Michelle Lang's memory shines a light on women's prisons

By Zoe McKnight

When Toronto Star reporter Laura Stone first heard about Ashley Smith, the teen who in 2007 asphyxiated herself in a segregation cell in a Kitchener jail, she had no idea where that story would take her.

It turned out she would travel from her hometown Ottawa, where she was an intern at Postmedia, to Calgary and back many times as winner of the inaugural Michelle Lang Fellowship in journalism, trying to make sense of the hidden world, the untold story, of incarcerated women: one very different from the men's prisons that often appear in media reports.

"I hadn't really thought much about prisons before I heard about Ashley. The idea of a 19-year-old dying in a prison cell -- after being incarcerated in the youth system for throwing crab apples of all things -- was inconceivable," Stone says. "Maybe it resonated so much because it was so difficult to understand why it happened."

Stone, 27, applied for the 2010 Postmedia-sponsored fellowship with women's incarceration in mind. Once accepted, and armed with a $10,000 travel grant, she spent a year at newspapers in Ottawa and Calgary, doing general assignment reporting (the Stampede, politics) and chipping away at her project.

The guidelines were clear: the fellowship was created "in honour of slain reporter Michelle Lang (to) inspire young writers to strive for the same excellence pursued by the award-winning Calgary Herald journalist." Lang was killed in Afghanistan in December 2009 by a roadside bomb.

Stone says she felt a duty to honour Lang and her journalism. "This was especially pronounced at the Herald, because I was working with Michelle's colleagues and best friends. I wanted to do good work," she says.

The series, Women Behind Bars , takes an in-depth, multi-faceted look at how female prisoners live in Canadian jails, a side of the prison system rarely reported since a government inquiry led to system changes more than a decade ago. A media rep told Stone that no tour had been organized in two years.

One story touches on women raising babies in jail; another, three generations –- grandmother, mother and baby -- living in the same U.S. prison cottage; another, violent gang members in women's jails; one on dangerous overcrowding; another on rehabilitation in an aboriginal healing lodge. Prison conditions vary, but in most cases the threat of violence is present. The series examines factors leading to women's incarceration: abuse, substance use, self-harm, and mental health problems, but also takes a hard look at women as offenders as well as victims in their own right.

Given extensive creative freedom from the Calgary Herald, Stone organized prison visits through Correctional Service of Canada and got valuable documents from FOI requests -- documents that were key to assessing the progress of the system since the closure of Kingston's Prison for Women in 2000.

"As my editor always said, you can't argue with numbers," Stone says. Working with a project advisor, she pitched the stories, organized the trips, found the sources and set up the interviews, including one with Renee Acoby, Canada’s only female dangerous offender.

Stone determined the topics and the angle, also working on photos, video, sidebars and graphics. The series is a large body of work, and a weighty contribution from a young journalist.

Stone joined the Toronto Star in September as one of 12 journalists in the Star's one-year intern program.

Her work has been published by the the Vancouver Province and Postmedia group. She has a B.A. from Dalhousie and an M.J. from Carleton.

Zoe McKnight is a Toronto Star reporting intern. She works in the radio room. You can find her on Twitter.

How to get warm and fuzzy on International radio

By Josh Tapper

One of the beauties of journalism is that even the most innocuous story can catch a wave and resonate with people hundreds of kilometres away from the city newspaper in which it was first published. And so when another media outlet asks you to talk about one of those stories, you can't help but get a warm and fuzzy feeling.

Thursday morning I received a call from a producer at Public Radio International’s news program “The World” – it’s jointly produced with the BBC World Service and receives airplay on most American public radio stations and CBC Radio One. They wanted to interview me about a story I wrote for the Star's Living section earlier in the week: the Occupy Toronto movement was recently donated three Mongolian gers, which are now sitting among hundreds of tents in St. James Park.

                                                                                                (Photo by Josh Tapper/Toronto Star)

The gers, wood-and-canvas huts used by nomads on the Mongolian steppe, are an unusual sight in downtown Toronto. And at a cost of over $20,000, they don’t seem to jive with the protesters MO. But hey, the temperature is dropping and these gers have felt insulation.

My interview was slotted between a segment on the relationship between the size of your social network and the size of your brain and a report on Peru’s new minister of culture, near the end of the hour-long program. Lisa Mullins, longtime anchor of “The World,” asked the questions. What are the gers used for? Library, medical tent, general meeting place. What do they look like? Circular, colourful, ornate. How do they differ from yurts, a Central Asian cousin? Don't get me started.

