Best Student Project

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Submitted by: Alfred Hermida

The UBC Graduate School of Journalism has created a hyperlocal news website for Vancouver at TheThunderbird.ca that features stories on under-reported issues produced by students on the Masters of Journalism program.
Recent stories focused on the topic of immigration, with students producing in-depth journalism on different aspects of this issue. These range from a story explaining why Vancouver’s Korean community is being hit harder by the recession to a video feature on the challenges facing immigrant musicians.
The web platform offers students an opportunity to learn about the different forms of storytelling available online. For last year’s federal elections, a group of students used geo-mapping to highlight issues and events in Greater Vancouver that had an impact on the 2008 campaign. One student produced an audio slideshow in Flash to illustrate how Gordon Campbell is wooing the Sikh vote in the upcoming provincial elections.
TheThunderbird.ca takes advantage of the web by offering stories in a variety of formats - text, audio, video and Flash. It shows how an engaging news website can be created on a very limited budget, using Wordpress as the content management system and a premium Wordpress theme that was then heavily customized.
The website leverages the participatory potential of the web by offering users the ability to comment on any story, in text or in video. Users are also able to share the content as social bookmarking tools are available on every story.
TheThunderbird.ca website is an example of an innovative student project, led by assistant professor Alfred Hermida, that illustrates the power of digital media both as an educational tool and as an way of providing an alternative voice in Vancouver’s concentrated media market.