Rappler CEO among new board members of Global Editors Network

This is a press release from the Global Editors Network.

MANILA, Philippines – The Global Editors Network (GEN) is proud to announce the appointment of 4 new members of the GEN Board and its new Vice President for 2016.

Joining the GEN Board are Faisal Abbas, Editor-in-Chief of Al Arabiya English (UAE), Matt Kelly, CCO of the Archant Group (UK), Maria Ressa, CEO and executive editor of Rappler (Philippines), and Lara Setrakian, founder and editor-in-chief of News Deeply (USA). They were elected on 17 June by the GEN General Assembly.

Gerold Riedmann, already member of the GEN Board since 2011, has been appointed as GEN’s new Vice-President, replacing Harald Stanghelle from Aftenposten (Norway).

Since its creation in 2011, the Global Editors Network has thrived in its mission of empowering newsrooms around the world and helped define the future of journalism. Now in its sixth year, GEN has become one of the most forward-looking organizations in the world tackling and fostering innovation in the newsroom and beyond.

The 4 members joining the GEN Board this year prove the organization’s will to expand its reach globally and to tackle new challenges the journalism industry is facing today.

 

Faisal Abbas currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Al Arabiya English, part of the Al Arabiya News Channel. Having begun his career as a journalist and producer at the Future Television Network in Lebanon, he later became founding editor of the Asharq Al-Awsat’s Media Supplement, owned by the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat daily. In 2008, he became one of the first Arab editors to be featured as a regular blogger of The Huffington Post’s “World” section, and his insightful commentary on Middle Eastern and Western relations has also appeared on international outlets like the BBC, CNN and the International Herald Tribune. In addition, he has been a regular columnist for Gulf News and the Saudi Gazette. As editorial lead of Al Arabiya English since 2012, Abbas has played a key role in the network’s push to become a bridge between East and West and a go-to source for anglophone readers looking to build a deeper understanding of the region. Abbas is a member of the British Society of Authors, the National Union of Journalists, the John Adams Society and the Cambridge Union Society.

“I am honored to be considered for such an important role,” Abbas said when asked about his appointment as a GEN Board member.

 

Matt Kelly joined the Archant Group, which owns more than 130 regional publication brands in the United Kingdom, as its newly-appointed Chief Content Officer in November 2015. With ample experience on both a local and international scale and across various platforms, he has been behind the launch of successful digital brands like MirrorFootball.co.uk and 3AM.co.uk. Having begun his career in regional papers like Formby Times and Liverpool Echo, Kelly went on to occupy leadership positions at The Daily Mirror and Mirror Group Digital, and played a significant role in the digital transformation of the Argentinean newspaper Clarín as part of his role as director of the Barcelona-based consulting agency Cases i Associats. Prior to joining the Archant Group, he was Group Digital Director at Local World, now part of Trinity Mirror. Kelly is currently responsible for leading the content strategies of Archant Group’s different publications across an ample variety of platforms: from newspapers and magazines to mobile, applications and television.

“I am passionate about exploring the potential for journalism,” Kelly says, “because I think journalism needs more creativity now than it ever had. The idea that we can bring together brilliant minds to discuss this challenge as an organisation is something I’m very passionate about. I will hopefully play a role in seeing how we can open the organisation up even further so that more people feel enfranchised by the work that GEN does.”

 

Maria Ressa is a prominent figure in international journalism, having served as CNN’s bureau chief in Manila and Jakarta during 25 years. Her work, largely focused on investigative reporting and terrorism, has been widely acclaimed, and she has been a recipient of an Asian Television Award in 1999 and a Ferris Professorship of Journalism at Princeton University in 2001, among other recognitions. She also authored “Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of Al Qaeda’s Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia,” published by Free Press in 2003, and “From Bin Laden to Facebook: 10 Days of Abduction, 10 Years of Terror,” published by Imperial College Press in 2003. In 2005, as Head of News and Current Affairs for ABS-CBN, the country’s largest media network, she was responsible for leading more than a thousand journalists in the Philippines across various platforms. In 2012, she co-launched her newest venture, Rappler, an independent social news website tailored for the Southeast Asian market that features content in Bahasa Indonesia and English.

“Growth is going to come from Asia,” she says. “In general, we’re under-represented at GEN. And yet, this is where Western news organisations are going to have to move because that’s where the majority of the population in emerging economies are going online. I’m looking forward to working with this amazing, amazing group of people.”

