In addition to our core jury, we ask our partners to help choose other specialists help judge the various Prize categories. All jury members defer on assessing organizations or individuals from their own countries or affiliated with their organizations. Instead, Global Youth & News Media replaces that score with the average from the other judges.
2025 JOURNALISM AWARD
FOCUS: WIN-WIN LOCAL NEWS MEDIA - YOUTH COLLABORATIONS
RYAN POWELL — Ryan is head of Innovation and Media Business at the International Press Institute (IPI), based in Austria. He leads and designs a portfolio of funding, training and advisory programmes to support independent media around the world. Ryan is a journalist and media business advisor with twelve years’ experience helping independent media grow and achieve financial and editorial sustainability. He helps publishers in pursuit of diversified revenue models, audience-centric distribution and content strategies, and future-proofed editorial formats using innovation and strategic planning methods. In 2024, he co-authored a guidebook on revenue generation and editorial innovation, introducing pricing strategy, value proposition and management strategies for a range of ad-, content- and service-based revenues relevant for media. Before joining IPI, he led an Austrian magazine's product and publishing divisions, and advised media organizations in Europe and Africa on revenue diversification and product strategy.
JOE PAN -- Joe is the editor of Blockwind News and lecturer Hong Kong Baptist University, offering Asia’s only accredited master of journalism class on “Covering Cryptocurrency and Blockchain.” He is also the Journalist Governor of Foreign Correspondents Club Hong Kong, where he serves as a convenor for its programming committee and young journalist training series.
IVOR PRICE - Ivor is an award-winning South African journalist, author, and media entrepreneur. He is the co-founder of Africa Media Perspectives (AMP), an initiative amplifying diverse media voices across the African continent, with a strong emphasis on strengthening local news ecosystems. Ivor also serves as co-founder and editor-in-chief of Food For Mzansi, South Africa’s leading agricultural news platform, which has won 21 international media awards for its innovative journalism and community impact. Throughout his career, he has championed initiatives that place young people at the heart of storytelling, believing that empowering emerging voices is critical to the survival and evolution of local news media in Africa and beyond.
BEN SHAW — Ben is a lifelong believer in the power of local news. He is a 6th generation member of a local news family that operates media in Illinois & Iowa, USA, and grew up around the business. His passion for news has taken him around the world & he currently resides in Frankfurt, Germany with his wife Joon and dog Andy. For the last 6 years, he has been promoting innovation in journalism as part of his role at Google.
BRUCE KOON — Bruce manages Contra Costa Youth Journalism which provides Contra Costa County, California, secondary level students with training in journalism fundamentals and ethical practices from industry experts. The students’ stories and photographs are published on a website and local news outlets, furnishing their communities with pertinent and practical local news and information. A veteran journalist who mentors college and high school journalism students and mid-career journalists, Koon is a senior fellow of the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Policy and Leadership and a mentor for the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education 200 Fellowship program.He is a member of Pro News Coaches, a network of former Wall Street Journal editors and reporters assisting local news organizations.
YAEL DE HAAN — Yael is a professor of the research group Quality Journalism in Digital Transition at the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht and professor by special appointment of Local Public Broadcasting at the University of Groningen. She has a particular research focus on local journalism. Her current research projects also address the role of AI in journalism, changing news consumption of diverse audiences, and the role of ethics in changing journalism. For eight years de Haan was a member of the Dutch Press Council. Currently she is a member of the board of the Dutch Journalism Fund and the Dutch Institute for Sound and Vision. She is also vice-chair of the journalism studies section of ECREA, the European Communication Research and Education Association.
ELIS ESTRADA — Elis directs digital operations for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) Digital Studios in the United States.
Previously, she was senior director of PBS Newshour Student Reporting Labs (SRL), a national youth media organization providing thousands of educators and students with resources and programs to build journalism for local outlets, media literacy and storytelling skills. She led content initiatives featured on dozens of local PBS stations News Hour and in partner organizations including MediaWise, TeenVogue, Snapchat, Instagram and Global Youth & News Media's World Teenage Reporting Project. Before joining the NewsHour, Elis helped oversee program and digital strategy at the News Literacy Project and was a producer at NY1 News in New York.
JOSH LAPORTE — Josh manages the LIMENet (Local Innovative Media in Europe Network) for the Media Diversity Institute Global to help strengthen local and community media across Europe. Based in Brussels, he is an expert advisor on independent media development and press freedom. Recently he has led projects for Internews and the International Press Institute that supported media development and media literacy initiatives across Central and Eastern Europe. He directed media development at the European Journalism Centre (2006 to 2020) with programs across Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America that used an advocacy-strengthening approach focused on youth media literacy, journalist safety, diversity/accountability reporting and access to independent information. Josh is a board member of Global Youth & News Media and also sits on the core Prize jury.
LARA AYOUB - Lara is a digital media strategist, trainer, media and gender consultant with more than 20 years of experience. To date, she has launched and operated 5 digital newsrooms, including three TV stations and two print publications notably Jordan’s first 24-7 public service news station AlMamlaka TV, privately owned Ro’ya TV and Alghad Newspaper. She founded The Media Lab (Jordan) as a community interest organization to focus on the disconnect between news media and the public. She is the co-founder of SADAQA ("justice"), a nonprofit organization in Jordan advocating for women’s economic rights by removing structural barriers that prevent women from entering and remaining in the workforce. A certified Rapid Transformational Therapist (hypnotherapist and practitioner), she finds human psychology aspects a fundamental part of her work, especially amongst young people.
STEFANO ZAMPARO — Stefano serves on the executive board of European Youth Press, advocating for youth media and press freedom across Europe. He manages relations between local and international partners, coordinating initiatives (EYE local Forlì 2024) aimed at strengthening young people's engagement through journalism, media literacy, and civic participation. Stefano is also actively involved in community-driven media projects in Italy, focusing on sustainability, crowdfunding (Crowdfunding Festival in Padua), and digital communication to support youth voices in local journalism.
SOFIYA TRZUB-COOK — Sofiya has served as an executive board member of the European Youth Press since 2023. She also works as a journalist and regional editor for Eastern Europe at the European Correspondent. Prior to this role, she was an interviewer and moderator for Room for Discussion, where she conducted in-depth interviews with economists, politicians, and scholars on a wide range of topics. Sofiya is currently working on several youth-focused projects, including Pulse Z — a digital democracy platform that empowers young people to express their views on European issues through journalism, activism, and creative content. She is deeply interested in subjects concerning criminal justice, geopolitics and transatlantic affairs.
MICHAEL A. SPIKES, Ph.D. — Michael is a lecturer and director of Teach for Chicago Journalism at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. An expert in the field of news media literacy as an intervention for countering misinformation, he has trained educators globally, and has played key roles in implementing Illinois’ first in the nation media literacy requirement for high schools. His work and insights have been featured in outlets like NPR, Reuters, and the Los Angeles Times.
