Knight International Journalism Fellow Ayman Salah is connecting journalists with IT experts across the Middle East by starting Hacks/Hackers chapters. Salah has launched the technology journalism group in three countries: Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia. Participants are working to find technological solutions to information bottlenecks.

In Amman, journalists and programmers developed the first mobile citizen journalism reporting app for major Jordanian news outlets.

Knight International Journalism Fellow Ronnie Lovler is helping El Tiempo, Colombia’s largest newspaper, develop a website that uses citizen reports to map crime in the capital city of Bogota. Modeled after a similar Fellowship project in Panama, citizens and citizen journalists will post information on the map. Lovler will train El Tiempo journalists to use the map to identify trends and produce investigative stories about crime and violence. El Tiempo plans to expand the project nationally.

To fill the void of local news reporting, ICFJ and Malaysiakini will create a network of locally-based citizen journalists trained in journalism skills and armed with high-tech reporting tools. To empower and give voice to marginalized and often abused immigrant workers, the program will bring media trainers from their originating countries to train citizen journalists and help create native language news websites with stories drawn from their experiences throughout the country.