 

Lara Setrakian is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of News Deeply, a media startup and social enterprise based in New York, USA. Having spent more than five years covering the Middle East for television, radio and digital platforms as a foreign correspondent, she also counts with extensive experience reporting for ABC News, Bloomberg Television, the International Herald Tribune, Business Insider, and Monocle. More recently, she has focused on the fusion of news and technology; Syria Deeply, News Deeply’s first platform focused on the Syrian conflict, was met with wide acclaim upon its launch in December 2012. The pioneering project was followed by others centering on the Arctic, the California Drought and the refugee crisis. Setrakian’s professional trajectory has been widely recognized, and she has gone on to serve as an inaugural fellow with the Peter Jennings Program at the National Constitution Center, a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and was named one of the Top Women of 2012 by Marie Claire. Prior to joining ABC News, she worked as a business analyst specialising in finance and corporate strategy for McKinsey & Company and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University.

“I believe so much in what GEN is doing in the world of media innovation,” she says. “Joining the board is an honour and an opportunity. Personally, I am most excited about keeping this conversation, from the [GEN Summit] conference, going the other 362 days of the year. I’m bringing those ideas to the table and, most crucially, notions of how to execute it efficiently and in lean, startup style. I think it’s really valuable to have a combination of incumbent media practitioners and startups because everything looks different from the trenches.”

GEN’s new Vice President

 

Gerold Riedmann is heading the digital transition of Austria-based publishing company Russmedia. With an emphasis on journalism, mobile devices and a services strategy he has led the regional news portal VOL.AT (Vorarlberg Online) into the Top 5 Austrian news websites.

He is the editor-in-chief of Vorarlberger Nachrichten (VN), the largest newspaper of Austria’s westernmost province Vorarlberg known for its digital innovations.

“It is a special honour that GEN’s board members – all from globally admired media organisations – trust my work,” Riedmann says when asked about his new appointment as Vice-President of the GEN Board. “Together with GEN President Peter Bale and Co-Vice President Wolfgang Blau I will support our founder and CEO Bertrand Pecquerie in building the world’s largest journalism network. I will especially work on enabling cooperations between small and medium newsrooms and the large technology companies.”

  

The full list of GEN Board Members

• ABBAS Faisal, Al-Arabiya News (English), UAE
• BALE Peter, The Center for Public Integrity, USA – GEN President
• BLAU Wolfgang, Condé Nast International, UK – GEN Vice-President
• COHN David, Advance Digital, USA
• FARNSWORTH Amanda, BBC News, UK
• FILLOUX Frederic, Monday Note, France
• GILLMOR Dan, Arizona State University, USA
• HAIK Cory, MIC, USA
• ISHIEKWENE Azubuike, formerly Leadership Newspaper Group, Nigeria
• KELLY Matt, Archant Group, UK
• KHANFAR Wadah, Al Sharq Forum, Qatar
• KIRSCHBAUM Ricardo, Clarin Group, Argentina
• MIRO-QUESADA Alejandro, Cosas, Peru
• MUELLER VON BLUMENCRON Mathias, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany
• PURIE Aroon, India Today Group, India
• RAYMOND Gilles, News Republic, France & USA
• RESSA Maria, Rappler, Philippines
• RIEDMANN Gerold, Russmedia Digital / Vorarlberger Nachrichten Austria – GEN Vice-President
• ROBERTS Jim, formerly Mashable, USA
• RUETTEN Wilfried, European Journalism Centre, The Netherlands
• SALAH Nadia, L’Economiste, Morocco
• SCHLESINGER David, Tripod Advisors, Hong Kong
• SETRAKIAN Lara, News Deeply, USA / Hong Kong
• STANGHELLE Harald, Aftenposten, Norway
• STEIGER Paul, ProPublica, USA
• STONE Martha, World Newsmedia Network, USA
• VIDAL-FOLCH Xavier, El Pais, Spain
• VILLA Monique, Thomson Reuters Foundation, UK
• WAKIM Nabil, Le Monde, France

– Rappler.com

The Global Editors Network is a cross-platform community empowering newsrooms through programmes designed to inspire, connect and share. GEN is committed to sustainable journalism. The organisation is a community of more than 1000 Editors-in-Chief and media professionals from all platforms. It is a non-profit, non-governmental association.