News

A Tribute to Sputnik Kilambi

Sputnik Kilambi, a tireless and passionate journalist and former Knight International Journalism Fellow, died on July 6 after a battle with liver cancer. She was 55.

A veteran broadcaster, Sputnik had worked in Africa, Asia and Europe covering wars and humanitarian crises. She also trained teams of reporters dedicated to journalistic excellence and promoting peace in countries wracked by violence and poverty.

China Program Alum Exposes "Slum Girls'" Struggles in Kenya

Chen Yingying (Lulu), a correspondent for Xinhua News Agency in Nairobi, Kenya, recently did a report on teenage girls that was picked up and republished by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Lulu is a 2011 graduate of the Global Business Journalism master's program, a project of the International Center for Journalists and Tsinghua University, where it is based.

How Newsrooms Can Use Data to Meet Community Needs

To cultivate a loyal audience in today's media environment, newspapers must do more than simply churn out stories.

Editors and their newsrooms should create usable products, like data-driven news and information tools, to serve their readers, said Knight International Journalism Fellow Justin Arenstein at the World Editors Forum in Bangkok during his master's class for editors.

Winners of Vaccine Reporting Contest Focus on Barriers and Successes in Eradicating Polio

Journalists from Nigeria, Côte D’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates are winners of the first journalism competition on coverage of vaccines and immunizations. In well-documented multimedia and broadcast reports, most spotlighted the challenges—and victories—in eliminating polio.

“The winners produced coverage that serves as lessons to all in how to conquer devastating yet preventable diseases such as polio,” said ICFJ President Joyce Barnathan.

United Nations Publication Features Work of South Asia Training Participants

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) shared the work of two ICFJ program participants in a publication commemorating The International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking on June 26.

M M Badsha's piece "Gaza Phencidyl Yaba Crossing Border in the Hole of Bamboo, Inside the Pillow," detailed the practices of drug traffickers in his home country of Bangladesh while Chencho Dema's piece, "Substance Abuse Among Women a Growing Problem" offered a close look at drug abuse amon

ICFJ Participant Wins Prestigious Awards for Report on Human Trafficking

Wellesley, MA is a town better known for its college culture than its ties to the sex trade. But International Reporting Fellow Phillip Martin's award-winning stories are exposing it--and other hidden trafficking hot spots along the eastern seaboard.

How Costa Rica’s La Nación is Telling Stories Visually

When U.S. President Barack Obama visited San José, Costa Rica this spring, he brought along the biggest security operation in the country’s history.

Costa Rica’s La Nación newspaper knew its audience would be keenly interested in the logistics of a visit that would affect traffic throughout the city that day.

To Plan a Successful Hackathon, Start with “Why?”

The key to organizing a hackathon is to start with “Why?”

As Simon Sinek says in "Start with Why", great leaders inspire action because what motivates them is the meaning of a situation, not what to do or how to do it.

Sinek explains how the Wright brothers, young farmers who never finished high school, became the first to build a machine that could fly, although their main rival for that claim had financial support from the U.S. War Department and was beloved by the New York Times. Why did the Wright brothers succeed?

How Newsrooms Should Respond to the Data Revolution

With consumers searching less frequently for stories and expecting the news to find them, newsrooms must adapt their distribution strategies, ICFJ Knight International Journalism Fellow Justin Arenstein told workshop attendees at the recent World Editors Forum in Bangkok.

His "data revolution in your newsroom" workshop highlighted this and other trends that news outlets should be aware of, and advised newsrooms how they should change in response to the new focus on data.

Transforming Global Journalism with Open Data

Knight International Journalism Fellowship projects are transforming global journalism through the use of data.

Knight Fellows Gustavo Faleiros, Jorge Luis Sierra, Justin Arenstein, Miguel Paz and Mariano Blejman specialize in finding ways to convert raw data into information that's usable by and useful to journalists and citi