DAVID MAAS — David is the senior editorial director of the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ)'s multilingual resource hub, IJNet, which delivers the latest on global media innovation, news apps and tools, and professional opportunities for media professionals globally. As part of this role, David oversees IJNet's student-focused newsletter, IJNotebook, which offers tips and resources designed to help students pursue journalism careers, highlight how they are covering pressing issues on their campuses, and more. Before joining ICFJ, David covered local politics as a reporter and deputy editor at AL DÍA, a Spanish-English news outlet in Philadelphia; worked as a journalist in Medellin, Colombia, for the English-language news site, Colombia Reports; and managed USAID projects in Latin America for the federal contractor, Management Systems International.
ERIC ORTIZ — Eric is the founder and director of the Youth Community Journalism Institute at the Strong Mind Strong Body Foundation, a national youth and community development nonprofit based in Minneapolis (Minnesota, United States) where he is executive director. He also is the associate director of research, learning, and impact for The Pivot Fund, a venture philanthropy organization that invests in local news outlets serving underserved communities. A longtime journalist and community builder, Ortiz has a track record of excellence and innovation in community.
ANDREAS M. PANAGOPOULOS – Andreas holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Journalism and Mass Communications of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and is a seasoned journalist. .
He is currently a visiting professor at University of Peloponnese (MSc Modern Sport Communication, Journalism and Photo Press) and gives lectures in Greece and abroad on contemporary practices in journalism, including the use of web metrics in newsrooms and the integration of AI. Currently, he is working on an AI project funded by the Polis think tank at the London School of Economics and the Google News Initiative. He works as an advisor for Alter Ego Media's digital media and has been news director of ONE TV and MEGA channel, CNN Greece, and ANTENNA TV. He serves as executive secretary at the Panhellenic Federation of Journalists' Unions (PFJU). In July 2024, he was elected for the second consecutive term on the board of the Organisation for the Collective Management of Literary Works (OSDEL), representing the organisation's journalist membership. In 2013, he received a Botsis Foundation Award for Journalism and since then has repeatedly been recognized for his digital media achievements.
TIJANA BLAGOJEV - Tijana is active in the fields of media policies and open data initiatives, helping media organisations and experts collect and consolidate data, especially with analysis and visualisation in R-programming language. She is a research associate at the European University Institute’s Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom (CMPF), where she contributed to the Local Media for Democracy (LM4D) report and interactive map that analyzed the state of local and community news media in the 27 European Union member states. In addition, she participated in various research projects that evaluated various aspects of local media situation in Serbia. She is also part of the Media Pluralism Monitor, the flagship project of CMPF which assesses the potential weaknesses in national media systems that may hinder media pluralism. Previously, she worked in the media department of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Mission to Serbia, closely following media policy developments in the country with particular focus on regional and local information.
ANGELA MISRI — Angela is a Toronto journalist and novelist who worked at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) for 14 years before becoming the digital director for The Walrus. She is currently an assistant professor at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) and a co-director for the Local News Research Project, with a focus on research related to AI and news practice. Misri also runs the newsroom for the student masthead in the School of Journalism at TMU -- teaching the next generation how to report on their communities. She writes for many different media groups including the Globe and Mail, CBC, The Walrus, Global TV, and is the author of seven fiction novels.
VERA PENÊDA is director of programmes & impact at the European Journalism Centre (EJC), where she leads initiatives that strengthen independent journalism across Europe. With over 15 years of experience in international NGOs and major news organisations across Europe, Latin America, and Asia, she has designed and managed cross-border training, grant, and fellowship programmes that have supported journalists in more than 50 countries. Vera has worked extensively on newsroom innovation, media resilience, and digital transformation, securing long-term partnerships with institutions such as the European Commission, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and YouTube. Earlier in her career, she held roles as a local journalist, correspondent, reporter, and multimedia editor. Throughout her career, Vera has trained and mentored dozens of young journalists at the start of their careers, as well as seasoned professionals looking to innovate and upskill across three continents.
JAN ROSS SAKIAN - Jan Ross is a program/community manager on the American Press Institute's journalism strategy team. She co-designed training and resources for alumni of the Table Stakes program, supporting local news organizations in their pursuit of sustainable change and digital transformation. Previously, she was a founding contributor to The Texas Newsroom, a first-of-its kind collaboration between member radio stations and NPR. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin's School of Journalism and Media. Jan Ross is an alumna of the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change (2014), The Archer Center Fellowship in Washington, D.C. (2016) and The Poynter Institute’s Leadership Academy for Diversity in Digital Media (2020).
SURYA HK — Surya is an Impact Fellow at Salzburg Global, where he co-curates programs on arts & culture, media, education, public policy, and social change. He also serves as design lead for the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change where, since 2018, he works closely with young media makers to explore the future of journalism, civic storytelling, and democracy. He was previously chief of staff to Samir Jain, vice chairman & managing director of The Times of India Group. In the past, he led communications at the Museum of Solutions (JSW Foundation) and curated public programs at the Museum of Art & Photography, both pioneering institutions in India. He has worked across literature festivals, election campaigns, and parliamentary research, and has taught courses in journalism, political science, and gender & sexuality at Ashoka University. As a Young India Fellow and former journalist himself, he strongly believes that youth participation in local and community media is essential to strengthening democracy.
THE SALZBURG TEAM
The Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change will examine the cases as part of its focus this summer on Local Media Futures and Democratic Health. Five graduate students will serve as part of our jury.
TAMIRES CAMARGO LIETTI LIPPI DE OLIVEIRA —Tamires is a PhD candidate and academic researcher investigating the representation of Middle Eastern cultures in visual digital media. After several years working in education and research, she joined the Research Centre for Communication and Culture (CECC) in Lisbon, where she focuses on digital communities, affective narratives, and the dynamics of visibility and objectification across social media platforms and interactive media, such as games. Her work sits at the intersection of media studies, critical cultural analysis, and humanitarian communication. She is especially interested in how digital spaces both challenge and reinforce stereotypes, and in how alternative narratives can shift public perception. She is drawn to studying these entries to better understand how platforms mediate identity and to advocate for more equitable and empathetic modes of storytelling online.
TOM MUTSCH — Tom is a communication researcher and media practitioner based in Lisbon, Portugal. He is a Ph.D. candidate in Communication Studies at Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP), where he explores (dis)connection practices and self-regulation in digital culture through ethnographic research, with a particular interest in alternative media environments and grassroots communication. Tom has over a decade of experience in the media and cultural industries and has led non-formal education initiatives in Luxembourg focused on media literacy, intercultural communication, and team-building for young people. This experience also informs his research and underscores his belief that alternative media initiatives are vital for sustaining local journalism and empowering communities —particularly youth — as drivers of democratic transformation. He holds a B.A. in Multimedia Production and an M.A. in Learning and Communication in Multilingual and Multicultural Contexts from the University of Luxembourg (Luxembourg).
