Mere observations, fair comment and actual facts

By Lina Latif

The Frontiers journey has been an adventure for me, from its inception till the writing of this closing entry.

In thetwo years Frontiers has been in operation, we have churned out 21 editions. In that time, we have trained nearly 30 journalism students. Some had panache, while others were lukewarm with a touch of ‘safeness’ to their stories. But that was okay, as the idea for these ‘probies’ was always to go far enough to make an impact but not overboard to the extent of getting into trouble.

The main intention was to equip the students with the fundamentals for the world of journalism. The point of contention was that some quarters could only find fault without looking at the bigger picture of what Frontiers was all about.

Nevertheless, we’ve received good and interesting comments for some of our stories. From authors like Ellie Campbell, whose book When Good Friends Go Bad we featured, to people who thought our statements could jeopardize careers! We were also very pleased when the Star newspaper picked up on The Tamil Calendar Begins Again! and ran a centrespread on it.

Frontiers and the Corporate Communications Department have also shared stories and supported each other on coverage of university events.

When we started Frontiers many months ago, we only got 544 hits. The numbers have increased steadily to 1,359 visits as of March 2011. According to the Google analytics managing our account, the visits were from 71 countries/territories including Malaysia, the United States, Canada, our neighbor Singapore, Australia, Philippines, India and Indonesia, just to name the top 10 countries. It is amazing to know that Frontiers is also viewed in 33 languages!

So I guess it wasn’t a surprise when we received requests from writers as far away as Arizona to write about health, and another from Zen College Life to discuss matters pertaining to college life.

I also invited the renowned author of ‘A Malaysian Journey’, Rehman Rashid, to share his thoughts with us but I guess that will not become a reality now.

The idea of creating a campus community that would encompass the Cheras neighborhood has expanded beyond Frontiers and further than our expectations. It truly has been a passage of intellectual discourse in writing, thinking and maturity with these kids. Sharing experiences and learning off each other has made us better, stronger and more diverse.
My heartfelt thanks to Hasrimy.com for sponsoring Frontiers during what we theme as ‘our glorious years’. We couldn’t have sailed this smoothly without Jimmy and his team of tech-savvy experts. As the technical ‘guru’, Jimmy has taught the students to manage, construct and expand the website to what we have today.

My deepest thanks also to Belinda Chee, who was my Assistant Editor for the duration of this project. Taking time from your busy schedule to help sub stories pertaining to the university made things easier for me.

To the students who have gone through the rigor of assessments or internship with Frontiers, I sincerely hope you will take away the essential experiences it was intended to give you. It was always exciting for me when the deadlines got closer and the students scrambled to piece their stories together. Some passed with flying colors, while a few were casualties of my strict ruling of “you miss your deadline, you die”.

It was a cool journey for me as Editor-in-Chief. Subbing grammatical errors and sifting out incomplete facts and figures while trying to maintain each individual’s writing style was not easy. All this mostly happened during the weekend, throughout the night, just before the uploading of the new stories at the end of every month.

Nevertheless, it gave me satisfaction when an issue came together. It also gave me a chance to write about things that mattered and were important to me, even if I merely wrote out of necessity to ‘help out’ with the line-up when some stories didn’t quite make the cut.

By and large, Frontiers was always about the students, for the students, and working with the students. That, I will miss the most. But above all else, I still believe if facts and observations are fairly presented, the truth will take care of itself. And it has.