The people of Beta 2025

Germany

DW Akademie

News isn’t free — even for the bots. Here are 5 ways to monetise in the age of AI

Attila is a freelance journalist and consultant with DW Freedom, the media development think tank of DW Akademie — Germany’s leading media development organisation, which invests in research, builds networks, and advocates for free and open media systems worldwide, including efforts to address the financial challenges facing the news industry. A former Stanford University John S. Knight Journalism Fellow, he works at the intersection of media, digital strategy, and media viability, helping independent media startups build sustainable models. His current focus is developing one of DW Freedom’s key thematic areas: journalism financing in the age of AI.

United States of America

Field Nine Group

How I’m rebuilding journalism’s trust infrastructure by working with creators

Adriana Lacy is the CEO of Field Nine Group, a media and technology company driving innovation at the intersection of consulting, analytics, and storytelling. Within Field Nine Group, she leads Influencer Journalism, which helps news organisations collaborate with creators to strengthen trust and engagement. Recognised on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, Adriana has held roles in newsrooms including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and Axios, and now teaches media strategy to emerging journalists. Through her ventures and teaching, she champions new models that bridge traditional media with today’s digital communities.

Indonesia

Pulitzer Center

What the vanishing Thai mackerel taught us about rethinking journalism, action, and art

Intan manages the International Education and Outreach team at the Pulitzer Center, connecting journalism with audiences in the Global South. Before joining the Center, she led communications projects in Indonesia across gender equality, public health, and cultural relations. She is passionate about making information and knowledge accessible to build empathy, solidarity, and informed action.

United Kingdom

climateXchange

Why media needs advanced tools to re-shape climate coverage -- and that's where tech comes in

Shereen Daver is Programme Director and Innovation Lead at ClimateXchange (cXc), where she leads product and services at the intersection of journalism, technology, and data. With over 20 years in global communications and a focus on sustainability strategy, she led the creation of Maai, the world’s first Climate Narrative Intelligence Platform. Her work focuses on redefining climate storytelling through evidence, empathy, and systems thinking, empowering journalists to create reporting that informs, inspires, and drives real-world change.

Thailand

Multidisciplinary artist and curator

What the vanishing Thai mackerel taught us about rethinking journalism, action, and art

Pongpan Suriyapat is a multidisciplinary artist and curator known for transforming investigative journalism and community stories into immersive installations, including the acclaimed “I Miss You Pla Too Thai” project on Thailand’s vanishing mackerel. His exhibition work spans museums, public spaces, and world expos.

Indonesia

Tatkala.co

How a literary community in Bali survives the media apocalypse

Kadek Sonia Piscayanti is a writer, producer, playwright, lecturer, and researcher. She established the Mahima Community and the Mahima Indonesia Foundation to actively promote literacy and literature in Singaraja, North Bali. Her diverse literary contributions include the poetry anthology Burning Hair, the short story collection The Woman Without a Name, and the play Jayaprana Layonsari dan 11 Kisah Ibu. Expanding her influence globally, Piscayanti has spoken and performed at international events, such as the Oz-Asia Festival and cultural programs in France and the Netherlands, and founded the Singaraja Literary Festival in 2023.

India

BehanBox

Saumya Kalia is an associate editor at BehanBox, where she reports on labour, care, and communities. She has previously worked with The Hindu and The Swaddle, and as a reporting fellow covered issues of health rights and civic liberties. Her work has been recognised by the James Beard Foundation and Laadli Media Awards, among others. Saumya is drawn to experimenting with new forms and futures of storytelling. 

Pakistan

TCM News

Talha Ahad is a journalist podcaster and media entrepreneur telling Pakistan’s stories in a fresh digital-first way. He’s the Founder and CEO of The Centrum Media (TCM) the country’s first digital news network that brings powerful human stories to millions every month. He also hosts The Talha Ahad Podcast one of Pakistan’s most premium shows featuring four Prime Ministers corporate leaders changemakers and global guests. Through his work Talha is reimagining journalism blending storytelling creativity and purpose to create conversations that matter.

India

Report for the World

Preethi Nallu is co-founder and executive director at Report for the World, part of the Groundtruth Project. She was a founding editor at News Deeply. Born in Iran, raised in India, Preethi's career spans 14 countries across the global north and south. She has researched, reported and campaigned about humanitarian and media development issues. Her films and reports won multiple Webby awards, Migration Media awards, and the Human Rights Press Prize.

India

Independent Consultant

Panel: The days of mass audience traffic are over: What we’ve learned in Pakistan and India, and what we’ll do in 2026

Chitranshu has over a decade of experience in product and subscription roles in media. In his most recent role, he led the product and subscription business at Newslaundry — one of India’s leading reader-funded independent media organisations—where he oversaw teams that designed, built, and scaled forward-thinking products. His work was recognised with the WAN-IFRA Global Media Award for Best Innovative Digital Product. In 2024, he was among 25 media leaders globally selected for the AI Journalism Lab at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.

India

Newslaundry

Jayashree Arunachalam is Executive Editor and Chief Community Officer at Newslaundry, an independent, reader-supported website in India. She’s been a journalist and editor for over 16 years, working at publications like The Hindu and Fountain Ink. In her current avatar, she works at the intersection of partnerships, community and events to drive a successful subscription model at Newslaundry.

