Siddhartha Dubey is a Knight International Journalism Fellow who is leading the World Media Academy Delhi, the only journalism institute in India that teaches students to report across multiple platforms, with hand-on, practical training in print, TV, online video, audio/radio and social media.

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.

Harry Surjadi has recruited and trained more than 150 citizen journalists living in the most-remote areas of Borneo to send news reports via text messaging using the FrontlineSMS system to Ruai TV, a station in the provincial capital. The service also allows subscribers from mainstream media, the government, and activist organizations to receive the news reports.

Hena Cuevas trained broadcast news reporters and producers in Peru to improve the quality of news reports and increase local news in national coverage. Her partner, the National Association of Local Television Channels (Red TV), is Peru’s largest network of local TV stations, an alliance of 40 independent channels that reaches more than a third of Peru’s TV viewers. She has created a two-person training team that is working with Red TV’s affiliates to improve everything from reporting standards to camera work.

Knight International Journalism Fellow Klarreich established an investigative team at Le Nouvelliste, Haiti’s leading newspaper, which regularly produces stories on the misuse of aid sent to Haiti after the catastrophic January 2010 earthquake. The team has broken stories about a land dispute that stopped work at a critically important sanitation plant near a refugee camp. After reading these reports, Haitian President Michel Joseph Martelly intervened and construction resumed.

Stephen Douglas launched the country’s first media training center at the new Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC), and served as its interim director. He coordinates all journalism and media management training funded by groups such as Deutsche Welle, Journalists for Human Rights, BBC World Service Trust and the United Nations. Courses range from media law and basic radio reporting to journalism ethics and TV camera operation.

Mia Malan launched the first weekly health program at Soweto TV, the largest community TV station in Africa, with more than 1 million viewers. She trained a team to produce high-quality feature reports for the show with a special focus on HIV/AIDS. The half-hour show features topics such as the use and abuse of antiretroviral drugs, male circumcision, attention-deficit disorder and organ transplants.

In addition to the new half-hour weekly show, health stories on Soweto TV’s daily news reports have increased threefold as a result of Malan’s efforts.

The Online Video for Citizen Journalists in Malaysia program is a three month-intensive training for citizen journalists. Throughout the course, journalists produced and disseminated online news videos about Malaysia’s several religious and ethnic communities through the prism of human rights, religious and ethnic tolerance issues.

In East Timor, Knight International helped radio journalists provide for the first time an independent, national weekly newscast to listeners in all 13 districts of the country. Knight Fellow Maria-Gabriela Carrascalão Heard, East Timor’s first woman journalist, trained news teams in each district to produce weekly segments. She created the first university-level journalism program in the capital as well as the first student radio station.

In the Middle East, bloggers and digital journalists are covering stories and sparking debates on topics avoided by mainstream media. Knight International created an online networking site in Syria that enables young reporters to share resources, experiences. Called Tawasul – Arabic for "connecting" – the network features multimedia stories, including photography, cartoons and animation, on social issues. Their stories focus on social issues such as maternal and child health, gender equality and religious tolerance.

The International Center for Journalists’ project in Dili, Timor-Leste, is working to develop a strong, professional and sustainable media sector.

About the Program

Plagued by the twin challenges of a slow economy and digital disruption, many U.S. news organizations are cutting back on foreign coverage and are shrinking their editorial staffs.

But journalists can play an essential role in raising awareness around international social justice issues, including women’s rights, corruption, human trafficking, poverty, religious tolerance, environmental issues, migration and education.

It is with this in mind that ICFJ announces the Social Justice Reporting for a Global America Program, sponsored by the Ford Foundation.