History
UBC Insiders was founded by Tim Louman-Gardiner and Gina Eom in January 2007 as part of the AMS Voter Funded Media contest–a contest run by the UBC Student Society to incentivise independent media like ourselves to cover their elections.
Gina and Tim entered because they viewed VFM as a “perfect opportunity to offer the student body honest insight and experience accumulated over the many years they’ve been at this university”. This spirit has been the guiding principle of the site today.
The first website was hosted on Blogger, and saw three generations of editorial teams. The first team of Tim and Gina had the support of Gerald Deo, as webmaster and behind-the-scenes guru. Despite providing the most detailed coverage in the first VFM round, the site did not place well, losing out to more established papers. Tim and Gina graduated, they took a risk and brought on Maayan Kreitzman–a relatively unknown face at the time.
Maayan was more than up to task though, and carried the blog forward from late 2007 to 2009. In the 2008 elections cycle, with the support of past editors, her leadership brought the blog to top-tier status.
In the time between the 2008 and 2009 elections, Blake Frederick took a post which he gave up to run in a successful bid to be AMS President.
By the 2009 electoral cycle, Maria Jogova had joined up, and with the assistance of Gerald Deo, kept the torch burning. This yielded modest VFM results. Neal Yonson joined in shortly thereafter.
In September 2009, Insiders was relaunched on the new UBC Blogs platform with Neal Yonson, Alex Lougheed and Andrew Carne composing the editorial team. They took the site in a new, investigative direction, to much acclaim. This elections cycle featured three VFM contests: two (a continuous, and one-time) during the general student society elections, and another during undergraduate faculty elections. On aggregate, Insiders womped the competition, taking in the most money overall.
In the summer of 2010, the website was redesigned yet again and moved to independent hosting at our current ubcinsiders.ca. As Alex and Andrew graduated, Samantha Jung joined in as well.
And now it’s today.
Over the course of these years though, many guest posts and interim editors came on board. Regular contributors have included Dr. Darren Peets, Brendon Goodmurphy, Crystal Hon, and Bowinn Ma.
Alumni Roll
Andrew Carne Editor ’09-
Andrew recently graduated with a materials engineering degree. Out of fear of the recession, he’s back at UBC for a masters.
Alex Lougheed Editor, Webmaster ’09-
Alex graduated with a mathematics degree, now works for the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, and continues to write and webmaster the site.
Neal Yonson Editor, ’09-
Neal is working towards his chemistry doctorate. One day he’ll make it.
Maria Jogova Editor ’08-’09
Maria graduated from UBC, and now studies medicine at the University of Toronto.
Blake Frederick Editor ’08
Blake is a recent graduate of UBC. He should let us know what he’s up to!
Maayan Kreitzman Editor ’07-’09
Maayan now lives in Israel, doing something over there.
Gerald Deo Editor, Webmaster ’07-’09
Gerald is in the last year of his study, and is still informally around to help out whenever. He’s kind of great.
Gina Eom Editor ’07-’08
Gina is a grad student abroad.
Tim Louman-Gardiner Editor ’07-’08
Tim now practices law in Vancouver. He also enjoys the rodeo.
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