Second-year UBC journalism student Emi Sasagawa has won a prestigious fellowship with News21.
Each year News21 runs a fellowship program for journalism students from around the world. This program, which is based in the U.S., gives students an opportunity to work on digitally innovative projects with top journalists.
This year’s project will focus on the trend toward the legalization of marijuana in the U.S. The reporting project will look at how other countries, including Canada, are handling this issue.
“I think I will bring to the project some expertise on drug policy, just because I have lived in countries where there has been a shift in policies recently,” said Sasagawa who has lived in Brazil, the Netherlands and Vancouver, Canada.
As part of the fellowship, Sasagawa will spend the spring semester participating in a teleconference course taught by leading journalists. She will then spend the summer working collaboratively on a project to report, film and produce multimedia content.
Sasagawa says she is excited to spend an extended period of time focusing on one project. “I’m hoping to be able to produce more journalism I’m proud of and to meet talented journalists.”
Second time for UBC Journalism
UBC is the only journalism school in Canada to have students receive the News21 fellowship.
Last year’s News21 recipient from UBC was Allison Griner. The resulting project, “Gun Wars,” looked at gun violence in America – the project included more than 100 articles and videos.
The publications ranged from the front page of the Washington Post to the top of nbc.com. It won a 2014 EPPY award from Editor and Publisher, which honours the best media-affiliated websites across 31 diverse categories.
“I feel incredibly lucky to have been nominated for the program,” Griner said of her experience. “It’s quite literally a 24/7, immersive experience. Our mentors were incredibly open about their own professional experiences and were very supportive of the fellow’s goals and visions for the News21 project.”
Going the extra mile
Sasagawa says it was Griner’s work that inspired her to apply to News21. “I had been checking over the summer the project that Allison Griner was working on and I was really impressed with it.”
School director Peter Klein said, “Emi is the kind of journalist who goes the extra mile.” Klein recalled that she took the time to meet with prominent marijuana policy makers to deepen her understanding of this year’s News 21 project.
“She went ahead and started reporting this story before she even got the fellowship,” he said.
Sasagawa is one of two research assistants at UBC Journalism’s social media lab, co-founded by professors Candis Callison and Alfred Hermida in spring 2014.
Professor Hermida, who has worked closely with Sasagawa over the last two years, said, “Emi is a uniquely talented journalist. She is driven by a desire to discover the story behind the headlines and make a difference in the world.”
