his instructor announced an overnight assignment: the class was to monitor police radio communication one evening and write as many stories as they could muster from the leads they picked up.

Most of his classmates contemplated writing five or six stories, O’Byrne recalls:

“I said I’m going to get 20 stories. I went out to every little cat call… and I wrote 20 stories the next day.”

One of the stories described firefighters rescuing a cat from a burning building. O’Byrne’s instructor was impressed and suggested he might be able to sell it to one of the city’s two daily newspapers. O’Byrne took it to the Ottawa Journal, whose editors snapped it up.

“They paid me one hundred dollars,” says O’Byrne, but that wasn’t the best part. “They knew who I was, and they hired me a month later. Because of an assignment at Algonquin College. That’s how it started.”

When the Journal folded in the late summer of 1980, happenstance and O’Byrne’s College training again served him well. His program had included one course in television journalism and he had taken to it – quickly learning the different rhythms and conventions of writing for TV and presenting on air. On the strength of that experience, he landed a position with the CJOH (CTV Ottawa) newsroom; nearly 37 years later, O’Byrne looks back proudly on the career he built there.

A long time anchor of CTV News at Noon, O’Byrne has also helped created some award-winning television, including an internationally-acclaimed documentary about Noella Leclair’s experience as Canada’s first recipient of the Jarvik-7 artificial heart.

He has travelled the world on assignment for his station, and recalls covering the launch of the space shuttle Challenger when it carried Ottawa astronaut Steve MacLean into orbit.

“Algonquin College changed my life,” says O’Byrne. “Algonquin College gave me an opportunity that turned into a career.”

As it turned out, the College gave him that career long before he was able to graduate. His work at the Journal and CJOH made attendance at his journalism courses sporadic, and O’Byrne was a couple of courses short of diploma requirements when his classmates graduated in 1982. Years later, the College’s administration offered to give him an honorary diploma, based on his experience and his community involvement (O’Byrne lends his celebrity to more than 200 charity events a year). O’Byrne demurred.

“I said, ‘No, I don’t want an honorary diploma, thank you. I want to go back to school and earn the credits that I was short,’” he recalls. “They arranged for me to go back to school that summer.” He accepted his diploma with that fall’s graduating class.

“It meant the world to me to go back to school and get that diploma and go to my graduation with my kids in the audience,” he says. Today, O’Byrne gives back to his alma matter by serving on the Algonquin College Foundation’s Board of Directors.

Given the dramatic changes O’Byrne has seen in his industry, particularly since the ascendance of the Internet, he has some advice for new graduates of the College’s journalism program: be open and inquisitive.

“Algonquin College gives you the groundwork to convince someone to hire you,” he says. “From there, you’re going to learn so much more.”

 

 

Up to $5,000 Towards Tuition? Yes Please.

Posted on Tuesday, January 9th, 2018

If you’re planning to attend Algonquin College in the fall of 2018, listen up! You could win up to $5,000 towards your tuition. Yes. That’s right. Five. Thousand. Dollars.

Entering the contest is easy. Put your creative writing skills to the test and answer the following question in 140 characters or less. What do you hope to change by coming to Algonquin College? Read more >

Graphic Designer on the fast track: Brendan Droppo is the image of success

Posted on Monday, January 8th, 2018

Graphic artists never really have to give up their designs. They can admire them whenever they want — on the side of a building, the top of office stationery, the back of a business card.

But if Ottawa’s Brendan Droppo, 2011 Graphic Design alumnus, wants to catch a glimpse of his signature artwork, he’d better not blink. It’s likely streaking by at 300 kilometres per hour.

Since grade school, Droppo has had two passions: drawing and motorsports. Now he draws racecars for a living. “One great thing about going to Algonquin was that I was able to sharpen up on all my skills,” Droppo says. “When I wanted to pursue drawing race cars professionally, I was able to go at it full force.”

He doesn’t so much draw racecars as the designs that make each sponsored car unique. It’s an exercise in sports marketing and branding as well as art, and his skill at it has caught the attention of a number of NASCAR racing teams. He’s even designed the look of cars driven by seven-time NASCAR series champion Jimmie Johnson, NASCAR Most Popular Driver Dale Earnhardt Jr., Chase Elliott (2018) and Alex Bowman (2018).

Each of his designs, he says, is a “resume on wheels”.

“One thing led to another and now I’m designing more race cars for (NASCAR team sponsors) Lowe’s, Nationwide Insurance, NAPA Auto Parts and Hooters.”

Droppo’s portfolio includes more conventional graphic design as well – logos, brands and digital designs for schools, companies, and services. One prominent Ottawa LOGO that Droppo created when he was still in school only looks like it’s going fast: The Algonquin College swoosh.

Droppo’s role in Algonquin College’s logo redesign a few years back was entirely by chance. It happened during a six-week internship, a key component of the Graphic Arts program’s final year. “I was able to intern in Toronto at an agency and it just so happened that their client was Algonquin and I got to work on the new logo.

“It was fun to come up with the evolution of the logo. As soon as I saw (it), I knew it had to be updated, with kind of a swoosh through it with a more modern font. I was really happy that they chose that – that was really fun to cap off the three-year course.”

Maybe it was also a bit of payback for a college program he describes as “a great experience.”

“I knew what I wanted to do with my career, but I didn’t have the technical skills yet,” he says. “(Algonquin) was a great fit. I learned so much every year and I’m just so thankful that the course provided basically all the ins and outs that I needed in the industry.”

Attending Algonquin is a family affair for Droppo. About a decade after the college opened in the late ’60s, both his parents attended Algonquin – his mom studying to be a legal assistant and his dad preparing for a career in heating, ventilation and air-conditioning.

“It’s just really neat to come here almost 40 years after they did and kind of continue a family tradition, if you will,” he says.

The College gave him the tools to become a successful sports marketing entrepreneur, says Droppo. After that, it was just putting in the work. “There really is no secret. You have to pay so much attention to detail, and be dedicated to your craft and what you believe in, and (in) the product that you want to give your clients.”

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