YUKUN CHEN —Yukun is a master’s student in Government and Politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include international relations, national security, and political communication. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Diplomacy from Jilin University, China. Yukun has participated in international academic exchange programs at the University of Oxford (UK), Tomsk State University (Russia), and Kyushu University (Japan). He has also published several academic articles in influential journals such as Modern Diplomacy. He believes that the media plays a vital role in promoting mutual understanding and communication among people of different cultural backgrounds, and he is particularly interested in learning how youth-led initiatives and collaborations with local news media are creating positive social impact.
MANASVI MAHESHWARI – Manasvi is a Ph.D. scholar at the University of Miami, specializing in journalism studies and communication for social change. With over 12 years of experience in teaching in India, her academic journey reflects a deep commitment to understanding and enhancing the role of media in fostering inclusive and equitable societies. She believes in the transformative power of research to drive understanding and social progress. Manasvi holds undergraduate and master’s degrees in journalism and mass communication from India and earned her doctorate in Media Management from the School of Journalism and New Media Studies, IGNOU. She is deeply interested in local news youth collaborations, as they align with her passion for empowering young voices, promoting media literacy, and fostering youth engagement in democratic dialogue.
ANU JAKHAR — Anu is part of the Young India Fellow postgraduate programme at Ashoka University. She has a background in history and journalism, driven by a deep interest in how narratives influence public understanding and social change. A graduate of Lady Shri Ram College, she has worked in research, communications, and cultural programming with organizations such as Himal Southasian, Newslaundry, and the India Art Fair. Her work reflects a strong commitment to questions of representation, media literacy, and youth engagement in civic life. Anu is particularly interested in how youth-led collaborations with local news media can create space for marginalized voices and foster more inclusive forms of civic dialogue. Her interest lies in understanding how platforms mediate identity and in advocating for storytelling practices that are both empathetic and socially transformative.
... more to come
2025 MEDIA LITERACY AWARD
FOCUS: STRENGTHENING MEDIA LITERACY LESSON #1
AWARD LAUNCH > 1 JULY 2025
MARISKA KLEEMENS — Mariska is a professor in both the Behavioral Science Institute and the Communication Science Program at Radboud University (Nijmegen, Netherlands). She concentrates her research work on how children and adolescents can become more involved with news, and how news can inspire them to contribute to society. An important part of her research focuses on the question how news producers should present negative news to children. She also investigates how young news consumers can become more news literate, with a focus on fake news. She has repeatedly received student-voted “teacher of the year” awards and has been director of education of the teaching institute for Social Sciences since 2022.
CHLOÉ PÉTÉ - Chloé is a digital and media literacy projects and communications officer and reports author at The Media & Learning Association, a not-for-profit association based in Belgium that aims to promote and stimulate the use of media as a way to enhance innovation and creativity in teaching and learning across all levels of education in Europe. Members include national and regional agencies charged with the promotion of innovation in teaching and learning as well as universities, ministries of education and schools’ networks.
ETIENNE MILLIEN — Since 2021, Etienne has been the director APEM (Association pour Éducation aux Médias) , a non-profit organization dedicated to media literacy set up by the French newspaper, magazine and online publisher trade associations. He has been a journalist for over 25 years for TV and print media companies, in France, the US and UK. After 10 years with Bloomberg he joined the French regional newspaper Sud Ouest where he developed media education activities.
MOGENS SCHMIDT — Mogens advises foundations, NGOs and government entities on their international media development and press freedom/safety of journalists programmes and projects. He also has been a top executive in that field for some of the world’s leading players: UNESCO (deputy assistant director general for communication and information after having served as director of its Division for Freedom of Expression, Democracy and Peace), the World Association of News Publishers / World Editors Forum (assistant director general) and The European Journalism Centre (managing director). He comes from a strong journalism education background, including having been managing director of the The Danish School of Journalism.
MARC DEUZE — Marc is a professor of media studies and director of graduate studies at the University of Amsterdam's Department of Media Studies. He focuses on the social construction of electronic and digital media, with specific reference to the various ways in which the individual and society are implicated in media use. His research has explored the changing state of journalism and journalists in more than ninety academic journal articles and in nine books. Most recently he examined the mental health challenges of the “professional storytellers” engaged in a wide array of media work. Mark is also the bass player and singer of post-grunge band Skinflower.
MARGARET HOLBORN — Margaret specialises in devising and delivering programmes for teaching news, media and digital literacy experiences to children, young people and educators. After a successful 10-year career in education and management at a state school in South London, teaching history, business and citizenship, she set up and led The Guardian’s in-house news and media literacy programme and its Education Centre in London. By the time she left, over two decades later, 165,000 young people, teachers and adults had engaged with the award winning programme at the Education Centre, virtually and in schools and colleges across the UK. She was also head of The Guardian Foundation’s secondary and higher education programme.
mORE JURY MEMBERS
WILL BE ANNOUNCED SOON
2023 News/MEDIA LITERACY
FOCUS: PRESS FREEDOM TEACHING
Open to educators and news media organizations
JANIS SCHACHTER (USA) is a 2021 laureate of the Global Youth & News Media prize for news/media literacy. She is a journalist and a social studies teacher at Northport High School in New York State, where she has taught since 2005. Through her affiliations with the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University, the Law Youth and Citizenship Program of the New York State Bar Association, and Project PATCH, the Law and Civic Education Program of the Northport—East Northport Union Free School District, she has provided training in news literacy and media literacy to hundreds of teachers in the United States and around the world.
VITOR TOMÉ (Portugal) is an international expert on news/media education. He is a researcher in education and communication sciences (Autonoma University of Lisbon, Iscte-University Institute of Lisbon), a teacher trainer (Portuguese Ministry of Education), a trainer of trainers for journalist continuing education (CENJOR), and, since 1993, a journalist covering education and economics for multiple Portuguese outlets. He also collaborates as an expert for the Council of Europe (Digital Citizenship Education program) and for the European Commission group on Tackling disinformation through education and training. He has also advised international projects such as Iberifier - Iberian Digital Media and Fact-checking hub and numerous national projects for teachers, youngsters and communities such as the ALPMJ association, for which he is president. He has a doctorate in media literacy education from the University of Lisbon.
Dr. CRISTIANE PARENTE DE SÁ BARRETO (Portugal, Brazil) is a global consultant, researcher, teacher trainer and columnist on media and education.She is managing director at Iandé Comunicação e Educação (Brazil) and has conducted studies and programmes for universities, media and NGOs all over the world. Previously, she coordinated 60 news in education programmes for the Brazilian publishers association, Associação Nacional de Jornais. Her doctorate is in media education from Universidade do Minho (Portugal) with an emphasis on media literacy.
