The Jury

NOTE: Judges 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.

2023 News/MEDIA LITERACY CATEGORY

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.

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.

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.

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. He is a board member of Global Youth & News Media.

2023 JOurnalism Category

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.

GUEST Jurors:

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.

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.

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.

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.

THE JURY

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