                                                                                                (Photo by Josh Tapper/Toronto Star)

The interview happened at St. James Park, inside one of the gers, and captured a really on-the-ground vibe. I tend to run my mouth when I'm given an outlet, so it was a relief to hear I was reasonably coherent and professional.

Still, my tape starts out with a laid-back "Yeah ... hey!"

Listen to the interview here. But read the article first.

 

Josh Tapper is a reporter in the Star's one-year program and has occupied yurts in Kyrgyzstan and Russia's Buryatia province. You can find him on Twitter.

 

How to talk to grieving families

 

By Dylan C. Roberston

If you look at the northeast corner of Spadina Ave. and King St. W., a longboard’s been mounted on one of the lampposts. It’s a tribute to a 25-year-old musician who was killed last week in a tragic accident.

I pass this lamppost on the streetcar to work. It reminds me of speaking with the victim’s bandmates for our article about him.

We write a lot about crime and tragedy in the radio room. An inevitable part of the job is reaching out to family and friends of those who have died.

It’s not easy. In our training manual, a single paragraph gives general instructions on  how to speak with those in mourning. It’s intimidating to bother people at a sensitive time. If I was grieving, the last thing I would want to do is speak to some nosy reporter.

A few things help. I close the door so nothing distracts me. I introduce myself as a Star reporter and tell them that I will be writing an article – not thinking, writing – about their loved one. I tell them I want to know about their friend as a person, not just their death. Two questions I find open people up are “How do you want your friend to be remembered?” and “What are you most proud of?”

I speak in a calm but removed voice. Over-sympathizing makes people break down and become too emotional to talk. But I allow for a slow conversation; there’s often a lot of long silences. Even if I’m on a tight deadline and see my editor walking over, I give the person I’m speaking with time to open up. We often leave a number if people want to speak with us at a later time.

Good journalism means getting more than basic facts; it’s about capturing someone’s character and how they touch others. As a colleague put it, we want to create as real and thorough of a memory as possible.

Besides, those who suffer or die in our city often speak to broader issues in our society.

Journalists cover a lot of tragedy and injustice, whether its fatal accidents at home or war and genocide abroad. Working in the radio room is not a glamorous job, but it teaches you a lot, including how to get the story from people at their most vulnerable moments.

It's by reaching out to people in grief that we keep an accurate, meaningful record of lives touched by tragedy, in the same way that longboard captures a victim's memory. It’s one of the most valuable things journalists do.

Dylan C. Robertson is a Toronto Star intern. He works in the radio room. You can find him on Twitter.

Star summer internships no day at the beach — but they're quite the journey

By Wendy Gillis

You might not lounge all day at the beach or spend weeks at the cabin, but a summer at the Toronto Star will take you places.

Past Star summer interns have covered the trial of fallen media baron Conrad Black in Chicago and tracked down one of the jurors, delved into the depths of a bitter custody battle over a whale at Niagara Falls' Marineland or poked fun at the picturesque city's anti-Toronto marketing campaign, and covered the abrupt layoffs of over a thousand workers at an Oshawa call centre. 

They've gone to Korea Town to see if World Cup fans will cheer for North Korea, sniffed that new train smell when the TTC unveiled its rocket, and attempted to get the most bang-for-golden-buck as prices soared to new heights. Last summer — during the first week of our internship — Star reporter Amy Dempsey and I went undercover with protesters in the days leading up to Toronto's G20 summit.

Summer interns have asked why Toronto beach bums won't dare set foot in the lake (okay, so maybe you will go to the beach), why Mayor Rob Ford allegedly flipped the bird while driving, why Toronto doesn't have a public bed beg registry and why police fired into crowds at the Caribbean Carnival.

If you haven't figured it out already, a summer internship at the Star will send you somewhere unexpected, interesting, fun and important, even on the days when you've only left your desk for a coffee refill. 

What's more, the on-the-ground experience — including reporting and writing, shooting photos and videos, tweeting and live-blogging, and more — in a competitive but supportive newsroom will take your journalism career further in 12 weeks than you ever thought possible. Just be prepared to learn, adapt and be ready for anything. 

That, and work hard. Summer interns replace staff journalists on vacation, and editors rely on them to fill these reporters' shoes, wherever those shoes are taking you.

Sound good? Applications for the a summer at the Star are due November 18, 2011.

Oh — and don't just take my word for it. Read what three former summer interns had to say about the program.