LAMIA RASSI (Lebanon) is an expert in news/media education. She is the co-founder and managing director of Planet News Business, a media group for youth in Lebanon, and creator of the award-winning KELYOM news (for children) and YOMKOM (news and interaction for adolescents). She has also co-founded and served as the principal of a school for 13 years (Lycée Abdallah Rassi in Northern Lebanon). She directs a group of trainers for teachers and students in media literacy and debating in Lebanon, covering more than 60 schools in both Lebanon and Qatar. She collaborated in the creation of a Pan-Arab educational media tool with Jazeera Children’s Channel (VOD) and, most recently, participated in an International Center for Journalists advisory session on youth and crisis news. She has degrees in economics and education from the American University of Beirut (AUB)
BO BRUSCO (USA) is an experienced public educator and multimedia journalist. He taught 12th-grade (the last year of secondary school) English Language Arts in Las Vegas, Nevada, and later became a multimedia journalist for a Snohomish County-based news outlet in Washington state. His work as a journalist earned him several awards from the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association (WNPA), including first and second place in the WNPA’s video category in 2022. Now, he is the director of communications for the Journalistic Learning Initiative (JLI), a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering students to discover their voice, improve academic outcomes, and engage in self-directed learning through project-based journalistic storytelling.
MARGARET HOLBORN (United Kingdom) is head of secondary and higher education at the Guardian Foundation and manages the Behind the Headlines programme, which runs workshops for young people at its Education Centre based in London, virtually and in schools in the UK. Since 2002,153,000 young people, teachers and adults have taken part in their activities. Prior to setting up the Centre she was a teacher and manager in a South London secondary school, where she taught history, politics and citizenship along with careers and business studies.
BARBARA MCCORMACK (USA) is a sought-after speaker on media literacy education, navigating the challenges of a free press and facilitating difficult classroom conversations. She has provided media literacy training for students and adults nationally and in 18 countries. The former vice president of education at the Newseum, she has been a member of the North American steering committee of GAPMIL, UNESCO’s initiative to promote media and information literacy worldwide. She also serves as a special advisor for Global Youth & News Media.
NOLWAZI MJWARA (South Africa) is trustee of News Decoder, the international eductional news service that is a partner in the Global Youth & News Media Prize. She is an associate communications officer at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris, France. She has previously held roles in social media and communications at the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), Auroville Village Action Group (Pondicherry, India) and UNICEF. Nolwazi holds a bachelor of social science from the University of Cape Town, a bachelor of arts (with honours) from the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg) and a master of arts specializing in development communications from the American University of Paris (AUP). Prior to her studies at AUP, Nolwazi worked in journalism at Media24 (Cape Town, Johannesburg) South Africa.
BAYAN TAL (Jordan) is a media literacy, media and communication specialist with more than 40 years of experience. She began her career as a broadcast journalist, anchor, and later executive at the Jordan Radio and Television Corporation (JRTVC). In 2005, she established the first communication department at the Jordanian Prime Ministry and later moved to the Royal Hashemite Court where she was foreign press secretary for His Majesty King Abdullah II. Tal for more than five years after which she returned to JRTVC as its first female Director General. During six years as senior adviser at Jordan Media Institute, Tal designed and led the first Media and Information Literacy (MIL) project in Jordan in 2016 and successfully advocated for the adoption of a national MIL strategy by the government in 2019 to ensure its integration into schools, universities, youth centers and civil society. Tal is currently leading a team of experts working with the National Center for Curriculum Development to integrate MIL into grades K2-12.
ROBERT MAHONEY (USA) is a veteran journalist who has been at the forefront of the struggle for press freedom, journalists' safety, and the right to report. From 1978 to 2004, he worked for Reuters news agency in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. He headed news bureaus in Jerusalem, West Africa, and Germany, and also served as news editor for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East based in London. After a stint as a freelancer and journalism trainer, he joined The Committee to Protect Journalists, a USA based nonprofit dedicated to promote press freedom worldwide. He helped lead the organization and expanded its reporting and advocacy, particularly at the intersection of technology and press freedom and helped build an Emergencies Response Team to address the growing safety needs of journalists. In 2022, he co-authored with former CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon The Infodemic: How Censorship and Lies Made the World Sicker and Less Free.
CHIDO ONUMAH (Nigeria and Canada) is coordinator of the African Centre for Media & Information Literacy (AFRICMIL), set up in 2008. He is chair of the Pan-African Alliance for Media & Information Literacy (PAMIL). He has also worked for over two decades as a journalist, rights activist and media trainer in Nigeria, Ghana, Canada, India, the US, the Caribbean and Spain.
JOYCE YANG (France) is program manager for News Decoder, an international educational news service based in France. She recently completed a Master of Public Policy degree at Sciences Po Paris focusing on education policy. She also holds a Master of Arts in Teaching from the University of California. She is a former classroom teacher in the United States and France and an advocate for equitable access to education. For News Decoder, she recently wrote about the significance of global citizenship education in schools.
WENDY TRIBALDOS (Panama) is a journalist, educator and museum studies specialist. She is co-author of News Literacy and News Publishers, a 7-part report and database, and a prize-winning practitioner of youth engagement strategies for news media. She is the author of several books updating Panamanian history, the most recent of which sheds new light on the crucial role of secondary students in its development. While at La Prensa in Panama, she developed several award-winning initiatives, including highly effective and enjoyable introductions to news for children. She also serves as vice president of Global Youth & News Media.
2023 JOurnalism
FOCUS TEENAGE JOURNALISTS' PROFILES OF CLIMATE CHAMPIONS WITH NEWS DECODER AS PART OF THE THE WRITING'S ON THE WALL PROJECT
(This partnership also includes The Climate Academy at the European School Brussels II and co-financed by the European Commission as part of Erasmus+ )
JAZMÍN ACUÑA (editor) and ALEJANDRO VALDEZ SANABRIA (general manager) founded El Surtidor (Paraguay) in 2016 as a Facebook page with a small team of designers and journalists. It has since become a compelling digital news outlet and a benchmark for visual journalism in Latin America. It was the top laureate for The Planet Award of the 2018 Global Youth & News Media Prize for its illustrated series about deforestation in the Chaco region, the second most important ecosystem in South America. That work also received the Gabriel Garcia Márquez Gabo Award for innovation. El Surtidor has since devoted a full section to the coverage of the climate crisis: https://elsurti.com/futuros.
MARCY BURSTINER (Ireland/USA) is the educational news director for News Decoder. She is a graduate of the Columbia Journalism School and has taught journalism for more than 15 years at the California Polytechnic University, Humboldt. She is the author of the textbook Investigative Reporting: From premise to publication. For News Decoder, she recently wrote about the connection between teen mental health and climate change news.
NICK CLARK (Qatar) is the chief environment editor and a senior presenter at Al Jazeera English, where he has worked since 2006. He also hosts “Plan It Green,” a series of short, sharp examinations of current environmental issues. In addition to a rich background in broadcast and print journalism, he studied ocean science during a Knight Science Journalism Fellow (2013-2014) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
JOHNNY DABROWSKIi (Poland) became a climate activist at Fridays For Future Poland in 2019 and now coordinates the international Climate Education Coalition. The group, led by Earthday.org and launched during COP27, unites 100 organizations in a quest to get the world leaders to give adequate funding and attention to education about the largest crisis any generation has had to face. The coalition also aims to create a youth movement around climate education.