Syria

Lighthouse Reports

Panel: 2025 showed us the limits of journalism. We have better ideas on how to actually make it useful for our audiences

Bashar is an investigative journalist with a specialisation in digital investigations. He has participated in different teams that have produced groundbreaking reports on various issues such as the violation of human rights of asylum seekers at EU’s borders, Europe’s secretive phosphates trade with Syria, and tracking EU arms in conflict zones. In the past he has collaborated with The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Forensic Architecture, BBC and Channel 4.

Myanmar

SOZO LAB

How to use AI to create testable prototypes for your community

Linn Htet is a digital product leader with over 12 years of experience turning ideas into human-centred tech solutions. He is passionate about education and digital development in emerging countries, and has led multiple innovation projects that helped organisations transform and digitise during the pandemic. At SOZO LAB, he designs and manages tools and platforms that help communities, startups, and nonprofits prototype faster and smarter.

Myanmar

SOZO LAB

How to use AI to create testable prototypes for your community

Kyaw Tun Sein is a creative technologist and education innovator with over 10 years of experience building full-stack digital solutions for social impact. At SOZO LAB, Kyaw leverages his decade of expertise to deliver scalable, user-centred digital products designed to solve complex social challenges. From ideation to implementation, he combines technology, pedagogy, and community insights to create responsible, impactful tools that enhance learning, inclusion, and digital resilience on a global scale.

Philippines

Amber Studios

How I dropped out of traditional media to build my own creative lab

Jacque Manabat has transitioned from a celebrated, decades-long career as a senior multi-platform journalist at the Philippines' largest broadcasting network to becoming an independent producer and creative entrepreneur. Jacque is the co-founder of Amber Studios, a vibrant post-production hub and creative lab dedicated to shaping the next wave of Filipino content.

Italy

Code for Africa

How to recalibrate your grant work in the post-USAID era

Jacopo Ottaviani is a computer scientist who works as Code for Africa’s Senior Strategist. As an ICFJ Knight Fellow in 2016-2019, Jacopo built teams and programs funded by the World Bank, Google News Initiative, GIZ, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. His mix of technical skills, as a computer scientist and data journalist, has resulted in a series of projects published by, among others, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, El País, and Internazionale.

United States

Lighthouse Reports

Global funders come with agendas. We avoided those, and used our funding for community-driven investigations

Eva Constantaras is Data Editor at Lighthouse Reports. She has spent most of her career as an itinerant data journalist, setting up data teams in newsrooms in Global Majority countries. She is also a Google Data Journalism Scholar, a Fulbright Fellow, and a winner of the Sigma Data Journalism and Philip Meyer Award. She is currently based in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Philippines

AI Ethicist

How I reset my life, found myself in AI ethics, and stumbled back into media

Carl Javier is a writer by training, but has a career that has spanned journalism, academe, publishing, development work, and more. He was the CEO of PumaPodcast for 4 years, the Managing Editor of Anino Comics for 5 years, and has been a teacher for almost 20 years. He is currently the Executive Director of Data and AI Ethics PH, where he advocates for Responsible AI adoption.

Malaysia

Trident Media

How I took over a media business while grieving — and somehow made it work

Darshini Kandasamy is an award-winning journalist, media entrepreneur, and 2024–2025 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. She co-founded Between The Lines, Malaysia’s pioneering subscription-based newsletter known for its sharp, contextual coverage of politics and current affairs, and led it to 2023 through a period of profound transition after the loss of her co-founder and husband.

Mauritius

Consultant

Here’s how to build independence from the expertise you already have

Khalil is an advocate for more audiences-informed approaches in the media, and an audience development expert, with focuses on user needs, product work and AI. He's always happy to chat: he does consultations, and advises and mentors teams and individuals. He's also a long-distance swimmer, perhaps a natural consequence of living in the tropical island of Mauritius.

India

Scroll Media

I talk to machines about journalism all the time. Here’s what they don’t understand, and what we can do about it.

Sannuta Raghu is a journalist and product manager. She heads AI at Scroll.in. With her colleagues, she is building Factivo, a multimodal versioning platform for users to consume the news in a form that best fits their needs. She was recently a 2025 Journalism Fellow at the Reuters Institute, University of Oxford, where she developed a metadata blueprint to codify journalism’s 'knowledge' layer. She was also a 2024-2025 ICFJ Knight Fellow, where she built the Directory of Liquid Content to map the structural layer of journalism. 

United States of America

Journalism Cloud Alliance

Why you should support alternative tech infrastructure for journalism – and how

Michael is a Belgrade-based entrepreneur, tech sustainability consultant, and the founder of Oghia Advising, a consultancy providing strategic communications, project management, and ecosystem-building services to clients across the digital infrastructure, cyber resilience, Internet policy, and media development landscapes. He currently manages the Journalism Cloud Alliance, an initiative by GFMD and OCCRP that is making cloud-based infrastructure and services more accessible, secure, affordable, and sustainable for newsrooms and public-interest initiatives.