Jasmeet Sidhu, Summer 2010:

More than any technical journalism experience, the summer internship at the Toronto Star really taught me to step outside my comfort zone: to learn how to drive on the Gardiner Expressway, to speak with mothers of fallen Canadian soldiers, and to be on the ground during a hostage-taking at a Swiss Chalet. But most of all, it was wonderful to spend a few months with some of the greatest reporters and writers in all of Canadian journalism right there in the Toronto Star newsroom.

 

Gilbert Ndikubwayezu, Summer 2011:

 I enjoyed my summer at the Star first, because it challenged me: I would always come with a terrifying feeling that  I was working for this big paper and that if I ever screwed up, it would be such a disappointment to t heir esteemed readers. Thus, the idea of fact-checking was huge. Second, because of the schedules: some weeks I would work day shifts, which normally mean you're bound to doing stories that are assigned to you; and other weeks I would work evening shifts which are normally super slow and thus you get a chance to develop your own feature ideas.

Amy Dempsey, Summer 2010:

Most people will tell you that life as a journalist or life in general is a marathon, not a sprint. Life as a summer intern is unquestionably a sprint. It's also a lot like living in a reality TV show. Exciting, dramatic and often bizarre. 

 

 

 

 

Wendy Gillis is currently in the one-year program at the Star, and was a summer intern in 2010 and 2011.

How to get (and keep) a job at the Toronto Star

   

 Porter                       Oleniuk                   Filson                        Loureiro  

By Amanda Kwan

Nine years after completing the Toronto Star one-year internship program, Catherine Porter still remembers now-retired columnist Joey Slinger’s five tips on good writing.

“I still go back to them,” says Porter, who is now a columnist at the Star. “You can be in this business for a long time and never have anyone talk to you about the craft of writing and tricks of the
trade an learning how to better yourself.”

It is this combination of training and development that makes the internship an invaluable experience, say graduates of the program.

The Star one-year intern program is arguably Canada's best training ground for entry level journalists. It's about as hands-on as they come and has 'graduated' some of the best young journalists in the country.

Every year the program introduces a group of talented and accomplished young journalists to the newsroom for 365 days of trench warfare.

As a copy editing intern in 2008, Christine Loureiro learned that mastering the basics — spelling, grammar, meeting deadlines — is at core of good journalism.

And it was this focus on the foundations of good writing that gave her a sense of composure when her dad was battling colon cancer.

“I couldn’t fix my dad but I could correct passive construction and fact-check the hell out of a column, and go home feeling collected,” she Loureiro, now Deputy Living Editor at the Star.

Photographer Lucas Oleniuk describes his internship as a “very challenging and stressful time.” On his second day, he traveled in the wrong direction on an assignment and arrived two hours late.

“"I [was]… somewhat concerned for my future at the paper. Luckily I was given many opportunities to bounce back” said Oleniuk, who has been with the Star since finishing the program seven years ago. He recently won his third National Newspaper Award in photography.

Similarily Sports Editor Jon Filson had tough moments during his copy editing internship in 2000.

Six weeks into the job Filson was moved off the foreign/national desk.

“I thought I was done right there. It wasn’t a good fit for me, I knew that. But it was hard to hear that I wasn’t doing well.”

But Filson survived and has gone on to play a key role as Sports editor and sums his advice this way: “Don’t hesitate to think big.”

Three questions:

What is your job now?
Catherine Porter, columnist.
Christine Loureiro, Deputy Living editor.
Lucas Oleniuk, photographer.
Jon Filson, Sports editor.

When were you in the one year program? What was your job?
Porter: 2001/02 reporting intern.
Loureiro: 2007/08 copy editing intern.
Oleniuk: 2003/04 photography intern.
Filson: 2000 copy editing intern.

What was your best lesson in the program?

Porter: “Never be too embarrassed to ask what an assignment means.”

Loureiro: Master the basics. “People who are very good at journalism
are good at the basics.”

Oleniuk:  “Surround yourself with talented people. Creative folks who
are driven and have big ideas are inspirational.”

Filson:  “Make sure your core responsibilities are taken care of
first … Only after that can you branch out.”

Amanda Kwan is an intern at The Toronto Star. She works in the radio room.

From newbie to national award winner in one 'easy' step

 

I didn't have any experience in foreign reporting, I didn't know anything about Chile or South America or mining. I didn't speak Spanish.

 

National Newspaper Award winner Jennifer Yang.  

