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

The Toronto Star drew many headlines this week when they announced they were cutting 121 positions, including 70 full-time and eight part-time jobs from their editorial department, which has 390 employees. Instead, they plan to outsource some of their newsroom production work.

In Montreal, La Presse settled their month-long disputes with eight of their unions, ensuring the likely survival of the newspaper.

Trying to discourage Google News from indexing its content for free, News Corp. hopes to strike a deal with Microsoft.

After much public speculation, the CRTC gave the green light to Al Jazeera.

Canadians were still busy discussing the pros and cons of the new Kindle e-reader.

And finally, although this actually happened last week, it’s worth mentioning that Wikipedia, Craigslist, and Twitter were part of the Webby’s top 10 most influential internet moments of the decade.

Tags: Awards, E-readers, Job losses