LAUREN HEUSER (Canada) is founder and publisher of Canadian Affairs News Inc. (launch in mid-2023), She was the chief strategy officer of News Decoder and helped originate The Writing's on the Wall project. Previously, she worked as a deputy section editor at one of Canada's national newspapers and as an international journalist. Prior to entering journalism, she was a corporate lawyer at an international law firm. She holds a master of business administration from INSEAD (France) and a juris doctor from the University of Toronto.
BELLA LACK (United Kingdom) has been an environmental activist since age 11 when she saw a video about the effect of palm oil on orangutans. She is the author of Children of The Anthropocene (Penguin, 2022), which describes youth who are combating the environmental crisis. She is an ambassador for the Born Free Foundation, RSPCA and Jane Goodall Institute. She co-starred in the 2021 documentary ANIMAL, directed by Cyril Dion (Demain/Tomorrow) and also featuring French climate activist Vipulan Puvaneswaran and Jane Goodall, the British primatologist and anthropologist She has been the Youth Ambassador for the Born Free Foundation since 2018 and is also part of the Ivory Alliance, which is a group of political leaders and other influencers working to combat the Illegal Wildlife Trade.
MALGORZATA ”Gosia” LUSZCZEK (Denmark) directs Young Reporters for the Environment (YRE), which gives more than 400,000 young people ages 11-25 worldwide a platform to research environmental issues and promote solutions through investigative reporting, photography, and video journalism. After graduating with an environmental engineering degree in her native Poland, she spent more than two decades promoting environmental education there, including instilling a nationwide school environment program. YRE was a Planet Award laureate for the 2018 Global Youth & News Media Prize.
KATINA PARON (USA), an editor, author and journalism educator, has created byline opportunities for youth reporters for nearly three decades. She specializes in running journalism program focused on environmental and feminist issues. She was a founding director of the Institute for Environmental Reporting, a summer program for teenage journalists run by Inside Climate News. She edits a monthly teen-written feature in Ms. magazine and served as senior project editor for the teenage journalists who profiled the 1200+ young victims of gun violence in “Since Parkland,” the top Journalism Award laureate of the 2019 Global Youth & News Media Prize. She is the author of “A NewsHound’s Guide to Student Journalism'' (McFarland), a comic book-style resource for classrooms and newsrooms.
SUE PHILLIPS (United Kingdom, France) is a trustee at News Decoder, which is Global Youth & News Media’s partner for this competition. She has spent more than three decades in senior leadership posts in media and public affairs and is a lifelong defender of the environment. At the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, she held senior production roles in London, Moscow, Rome and Washington before serving as CBC’s London Bureau Chief. At Al Jazeera, she worked as London Bureau Chief and then as Director of Foreign Bureaux, Doha. She held senior positions at the Doha Film Institute and the National Museum of Qatar. As a media consultant for the African Wildlife Foundation she produces content for a variety of global platforms. In 2017 she founded Wildlife Workshop and delivers Conservation Journalism training in Africa and Borneo. Sue is a Patron of the Borneo Nature Foundation supporting the protection of tropical rainforests and biodiversity.
RORY RUSNAK (Ireland) founded Youth for Positive Change in 2019, which spotlights young people who are making an impact in their communities and beyond. The organization also provides advice and resources to those who want to get involved in activism. Rory is involved in his own local activism and is a member of The Learning Planet Youth Council (France).
RINA TSUBAKI (Belgium) leads various science media initiatives under the Lookout Station at the European Forest Institute. Currently, she is involved in online mapping analyses, including exploring how environmental issues are brought up on social media. The most recent project on the Amazon rainforest fires explored online 'recycling' practices of media content and the role of science on Twitter and media coverage. She also designs and develops the Solution Hack for Journalism series, a journalist training programme that focuses on solutions to climate and environmental crises. Previously, for the European Journalism Centre, she implemented a wide variety of initiatives, including the Verification Handbook, a step-by-step guide for verifying user-generated content, and the News Impact series with the Google News Initiative.
CATHY WATSON (Kenya) is head of partnerships at the World Agroforestry Centre CIFOR-ICRAF, a center of science and development excellence that harnesses the benefits of trees for people and the environment. She has lived in East Africa since 1986, working first as a BBC journalist and then setting up Straight Talk Foundation, which pioneered social and behavior change communication in Uganda through award-winning newspapers for 25,000 schools, radio in 17 languages and face-to-face programmes. The initial focus was HIV prevention among youth, but it broadened into other challenges and demographic groups. She also set up Mvule Trust which provided education to over 3400 young Ugandans, including hundreds of health workers, agriculturalists, foresters and teachers.
2021 JOURNALISM CATEGORY
FOCUS: PANDEMIC NEWS FOR CHILDREN
XUE BAI (China) is the originator of From My Window: Children at Home During COVID-19, a United Nations free, downloadable book for children (also available in print) that looks at the lives of housebound children during the coronavirus epidemic. This year, she will finish a graduate degree in art and culture management at the Pratt Institute in New York, where she is a researcher and heads that school’s chapter of Net Impact, a global movement of leaders using their skills and careers to build a more just and sustainable world.
HELEN LEE BOUYGUES (France) is founder and president of the Reboot Foundation, which is devoted to elevating critical thinking through advocacy, research and resources. A former partner at the McKinsey & Company international consulting firm, she has served as interim CEO, CFO, or COO for more than a dozen companies. She is a columnist for Forbes magazine and is working on a book about critical thinking.
SANTHOSH KUMAR (India) is a specialist in gamification using game-like elements in non-game scenarios to make serious matters more memorable. He is managing partner at The BS Lab in Chennai, a design agency that helps brands connect to their customers through memorable fun engagements. During the initial days of pandemic, his company The Gamification Republic, created quizzes using Indian mythology as a theme to convey the protocols to be followed. He is also founder of Mooremarket, a closed group community for conscious consumption with more than 85,000 members.
ALISON MESTON (France) is communications director at the International Science Council. Prior to joining the ISC, she worked in the Communication and Information sector at UNESCO, as director of Press Freedom for WAN-IFRA (the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers), and as a public affairs officer for the British Red Cross. She also spent 12 years in the labour movement in Australia and the UK, organizing campaigns in sectors such as nursing, care homes, education, and the food and airline industries.
GUGULETHU NDEBELE (South Africa) became chief executive officer at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in 2019. The academy opened in 2007 with a mission “welcoming talented, underprivileged girls to a new lifestyle; a world filled with knowledge, social skill development and possibilities.” Previously she spent five years as CEO of Save the Children South Africa and 18 years in the Department of Basic Education where, since 2007, she had been deputy director general responsible for social mobilisation and support services (including a range of health-promoting programmes).
