In a RightsCon session hosted by GIJN, three editors shared survival strategies for independent newsrooms in authoritarian nations, as threats to the press, and institutions of accountability, grow around the world. They described a form of journalistic judo, where journalists can find advantages in the very tactics used to repress them.
Media startups from the Arab world have had to battle censorship, lack of funding and unstable political environments. In a roundtable hosted by GIJN in December at the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism forum in Jordan, founders of four startups shared their innovation tactics to survive and thrive, including renting out excess office space, training, events and paid newsletter subscriptions.
Ten years ago, when I first moved to New York and gave my first lecture at the Columbia Journalism School, I told students that I believe we are at the dawn of a Golden Age of global muckraking. They were a great class, but they didn’t believe me. But look at where we are now.
