Leaving The National after 28 years won’t be easy—but Mark Harrison is ready for a new challenge.

Harrison, now the former executive producer of The National, is taking over the health unit and the growing science and technology unit at CBC. He says the decision to leave CBC’s flagship nightly program was a personal one, but it also aligned with the broadcaster’s increasing focus on digital. Harrison says Jennifer McGuire, editor-in-chief of CBC News, is also interested in “raising the profile and building technology and science coverage up,” so his interest in switching jobs came at the right time.

His first day at The National was also Peter Mansbridge’s first day. “I’ve been here a long time. I’ve done a lot of jobs,” he says. “I started as a writer, a senior writer, and I’ve been executive producer for seven years and for some time now, probably a few years. I’ve been wondering when I would stop doing it.”

“I mean, I love the job, but it’s not something that I wanted to keep doing forever. It does take a toll. It’s a seven-day-a-week job…so it’s a bit unrelenting in that sense.” Harrison says he felt comfortable leaving the show because it was in “a good spot. Peter’s on top of his game, the people I’m working with here all seemed to be doing really well.”

The National’s new executive producer is Don Spandier, who’s moving back to the program—he used to be the senior current affairs producer—from his spot as the senior producer at World at Six. Harrison says he and Spandier will “be exchanging lots of smiles” when they see each other around the CBC building. “The program is constantly changing. The way we do what we do is changing, evolving, and it’ll be interesting to see Don’s perspective on how it’s changed since he was last here and his ideas on how to take it in to the future.”

Harrison says he’s excited to work more on health stories—which he’s been interested in since he was at school—and has wanted to develop more digital skills. The content units at CBC provide stories for TV, radio and online, “so it’s going to stretch me in different ways,” Harrison says.

“I’m really excited about the move, but it’s very much with mixed emotions and mixed feelings,” he says. “I love The National. I mean, people who work at The National, it really gets under our skin…we end up feeling very strongly about the people we do The National with too.” Although he likes the program and the team, Harrison says he also believes that it’s important not to get too comfortable.

“I do believe it’s good to try different things and stretch things differently into all aspects of the work we do.”

My fellow blog editor Fatima Syed wrote an important blog post yesterday responding to the Twitter debate regarding BuzzFeed Canada senior writer Scaachi Koul’s appearance on The National. I agree with the main argument put across in Syed’s post: we need to fight for newsroom diversity in order to allow more women of colour to have careers in journalism and reduce the unfair expectations placed on those who have attained some success.

Yet if we’re going to discuss race and representation in Canadian journalism seriously, it needs to be with nuance. Syed’s post lacked a bit of that nuance because she ignored, or wasn’t aware of, an important part of the conversation that Koul’s appearance sparked.

Syed characterized the backlash Koul faced solely as “abuse,” or as inappropriate comments about her appearance and mistaken whiteness. Koul certainly did receive disturbing abuse from some, and it’s no secret that women of colour on social media are disproportionately harassed. But Koul also faced very legitimate criticism from a number of black women, most notably another female journalist of colour, Septembre Anderson.

Anderson’s criticism of Koul’s appearance on The National focused on her perceived lack of insight regarding the importance of women of colour in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet. Anderson presciently noted that focusing solely on arguments for gender parity without deeper critical analysis will likely result in white women dominating the cabinet.

After Koul published an article at BuzzFeed Canada defending herself from perceived attacks, and attempting to address her privilege, Anderson responded in the comment section by saying, “So, rather than address the very real criticism you use your power and privilege to humiliate Rachel Décoste [a woman whose tweet was linked in Koul’s article], totally downplay accountability and play victim? Classy.” Anderson also took to Twitter claiming Koul unfairly portrayed her as aggressive, an “age old” tactic used against black people.

Syed unintentionally perpetuated this portrayal by characterizing the entire backlash Koul faced as abuse, without pointing out the valid criticism that came from other female journalists of colour like Anderson.

Obviously, Koul is not solely to blame for the fact that a panel on gender parity did not have enough critical insight regarding race. If the demographic of Canadian journalism reflected Canada’s population instead of being dominated by white people (especially older men), the responsibility for this sort of nuance would not have rested solely in Koul’s hands.

Still, Anderson and others absolutely have the right to critique Koul’s performance on the panel, as well as the perceived privilege they believe she used in an inappropriate manner. This sort of critical discussion should be encouraged instead of demonized if we truly want to build a more diverse Canadian journalism landscape, because nuance is of the utmost importance in this matter.