SWETA PAL (INDIA) is communications director at It’s Ok To Talk, an initiative of the Goa-based youth mental health research organization Sangath, where she also leads the India chapter for the global Speak Your Mind campaign. She also co-leads Outlive! with Gonsalves, a national youth suicide prevention public engagement initiative. Previously, she was communications officer at Public Health Foundation of India (Gurgaon) and a journalist for Prevention magazine.She is an expert in health communications, development of online and offline mental health campaigns, setting up and supporting youth advisory groups and youth training programmes especially for youth with lived experience of mental health needs.
MARIANE [VAN NEYENHOFF] PEARL (Spain) is a journalist based in Barcelona whose work often focuses on people who are often overlooked, particularly the women and children who live in communities plagued by poverty and conflict. In 2019, she co-founded The Meteor, a platform built by a collective of activists, journalists, and creators to focus on modern feminist work. She is the widow of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl who was kidnapped and assassinated in Pakistan in 2002 and a board member of The Daniel Pearl Foundation, which promotes mutual respect and understanding among diverse cultures through journalism, music and dialogue. She is author of A Mighty Heart, a celebration of her husband’s life and a call for peace and In Search of Hope: The Global Diaries of Mariane Pearl, a collection of her columns for Glamour. She is managing editor emeritus at the Chime for Change Foundation, which fosters empowerment of women and girls around the world via access to education, health and justice.
DR. KRISTI WESTPHALN (United States) is a PhD-prepared pediatric nurse practitioner and child health expert with over 15 years of clinical expertise caring for children and families. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow with the Department of Bioethics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and practicing at the University Hospitals Rainbow Center for Women and Children. As a senior fellow with the George Washington University Center for Health Policy and Media Engagement, she was a host and co-producer for Healthcetera radio and co-authored studies exploring the presence of nurses as sources for health news stories (Woodhull Study Revisited). Since 2019, she has served as a health consultant for Cleveland's public broadcast affiliate, Ideastream, where she hosts and co-produces the Health’s Up podcast that focuses on healthy choices through the voices of children and teenagers.
IAN YEE (Malaysia) is co-founder of The Fourth, a not-for-profit social enterprise focusing on investigative and impact journalism projects which use video-driven multimedia content and activism campaigns to create positive change on social justice issues. He is also executive director of the Environmental Reporting Collective, a network of investigative journalists from across the globe who collaborate on massive cross-border environmental reporting projects. He is also co-founder of As a journalist, editor, and producer, Ian's work has concentrated on stories of interest to and with an impact on young people (particularly with the R.AGE team in Malaysia). He and the R.Age team at the Malaysia Star won nearly 40 awards and two Peabody Award nominations. Ian is also currently an Obama Foundation Leader and Acumen Fellow.
2021 NEWS/MEDIA LITERACY CATEGORY
FOCUS: Inaugural Scott C. Schurz Press Freedom Teacher Award
ZAFFAR ABBAS is a Pakistani journalist, who has been the editor of Pakistan's English-language daily DAWN, since October 2010. DAWN is the country's oldest and largest English-language publication and now a multimedia enterprise. Mr. Abbas was the 2019 honoree of the Committee to Protect Journalists' Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award, for extraordinary and sustained achievement in the cause of press freedom. DAWN, founded in 1941, has a long history of aiding education in Pakistan and regularly teaches its readers about the importance of press freedom, most recently in this article published on World Press freedom Day 2021.
Dr. DOAN VIET HOAT (USA). Before the Vietnames government sent him to jail for a total of 22 years, Doan Viet Hoat had received a Ph.D. in education from Florida State University (Tallahassee) and was a professor and then vice president of Van Hanh University (a Buddhist private university in Saigon). Before, during and after his incarceration, he has worked constantly to advance the cause of freedom of expression and to help his native land. For example, when he met with the leadership of The World Association of Newspapers, which had awarded him its Golden Press of Freedom, he asked them to organize a continuing education program for Vietnamese journalists. This interview, meant as a resource for teaching human rights, offers a glimpse of what this man is all about.
JAN-WILLEM BULT (Netherlands) is head of Children, Youth & Media at Free Press Limited, a global media development NGO based in Amsterdam and chief editor of its WADADA News for Kids which has provided a global journalistic voice for children around the world since 2004. He is founder of the Children in the Centre Foundation, which assists child enrichment projects worldwide, and past president of the Eurovision Children's and Youth TV Experts Group. After a 14-year career as head of children’s programming for Dutch public broadcasting (NPO), he founded his own company in 2014 to create films for children and adults around the world.
MELISSA FALKOWSKI (USA) is faculty adviser to The Eagle Eye student newsmagazine at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida, where she has taught all levels of secondary English since joining the faculty in 2004. Along with The Guardian US, The Eagle Eye was co-recipient in 2018 of the first Global Youth & News Media Prize in recognition of their joint coverage of the March for Our Lives demonstration that year in favor of gun control. In 2019, she was named National High School Journalism Teacher of the Year by Columbia University's Scholastic Press Association for her courage during and after the shooting deaths of 17 students and faculty at her school on February 14, 2018 and her ability to "inspire her student staff to report through the tragic aftermath." She is co-editor with Eric Garner of We Say #NeverAgain: Reporting by the Parkland Student Journalists. She has degrees in English education (Florida Atlantic University ) and journalism (Kent State University).
SOLOMON ELLIOTT (United Kingdom) founded The Student View in 2016 as a media literacy charity to train teenagers across the United Kingdom about how to spot misinformation and as local news reporters. Previously he was a community organizer and teacher of English and politics in South London. In 2019, he became a member of the BBC’s Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Group to improve BBC on how it portrays all of the UK’s communities. That same year, The Student View received the top News/Media Literacy Award in the 2019 Global Youth & News Media Prize.
SHAELYNN FARNSWORTH (USA) senior director of partnership strategy at the News Literacy Project, based in Washington DC, which was a news/media literacy laureate for the 2019 Global Youth & News Media Prize. Her more than 20 years of experience in education began when she taught secondary school English in Conrad, Iowa, where she focused on information consumption skills, creating innovative ways for students to demonstrate understanding, and inspiring healthy skepticism about digital content. She was recruited by a regional state education agency in Iowa, where she spent seven years supporting districts throughout the state in literacy, technology, artificial intelligence and systemic change. She was a member of the state’s literacy, social studies, and technology leadership teams. She holds two degrees in English from the University of Northern Iowa.
Dr. PAUL MIHAILIDIS (Austria, USA) is an associate professor of civic media and journalism and assistant dean in the school of communication at Emerson College in Boston, MA, where he teaches media literacy, civic media, and community activism. He is founding program director of the MA in Media Design, Senior Fellow of the Emerson Engagement Lab, and faculty chair and director of the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change. His work has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Slate Magazine, the Nieman Foundation, USA Today, Newsweek, CNN, and others. He sits on numerous Editorial Boards, and the advisory board for iCivics.
