Speakers | Temasek Foundation - WAN-IFRA Journalism Programme: CHALLENGE OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS
Temasek Foundation - WAN-IFRA Journalism Programme: CHALLENGE OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS
Fergus Bell is the founder and CEO of Fathm, an independent news lab and consultancy. He is an experienced journalist, editor and leading expert in digital newsgathering, verification, newsroom innovation and collaborative journalism projects.
Fergus’ experience spans both the business and editorial sides of the news industry. He spent eight years at the Associated Press, where he became their first International Social Media and UGC Editor. He then headed up newsroom partnerships and innovation for digital newsgathering start-up, SAM Desk.
In 2015 Fergus founded Dig Deeper Media, advising broadcasters, publishers and start-ups on social and digital newsgathering, newsroom transformation and innovation.
In 2017 he co-founded Pop-Up Newsroom, a framework for collaborative journalism projects that has already seen success in the US, UK, India, Sweden and with the multi-award winning “Verificado” – an initiative designed to monitor for misinformation during the Mexican elections. In 2019 Pop-Up Newsroom was a core architect and partner of India’s ground-breaking Checkpoint initiative that innovated heavily with WhatsApp to tackle misinformation in the world’s largest election.
Fergus has been a Reynolds Journalism Institute Fellow and is a graduate of the University of Leeds.
Director, Digital Skills Agency, Australia
Corinne Podger is a results-driven consultant and training facilitator, through her consultancy, the Digital Skills Agency. She has a proven track record of supporting newsrooms, NGOs and social impact organisations in more than 50 countries to implement digital innovations that grow audiences and support business priorities. Corinne’s expertise draws on more than 30 years in the media industry as a reporter, editor, lecturer and author. Her specialisms include digital-first newsgathering, online verification, mobile journalism, social multimedia production, podcasting and audio storytelling, and strategic audience engagement that drives brand awareness and media revenue. Her clients include WAN-IFRA, Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union, European Journalism Centre, Thomson Reuters Foundation, BBC Media Action, and ABC Australia. She also works with science and public health organisations to tackle misinformation and disinformation. Corinne teaches on a sessional basis at the Universities of Sydney and Melbourne, and speaks regularly at international journalism conferences. She is a firm advocate of media diversity and inclusion in all her work.
Pamposh Raina is a journalist based in New Delhi. She has worked as a writer, reporter, and editor, across print, electronic, and online media. She has written on policy, politics, gender, and child rights for international publications, including Foreign Policy Magazine, U.S. News & World Report, News Deeply, and Women in the World. Pamposh has been a reporter with The New York Times and was the deputy editor for India Ink, which was NYT’s first-ever country-specific blog. She has also been a special correspondent, South Asia, for AFP.
Her recent work has focussed on analysing misinformation and disinformation on social media and closed messaging apps in India. She led a research project commissioned by WhatsApp that analysed the misinformation trends natively on the messaging app during the 2019 Indian parliamentary election. She also initiated a student-led project at UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center that focused on studying disinformation on social media in the run-up to the Indian election. She is part of Google News Initiative’s network of trainers in India. She conducts workshops on fact-checking and verification.
Pamposh has a master’s degree in Sociology from The Delhi School of Economics and got a fellowship to pursue graduate studies in Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University. She has received a UNFPA sponsored journalism award for gender reporting in India.
Journalist and consultant
Yusof Abdul-Rahman is a journalist and consultant. He spends much of his time looking at the way technological innovation affects social behaviour.
Yusof’s career began over 20 years ago with the Associated Press in London. He spent four years at AP’s Beijing bureau before returning to London in 2005 as a senior editor on the International desk. He has also worked at Euronews, Europe’s major multilingual broadcast channel.
An advocate for effective digital and video strategy, Yusof has most recently worked as a consultant at Malaysia’s National News Agency (Bernama) to help them with convergence strategy and news transformation. He has also worked on the Checkpoint initiative.
Portia Ladrido is a journalist and editor from the Philippines. She is Co-Founder of INKLINE, a media platform based in Oxford, UK, that specializes in solutions journalism. INKLINE is one of the 21 fellows of Solutions Journalism Network’s inaugural LEDE Fellowship, in which the team produced and commissioned in-depth, solutions-based stories on climate change. In parallel to these features, workshops were held in the UK, India, and the Philippines to discuss why climate change solutions are not more prevalent in the media landscape and the ways that can be done to tackle these barriers.
Portia is also the lead convener of the Solutions Journalism Philippines community, a diverse group of reporters, development workers, and academics who are interested in and dedicated to the rigorous reporting of solutions. Previously, she was an editor at CNN Philippines Life, the digital features arm of CNN Philippines. During her time at CNN, she was awarded the Human Rights Journalism Fellowship by the Philippine Human Rights Information Center for her coverage of social issues. The fellowship also allowed her to investigate the human rights abuses perpetrated by the military on peasant farmers in Eastern Visayas, one of the poorest regions in the Philippines.
Portia graduated with a Master's degree in International Journalism at Cardiff University, UK through an international scholarship awarded by the Cardiff University College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences.
Joi Lee is an Emmy-nominated producer and multimedia journalist who covers issues faced by marginalized communities. She began producing virtual reality and 360 video while at RYOT in Los Angeles and Huff Post in New York, where she covered the Syrian refugee crisis and the climate crisis. Joi then joined Al Jazeera in 2017 to help build a new immersive media unit, AJ Contrast, where she won several awards for her work. She produced stories that tackled the conflict in Yemen, the Syrian refugee crisis, air pollution in North Macedonia, food insecurity in Nigeria, and more. While at Al Jazeera, she also developed and launched several new digital series, like Fork the System which looks at food and politics.
Democratizing storytelling tools and platforms and supporting people to author their own narratives is a core tenet of Joi’s work. She has led workshops worldwide on 360 video storytelling, built award-winning citizen journalism networks at RYOT and Al Jazeera, and has taught as an Adjunct Lecturer at Northwestern University in Qatar. Joi is currently getting her MSc in Environmental Change and Management at the University of Oxford.
