IRP fellow Megan Devlin, centre, reporting in Bangalore with Prabhu Mallikarjunan, left.
A multimedia project about urban resilience by UBC Journalism students has been recognized by the Radio Television Digital News Association.
“Surviving the City,” an ambitious series produced by the 2016-17 International Reporting Program, has received a Regional Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in writing.
The RTDNA Edward R. Murrow Awards are among the most prestigious in broadcast and digital news.
The project is also a finalist for a RTDNA Canada network award and is on the longlist for the One World Media Award in the U.K.
Winners for those awards will be respectively announced in May and June.
- Disarmed and dangerous — can former Farc guerillas adjust to civilian life?
- One girl’s mission: can Lakshmi find clean water in Bangalore? (Video)
“This was a challenging project and the 20 students who worked on this from all over the world worked really hard to capture the complexities of what is happening to cities worldwide,” said associate professor Peter Klein, who directs the International Reporting course.
“It’s gratifying to see their hard work recognized by prestigious organizations around the world.”
Global collaboration
“Surviving the City” paired 10 journalists students from UBC with 10 students from three global universities: Nanjing University in China, Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media in India, and Universidad de los Andes in Colombia.
IRP student Stefan Labbé was part of a team that reported on crime in Colombia.
In Dec. 2016, students travelled to China, India and Colombia to report on the pressures faced by rapidly developing cities.
The project was published in conjunction with The Guardian, BBC News and the Toronto Star.
A podcast for Reveal, co-produced by the Global Reporting Centre, has also won a Murrow Award for Best News Documentary.
“America’s Dumping Ground” was produced by Allison Griner, a UBC Journalism grad and former IRP student.
Griner travelled to China to follow up on a former IRP project about e-waste and to see what happened to the world’s biggest electronic dump in China.