Dr. CRISTIANE PARENTE DE SÁ BARRETO (Portugal, Brazil) is a global consultant, researcher, teacher trainer and columnist on media and education.
She is managing director at Iandé Comunicação e Educação (Brazil) and has conducted studies and programmes for universities, media and NGOs all over the world. Previously, she coordinated 60 news in education programmes for the Brazilian publishers association, Associação Nacional de Jornais. Her doctorate is in media education from Universidade do Minho (Portugal) with an emphasis on media literacy.
CHIDO ONUMAH (Nigeria and Canada) is coordinator of the African Centre for Media & Information Literacy (AFRICMIL), set up in 2008. He is chair of the Pan-African Alliance for Media & Information Literacy (PAMIL). He has also worked for over two decades as a journalist, rights activist and media trainer in Nigeria, Ghana, Canada, India, the US, the Caribbean and Spain.
MARGARET HOLBORN (United Kingdom) is head of secondary and higher education at the Guardian Foundation and manages the Behind the Headlines programme, which runs workshops for young people at its Education Centre based in London, virtually and in schools in the UK. Since 2002,153,000 young people, teachers and adults have taken part in their activities. Prior to setting up the Centre she was a teacher and manager in a South London secondary school, where she taught history, politics and citizenship along with careers and business studies.
ANDREW HESLOP (France & Germany, UK) is executive director of media freedom at WAN-IFRA, The World Association of News Publishers. He has been with WAN-IFRA since 2010 and was previously responsible for editorial and communications in the Press Freedom and Media Development team. Based in Paris, he has worked throughout the Middle East, Africa and Asia as part of WAN-IFRA's on-going efforts to defend press freedom and support independent news publishers. Andrew, who is British, previously worked for over 10 years as a journalist and editor in the UK, Spain and France.
SOTIRIA TSALAMANI (Belgium) is a part of the multicultural team of EAVI- Media Literacy for Citizenship as a learning designer. EAVI aims to empower individuals to be active, engaged citizens in today’s increasingly challenging media environment. She is the author of several articles at EAVI including, Press Freedom: One of the pillars for democratic societies. She holds a degree in modern Greek language & literature (Democritus University of Thrace, Greece), is pursuing a master’s in educational sciences (Vrije Universiteit, Belgium), and holds a British educator certificate. Sotiria’s work focuses on promoting media literacy skills and ensuring the fundamental human rights to establish democratic and balanced societies. EAVI stands for European Association for Viewers Interests.
GUEST JUDGES: THE PLANET AWARDS
JAZMÍN ACUÑA (Paraguay) is editor at El Surtidor, a visual news digital outlet that was the top laureate for The Planet Award of the 2018 Global Youth & News Media Prize. With her team, she also received the Gabriel Garcia Márquez prize in innovation in 2018 and the Peter Benenson award by Amnesty International. She previously worked in public broadcasting and did research on the role of media in the justice and reconciliation process in South Africa. She will do her judging with Alejandro Valdez Sanabria, El Surtidor general manager.
BASANT RATHORE (India) is senior vice president for strategic planning, brand and business development at the Jagran Group, whose Dainik Jagran organization was the silver award laureate for The Planet Award of the 2019 Global Youth & News Media Prize. Previously, he worked at agencies such as Ogilvy, Mudra, Mindshare and Madison where he has planned and bought media for leading brands. He has conducted over 30 media workshops for professionals and has taught Media Management at several marquee management institutes across India. He has been with the Jagran group for the last 14 years. Under him, Dainik Jagran has emerged as the most awarded newspaper brand in India .
BELLA LACK (UK) has been an environmental activist since age 11 when she saw a video about the effect of palm oil on orangutans. Most recently, she co-stared in the documentary ANIMAL, direced by Cyril Dion (Demain/Tomorrow) and also featuring Jane Goodall, the British primatologist and anthropologist Her upcoming first book, 'Children of The Anthropocene' (Penguin, June 2022) describes youth who are combating the environmental crisis. She is an ambassador for the Born Free Foundation, RSPCA and Jane Goodall Institute. She has been the Youth Ambassador for the Born Free Foundation since 2018 and is also part of the Ivory Alliance, which is a group of 'influencers' and politicians working to combat the Illegal Wildlife Trade.
DAVID CALLAWAY (USA) founder and editor-in-chief of Callaway Climate Insights, which provides news, critical analysis and original perspectives at the intersection of global finance and the challenges of climate change. He is a former president of the World Editors Forum and worked at Bloomberg News, Marketwatch and the Boston Herald before spending six years as editor-in-chief of USA Today, the internationally distributed American daily.
SUE PHILLIPS (UK, France) is a trustee at News Decoder, which is a partner for the Global Youth & News Media Prize. She has spent more than three decades in senior leadership posts in media and public affairs. At the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, she held senior production roles in London, Moscow, Rome and Washington before serving as CBC’s London Bureau Chief. At Al Jazeera, she worked as London Bureau Chief and then as Director of Foreign Bureaux, Doha. She held senior positions at the Doha Film Institute and the National Museum of Qatar. As a media consultant for the African Wildlife Foundation she produces content for a variety of global platforms. In 2017 she founded Wildlife Workshop and delivers Conservation Journalism training in Africa and Borneo. Sue is a Patron of the Borneo Nature Foundation supporting the protection of tropical rainforests and biodiversity.
RORY RUSNAK (Ireland) founded Youth for Positive Change in 2019 at age 14, which spotlights young people who are making an impact in their communities and beyond. The organization also provides advice and resources to young people who want to get involved in activism.
RINA TSUBAKI (Spain) founded The Lookout Station at the European Forest Insitute, where the science and journalism communities use a scientific approach to explore new ways to tell climate change stories at @europeanforest. Previously, for the European Journalism Centre, she designed, developed and implemented a wide variety of initiatives, including the Verification Handbook, a step-by-step guide for verifying user-generated content, and the News Impact series for editors, newsroom managers, start-ups, developers, designers all across Europe.
CATHY WATSON (Kenya) is chief of programme development at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), a center of science and development excellence that harnesses the benefits of trees for people and the environment. She has lived in East Africa since 1986, working first as a BBC journalist and then setting up Straight Talk Foundation, which pioneered social and behaviour change communication in Uganda through award-winning newspapers for 25,000 schools, radio in 17 languages and face-to-face programmes. The initial focus was HIV prevention among youth, but it broadened into other challenges and demographic groups. She also set up Mvule Trust which provided education to over 3400 young Ugandans, including hundreds of health workers, agriculturalists, foresters and teachers,
KATINA PARON (USA), a journalism professor at Hunter College (City University of New York), has created byline opportunities for youth reporters for nearly three decades. She edits the monthly teen-written feature in Ms. magazine and served as senior project editor for the teenage journalists who profiled the 1200+ victims of gun violence in “Since Parkland,” the top Journalism Award laureate of the 2019 Global Youth & News Media Prize. She is the author of “A NewsHound’s Guide to Student Journalism'' (McFarland), a comic book-style resource for classrooms and newsrooms.