By Sarah Ratchford

It started out as just another September day in the Toronto Star newsroom for Jennifer Yang.
But then foreign editor Colin MacKenzie asked her to come see him.

Yang was told to pack her bags for Chile. She had never done any foreign reporting but had so impressed senior Star editors that she was being sent to report on the attempt to rescue 33 miners trapped 700 metres under a collapsed gold and copper mine in northern Chile. The Edmonton native had just completed a year in the Star's premier program for young journalists.

That meeting with MacKenzie also put the 27-year-old on the road to a National Newspaper Award.

But there were a few bumps on the road along the way and a bit of fear and trepidation.

"I didn't have any experience in foreign reporting, I didn't know anything about Chile or South America or mining. I didn't speak Spanish," she laughs.

"There were a lot of 'Why me?' feelings."

She quickly got over her fear, though, and spent a week brushing up on things she didn't know. She put her hard-won skills to work and did some mining of her own, combing through contacts to learn more about the scene she was about to face.

She may have done lots of homework but her arrival in Chile was completely overwhelming.

"It was just unlike anything I've ever experienced in reporting. There were hoards of media from around the world -- BBC, CNN, NBC -- media I'd never gone up against in competition for a story."

At the time of the rescue there were about 2,000 journalists clustered around the San Jose mine. Reporters descended on the families of the trapped miners, everyone trying to get the most poignant and emotional interviews, all of them driven to be the first and the best.

It was impossible to get through to the family of Florencio Avalos, the first miner to emerge after two months.

"I'd never seen anything that competitive. You really had to be strategic and creative, especially when you're going through a translator."

But Yang had befriended Avalos's sister prior to the rescue. The woman had always declined to talk to media and stayed out of the spotlight, but Yang found her on the day of her brother's rescue and she agreed to talk. The two woman stood side by side and watched as Avalos was brought to the surface.

Yang's NNA was for explanatory reporting, a category celebrating in-depth reporting on the complexities of a current event. Pieces submitted to this category are detail-centric, outlining terms, equipment, processes or theories.

The Star was nominated for 16 NNAs and took home three at the annual awards dinner in Ottawa May 13.

Photographer Lucas Oleniuk, a former intern in the Star one-year program, took home an award for news feature photography, his third NNA, and the Star also won a team award for its breaking news coverage of last summer's G20 protest.

The Star offers three different internships: the radio room, summer reporting, and a year-long reporting internship.

 

Sarah Ratchford is a Toronto Star intern who works in the radio room.

Meet five fearless woman who chase ambulances

They simultaneously conduct phone interviews, watch the news, scroll through tweets and try to decipher the heavily coded language that sometimes comes out of five scanners at once.

 

                                      Aleysha Haniff


                                      Galit Rodan
 
                                     Zoe McKnight

                                      Sarah Ratchford


                                     Amanda Kwan 


By Galit Rodan

Spot news.

As a student in Loyalist College’s photojournalism program eager to shoot – well, almost anything – the two four-letter words 'spot news' never failed to strike fear in my heart and elicit a chorus of grumbles and moans.

Had I fled law school only to become an ambulance chaser, that most reviled of all lawyers?

Spot news generally refers to hard-hitting news that is unplanned or unexpected. It is the death and destruction aspect of the news industry – from fires and killings to natural disasters.

Chasing spot news means talking to people who often don’t want to talk to you. It involves encounters with people who have just experienced some sort of loss, misfortune or heartbreak. And for an
industry newbie like me, it often involves feeling, at best, like a thorn in someone’s side and at worst, like a circling, swooping vulture.

We all have our idiosyncrasies. I’m a little sensitive and dislike being disliked. It actually makes me physically uncomfortable. I’m fairly certain that I turn red as a morning sunrise when somebody
yells at me. But I love photojournalism and so reluctantly completed my spot news assignments, mortified as I was.

Imagine, then, the irony of ending up a Toronto Star radio room intern. “The box,” as it is affectionately known, is all spot news and no photos. None of what I love and all of what I had previously approached with anxiety and consternation.

We “boxers” staff the radio room 24/7. There are five of us rotating this summer, all young and fresh-faced and female. We work alone, in eight-hour shifts, monitoring all the breaking news that’s fit to print and much that isn’t. We simultaneously conduct phone interviews, watch the news, scroll through tweets and try to decipher the heavily coded language that sometimes comes out of five scanners at once. We talk to editors, write stories, take dictation and field phone calls.
It’s a fitting job for us 20-somethings from the generation of A.D.D and multitasking.

