Media Blog

Ten students from the UBC Graduate School of Journalism were nominated for two Emmy Awards for their news documentary Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground. Led by UBC Assistant Professor Peter Klein, the documentary, which was aired on PBS Frontline World, garnered nominations in two categories: Outstanding Investigative Journalism and Outstanding Research. It is the first time that Canadian university students have been nominated for an Emmy in a news category.

For Digital Dumping Ground, students traced the path of electronic waste around the globe, to Ghana, China and India, and discovered public health, human rights and national security concerns.  The documentary also received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for best documentary of the year from the Society for Professional Journalists earlier this year, and it was nominated for another US prize, the Livingston Award for Young Journalists.

“People work their entire careers to get any of these awards,” said Prof. Klein, “so it’s pretty special that our students achieved this recognition for the great work they’ve done so early in their careers.”

The UBC Graduate School of Journalism is a partner institution of the CMRC. More »

Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground »

Tags: Awards, Education, New Media, UBC

Michael Rogers, a columnist for MSNBC.com and former futurist-in-residence at the New York Times, discusses the impact of technology on the news business with the Canadian Press. He was speaking at Ink and Beyond, a conference hosted by the Canadian Community Newspapers Association and the Canadian Newspaper Association. The CMRC was pleased to co-sponsor his appearance.

Click here to see the video.

Tags: Events, Future of News, New Media, UBC

Mark Glaser’s MediaShift posted an informative account of The University of British Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and their multidisciplinary approrach to teaching journalism. The article comes from UBC Associate Professor Alfred Hermida, and he describes how the program keeps up with the way in which journalism is evolving.

"The philosophy behind this change is to provide students with an integrated approach to journalism, taking its cue from the shift at universities toward interdisciplinary collaboration. This builds on the idea of convergence journalism with its focus on training students in how to report for different platforms.

But it goes beyond teaching the next generation of reporters how to tell stories and understand the best way to deliver that story, be it in print, in a podcast or in a Google map. While this is important, our aim is to reconceptualize what we mean by journalism in a digital age, when the boundaries of what is news and who is a journalist are becoming increasingly blurred."

The UBC Graduate School of Journalism is one of the three partner members of the CMRC. [More]

Tags: UBC