KRISTEN DAVIS (France) is founder and CEO of CinqC.co (France), which uses technology to help enterprises and societies evolve. Previously, she was director of information technology and innovation director at The International New York Times after working at Ziff-Davis APN in Australia and for Future Publishing in the UK. She also heads the USA board of APOPO, a global nonprofit using scent detection animal technology to detect landmines and tuberculosis to save lives. She is a board member at Global Youth & News Media.
CORE JURY MEMBERS
Different subsets of the Core Jury assess different categories.
CHIDO ONUMAH (Nigeria and Canada) is coordinator of the African Centre for Media & Information Literacy (AFRICMIL), set up in 2008. He is chair of the Pan-African Alliance for Media & Information Literacy (PAMIL). He has also worked for over two decades as a journalist, rights activist and media trainer in Nigeria, Ghana, Canada, India, the US, the Caribbean and Spain.
WENDY TRIBALDOS (Panama) is a journalist, educator and museum studies specialist. She is co-author of News Literacy and News Publishers, a 7-part report and database, and a prize-winning practitioner of youth engagement strategies for news media. She is the author of several books updating Panamanian history, the most recent of which sheds new light on the crucial role of secondary students in its development. While at La Prensa in Panama, she developed several award-winning initiatives, including highly effective and enjoyable introductions to news for children. She holds Panamanian citizenship.
GRZEGORZ PIECHOTA (United Kingdom) is a researcher-in-residence at the International News Media Association. An ex-fellow at Oxford and Harvard universities, he studied technology-enabled disruption patterns across industries with a focus on business model innovation in news media. He a former media executive with 20+ years of industry experience, beginning at Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza in 1996 where he worked his way up from local reporter to news editor and vice president of Agora Foundation. Among the award-winning projects he led while at Gazeta Wyborcza was the rallying of young people to save a river from destruction by a proposed highway and the massive overhaul of digital literacy in Poland’s schools.
KRISTEN DAVIS (France) As former IT & innovation director at The International New York Times, Kristen Davis has years of practical experience using technology to advance businesses and protect organizations around the world. In 2016 she founded CinqC.co, based in Paris, where her work spans the technology ecosystem, from multinational organizations and innovation labs to start-ups, using technology to help enterprises and societies evolve. She is also chairwoman of the U.S. board of APOPO, a global nonprofit using scent detection animal technology to detect landmines and tuberculosis to save lives.
JOSH LAPORTE (Belgium) is a expert advisor on independent media development and press freedom. Most recently he led projects for Internews and the International Press Institute that supported media development and media literacy initiatives across Central and Eastern Europe. He directed media development at the European Journalism Centre (2006 to 2020) with programs across Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America that used an advocacy-strengthening approach focused on youth media literacy, journalist safety, diversity/accountability reporting and access to independent information.
DARA ROSEN (USA) is a former chief editor at The Eagle Eye, the newsmagazine of Marjory Stoneman High School in Parkland, Florida, which was the co-recipient of the first, honorary Global Youth & News Media Prize in 2018. The other co-recipient was The Guardian US. She is now a journalism student at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, Florida. She is a special advisor to Global Youth & News Media and currently assisting with the #HowToSaveOurPlanetStep1 Project.
WITH THANKS TO THESE PREVIOUS GUEST JURORS
KYLE PLANTZ (USA) directs the J+ professional development program at the Craig Newmark Graduage School of Journalism, City University of New York. Previously, he has worked with National Association for Media Literacy Education, and the Solutions Journalism Network. He also continues as a fact-checker and reporter. Past work for a wide variety of USA news outlets includes covering statehouses, science and with an emphasis on stories that tell the story from a voice otherwise not heard
BENEDICTE AUTRET (France) joined the Google Syndication team in 2005 and has since embraced the world of partnership with news organizations. Initially working with some of the largest UK print companies, broadcasters and telcoms she now serves as Google’s head of strategic relations for news & publishers for the United Kingdom, Ireland, France & Benelux. Prior to joining Google, she worked for WILink Europe. She holds a degree from the EDHEC Business School in France. [She did not have a vote in cases with Google involvement.]
ANNE COLLIER (USA) is a youth advocate and executive director of The Net Safety Collaborative, the national non-profit organization that is piloting the new social media helpline for U.S. schools and helping Google update its global Be Internet Awesome digital literacy initiative. She has served on three national task forces on youth internet safety, most recently for the Obama administration, and now serves on the safety advisory boards of Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and YouTube. Earlier in her career, she worked on print, radio, TV, and web editions of the Christian Science Monitor and was editor of its first web site in the mid-’90s. She has been writing about children and connected media at NetFamilyNews.org since the late-'90s. [She did not vote in cases with Google involvement.]
ADNAN KAKA SHAFI (Kenya) is the founder and CEO of Sauti Afrika, a podcast that aims to help youth talk about difficult issues in their communities. The podcast is based in the African Leadership Academy and continues to work under a new team to chase it's vision to 'Foster tolerance through conversation'. He represented African Leadership Academy as a student ambassador and content contributor with News Decoder for the 2018-2019 academic year.
BARBARA MCCORMACK (USA) is vice president for education at the Freedom Forum Institute in Washington DC. She leads the team responsible for creating NewseumED: quality, educational resources and programs on First Amendment freedoms and media literacy. Through on-site and virtual classes and its website, NewseumED reaches 10 million students. She works to promote access to media literacy resources as a member of the steering committee for the North American subchapter of GAPMIL, UNESCO’s effort to promote media and information literacy worldwide. A former middle and high school teacher, she and her team have been recognized by the Journalism Education Association, the National Council for the Social Studies, and the Education Commission for the States for their contributions to the teaching of the First Amendment and news and media literacy.
ADAM THOMAS (Netherlands) was director of the European Journalism Centre (EJC) (departure set for summer 2021), an independent European non-profit connecting journalists with new ideas based in the Netherlands. In his previous role as Chief Product Officer at Storyful, he led five teams of developers and designers, creating products for world’s biggest media organisations. Previously, he was Head of Communications at the international nonprofit Sourcefabric and worked on media development projects in over 50 countries worldwide. [He did not have a vote in cases with EJC involvement.]
JO WEIR (Canada, UK) - Based in London, she is a media development expert and currently serves as editorial director at Al-Fanar Media, which covers education, research and culture in the Arab World. She spent 25 years at the Reuters Foundation where she was the director of Journalism Training and Media Development. During that time she directed projects in over 90 countries where training and mentoring was provided to over 13000 journalists, including helping set up Iraq’s first independent news agency, Aswat al-Iraq. As a consultant, she works with Chime For Change and others on humanitarian projects which empower women and girls, and with UN agencies, the European Union, NGOs and companies on media development projects. She was a co-founder of the Global Youth & News Media Prize with Aralynn McMane.