For eight hours at a time, our whole lives are contained in one 10 x 15 foot room. We pack our meals and hasten our bathroom trips lest the city crumble to dust while we are not looking. Our greatest fear is
letting something slip by us and, in doing so, letting down the amazing team of editors and journalists we work with. We are quickly learning to adapt to those seemingly endless overnight shifts and do
whatever we have to do to stay alert. Resting our eyes is simply out of the question.

People say it is good to step out of your comfort zone. Sitting in the radio room at 5 a.m., with five scanners to my right, a phone and television to my left and an empty, sprawling newsroom before me, I
feel as though I have rocketed out of mine. My comfort zone, for the time being, is gone. I left it in Kingston, 260 kilometres east of here, when I moved two weeks ago.

But already, merely four shifts into my four-month contract, I can feel the fear and panic beginning to subside. More importantly, each shift has been a valuable learning experience and I am on my way to
becoming a better journalist. In time, perhaps a new comfort zone will be established.

In an hour, editors will begin trickling in. By the time I leave at 8 a.m., the newsroom will be steadily building to its busy, buzzing self, full of talented people who will help me grow and who I will look up to for as long as I am here.

And although standing outside in the sunlight after a whole night in the box makes me feel like I’m viewing the world while standing on my head, I realize that I am, in fact, gaining an entirely new perspective on the world.

Before I go, I would like to introduce my colleagues and myself. We are getting to know you intimately, Toronto, so it only seems fair.

I’m Galit Rodan and the other wonderful women I work with are Zoe McKnight, Sarah Ratchford, Aleysha Haniff and Amanda Kwan.

We thank you in advance for your patience and understanding as we experience your ups and downs with you.

 

Galit Rodan is a brand new Toronto Star reporting intern. Last month, she was named the Loyalist College photographer of the year.

 

No story is too big for Toronto Star reporting interns

 

                                                                                                            Photo by Lucas Oleniuk, TorontoStar
Toronto Star reporters Jesse McLean, Jennifer Yang and Jayme Poisson.

                    

By Aleysha Haniff

Jennifer Yang waited quietly in the shadows cast by bonfires and floodlights in the cool desert night.
She was riveted by the sight of men working to free Florencio Avalos, one of 33 miners trapped 700 metres underground in a devastating collapse of a gold and copper mine in northern Chile's Atacama Desert in August 2010.
By Yang's side was Violeta Avalos Silva. They waited as Silva's brother, Florencio Avalos, became the first miner hauled to safety.
The rescue at the San Jose mine had played out in the world spotlight for more than two months.
Camp Hope, the tent city that had sprung up during the rescue, was crammed with eager reporters and in the  twilight of the mid-October night they mobbed the Avalos family as the family waited for Florencio Avalos to be freed.
But not Yang.
The 27-year-old reporter, fresh from a year in the Toronto Star intern program, had bided her time and persuaded Silva to be interviewed away from the media storm.
Together in the shadows, the two women kept vigil, Silva holding her young daughter in her arms.
The mood was anxious, tense.
And then Silva turned to Yang, her eyes gleaming with tears as she saw her brother emerge from what could have been his grave.
“I don’t think I’ve ever experienced so much emotion while covering a story before,” Yang said.
Her story explaining how the rescue worked won a National Newspaper Award, May 13. The award is one of the most prestigious in Canadian journalism.
Foreign reporting is not that unusual for young reporters at the Toronto Star.
In February, one-year intern Jayme Poisson, 27, travelled to Cairo and chronicled a democratic uprising that would rock the Middle East.
Poisson remembers one emotionally charged scene in the crowd.
Wael Ghonim spent 12 days blindfolded in detention, unaware that Egyptians had died for the cause he had started on Facebook and Twitter. When he was released, supporters poured into Tahrir Square and Ghonim’s cousin grabbed Poisson by the arm, pulling her from the jumble of people onto a makeshift stage.
Poisson stood by Ghonim’s side as he addressed the roaring, jubilant crowd.
Cairo was Poisson's first foreign assignment and the stakes were high.
“It feels like incredible crushing pressure because it feels like you’re competing with the world.”
As Poisson returned from Egypt, 23-year-old Jesse McLean was off to Bahrain to cover that country's bloody revolt.
McLean walked among corpses peppered with shells at a hospital, looking through medical charts to learn the names of the dead.
At one point, Lucas Oleniuk, a Star photographer in Bahrain with McLean, had to dodge bullets powerful enough to pierce metal lampposts.
Oleniuk was a one-year photo department intern in 2003.
McLean, one of Yang's 'classmates' in the one-year intern program, was sent to Haiti to cover the earthquake that overwhelmed the island in January 2010. He was just four months into the one-year program at the time.
Yang and McLean are two of five reporters who completed the one-year internship in September 2010.
Both say the day-to-day grind of the program helped them get the job done when they covered history in the making.
Each September, the Toronto Star brings a fresh group of young journalists into the newsroom, where they spend time in a number of departments including city, business, living and photography. The program is open to journalists under 30 who have never held a  full-time, permanent staff position at a Canadian daily newspaper.
Yang said the Star’s emphasis on professional development drew her to the program. The interns would regularly have sessions on anything from filling out freedom of information requests to figuring out the  court system.
One of her favourites? Walking through the city with the Star’s Christopher Hume as he filled them in on the architecture and history of Toronto’s core.

