Frontiers is One!

FRONTIERS is one year old everybody! It’s time for us to look back at our journey and see how far we have come, how much we have achieved for Frontiers and for the University.

In the last year we have had three batches of journalists – the first batch had their graduation recently on the 24^th July 2010. It was a proud moment not only for their parents but also for me, to see these kids graduate. These were the journalists that started Frontiers with me – Wai Ting, Yogee, Cherry, Hamza, Nandy, Sue Ann and Sabrina. Yogee is now a tutor for journalism at the Mass Communications Department and continues to shoulder the responsibility as Frontiers Administrator.

The second batch was a mild bunch as compared to the first. Hwee Ling, Sharala, Wei Tin and Navin covered the news with a touch of ‘safeness’ but it was okay. When we highlighted the Tamil Calender, we were just ecstatic when The Star newspaper picked up the story and ran a centrespread with Sharala’s picture in it!

We’ve also receive comments from authors on our book reviews. One was by Ellie Campbell who wrote “When good friends go bad”. The review was written by Sue Ann in our second issue. Ellie was pleasantly surprised when she stumbled upon our review which was on the 15^th September 2009, just a month after we started Frontiers.

The current batch of journos are still under training but seem to be coping well with the stress of deadlines. Farezza, our PM (Project Manager) for this semester runs the Newsroom with great panache. She is supported by Shaun Lee, Tari, Falila and Fateme.

We covered a lot of news that you can view in our archive system. Highlights features covered celebrations, gave tribute to the late Sultan of Johor and we became melancholic when we remembered broken hearts on Valentine’s Day. We celebrated academicians on Teacher’s Day and found out that Sarawak wasn’t so ‘ulu’ after all.

This semester we dwelled in more serious issues like the attacks of the aid flotillas to Gaza and how our very own journalist put their lives on the line just to get a story. We also reminisce about Yasmin Ahmad after a year of her demise and her works. We also share our views on breaking down the walls of Pudu Jail and with it the memories and withdrawal symptoms of the World Cup!

In Happenings we covered events on and off campus. We went for Photography Awards, Art Exhibitions, Cultural Carnivals and attended the JCI Youth Malaysia in Penang. On the home front, what caught our eye was events like Fiesta Numero Uno, we rocked with UNIFEST and pledged our solidarity for Earth Hour. Frontiers also went F1!

For our latest issue we feature the 23^rd UCSI University convocation, MoU on campus security for Malaysian universities and rubbed shoulders with prominent bloggers at the Asian Bloggers and Social Media Conference 2010 where former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad adviced the blogging community to “blog responsibly and always tell the truth”.

In Leisure & Lifestyle we did an assortment of stories on restaurants/food like Rebung, Thandoori Chicken and Iranian bread. For books, we read a range of novels from different authors. We read Thanks for the Memories, February Flowers and on a more spiritual tone, The Journey Home.

More than anything else, we just love going to the movies. We saw the good, the bad and the ugly. We sat in animations, remakes and movies that language we didn’t understand. But that didn’t stop us. Some of the more interesting ones were Avatar, Clash of the Titans, Shutter Island and the latest Inception, a mind messing movie even if you were into Freud or Jung.

We also did a follow-up story on Kevin Bathman exhibits on Yasmin Ahmad – In Her Own Words: A Celebration of Humanity and Universal Love. And then there was the ice age exhibition by Wizart Studios and we have been invited for their upcoming events soon. Engelbert Humperdinck’s ‘Legacy of Love’ concert hit closer to home for me…

We’ve also received write-ups from students wanting to shares experiences or just venting. Of course we took it with a pinch of salt, edited and printed. Thru Talk to Us, Joshua Chay, Krobo and Marianne sent in their thoughts on what it means to take the road to menara gading and back and how the greatest rewards come from the most unlikely places.

Yes, it has been a journey, an intellectual one with these crazy kids. To see them able to progress in terms of thinking, writing and maturity has been rewarding. The most important thing is we share and learn off each other and that is what makes us better, diverse and stronger.

The times when we don’t get encouragement, support and even when we’re pushed away when requesting for interviews are all deposited away when a story comes together. The satisfaction of seeing your story and byline in print supersedes the heartache that we journalist go through.

Our heartfelt thanks also to Hasrimy.com for sponsoring us for this glorious year. Without Jimmy and his technical team, we couldn’t have sailed this smoothly. As the technical expert, Jimmy has thought the students to manage, create and develop the website further as we see it today.

In the year we have been in operations, we have also developed our very own community at UCSI, communities beyond the boundaries of the University and internationally. The hits have increased from 544 visits in January of this year to 1255 visits in the start of April! These countries include India, Australia and the US. We have also readers as far as Arizona that want to contribute articles for Frontiers! What about that?

So watch out for more! Post latest gadgets and ads in Classificatory. Send in your thoughts and articles to us and check out our Frontiers Gallery for 2009 and 2010 for the latest photos. Who knows you might just be a picture archive in Frontiers!

Have a good read and ‘Long Live Journalists’