Aleysha Haniff is a reporter in the Star's radio room. She recently finished her last year of journalism school at Ryerson University. Follow her on Twitter

Former Star interns win NNA nominations

By Alexandra MacAulay Abdelwahab

When nominations for the Canada's coveted National Newspaper Awards were announced Monday, March 21 two of the The Star's 16 nominations were for former reporting interns.
Jennifer Yang and Raveena Aulakh helped win the Star top spot with more nominations this year than any other paper in the country.

Yang, who finished the one-year internship program in September, was nominated in the explanatory work category for her article on the effort to save 33 Chilean miners trapped underground for 69 days.

Aulakh, a one-year intern in 2008, was recognized in the international reporting category for her stories on the emigration of young men from Punjab villages  to the West.

Here is what they had to say about the nomination:

Jennifer Yang:

What were you nominated for?
An explanatory feature I wrote on the rescue of the 33 trapped Chilean miners.

How does it feel?
It feels great and a little surreal. I'm still getting over the fact that I got to go to Chile in the first place!

Do you think your time in the Star intern program helped you get this nomination?

Definitely. I learned so many skills, and gained so much confidence, during my year interning at the Star. I'm not sure I could've pulled off this assignment without that year under my belt.

Raveena Aulakh:

What were you nominated for?

The nomination is for International Reporting for a series of stories dealing with immigration issues. The lead story was about life of women and seniors in Punjab villages, which are bereft of young men -- they have left to seek a better life in the West.
The exodus of thousands of young men from Punjab villages was a story that had never been told. We have always written stories about the impact of immigration on Canada; what happens when immigrants arrive in a new country and how they cope. What no one had written about was what do they leave behind: empty villages, insecure women and seniors and dozens of social problems. I knew and understood the story because I was born and raised in India and I had seen it play out many times in villages in Punjab. I could ask probe and ask questions that others could not.

How does it feel?
It feels really good because a) it is my first such nomination in Canada, and b) it's a validation of the faith many, many editors have in me.

Do you think your time in the Star intern program helped you get this nomination?

The Star's intern program is the best possible training ground where interns are trusted with the biggest and best stories. Anyone who can pull off that one very, very busy year can do anything. Seriously.

 

Alexandra MacAulay Abdelwahab is an intern in the radio room. She is finishing up her fourth year of journalism at Ryerson. You can follow her on Twitter

Star reporter wins Emmy for investigative journalism

By Tamara Baluja

Ten University of British Columbia journalism students, including Toronto Star's Allison Cross, have won an Emmy Award for outstanding investigative journalism for their documentary Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground.

Students from UBC's Masters in Journalism program produced the film on dumping electronic waste in developing countries including Ghana, India and China. The film aired on the PBS documentary show Frontline in 2009.

Cross, one of the students who worked on the film, was at the awards ceremony in New York on Monday, taking a short break from her work at the Toronto Star. Two weeks ago she  joined the Star as one of the incoming one-year reporting interns.

Cross spent the past year chasing breaking news and reporting from Parliament Hill at Canwest News Service in Ottawa. Before that she was an intern at the Vancouver Sun and a community news reporter and photographer at the Nanaimo Daily News.

Cross and her colleagues were also nominated in the category of outstanding research.

On hearing about the group's nomination, Cross said she was just shocked.

"Most journalists work their entire careers for this kind of honour," she wrote on her blog. "The nominations have received quite a bit of attention, seeing as it's the first time Canadian journalism students have ever been nominated for an Emmy."

Tamara Baluja is doing her second stint in the Radio Room and has previously worked at The Province in Vancouver and CFRB 1010.