Cristi Hegranes is out to change the world using journalism as a development tool.
After being assigned as a foreign correspondent and seeing editorial decisions being made on the other side of the world by editors who thought they understood better than she just what the story actually was when she was on the ground seeing the story unfold, she decided not only that there had to be a better way but that she'd create it.
She created the Global Press Institute, the Global Press Journal and the Global Press New Service to train reporters, publish their articles and syndicate them, respectively.
On Tuesday, March 31, 2015 at noon Eastern, Hegranes will join me for a live discussion about her innovative work in journalism. Tune in here then to watch the interview live.
You can download an audio podcast here or subscribe via iTunes.
More about Global Press Institute:
GPI is an award-winning, high-impact social venture that uses journalism as a development tool to educate, employ, and empower women in developing media markets to produce professional local news coverage that elevates global awareness and catalyzes social change. GPI operates a unique training-to-employment program that teaches the principles and practice of journalism and builds the skills necessary for local women to become successful professional journalists.
Every woman who completes the training program is offered long-term employment at a living wage to become a reporter for Global Press Journal, the cutting-edge online home of GPI news coverage. The Journal is the premier publication specializing in news from developing media markets, and features unique stories on local issues overlooked by mainstream media.
Through Global Press News Service, GPI’s pioneering news syndication platform, the Journal’s content is shared with media partners and NGOs around the globe, including Al Jazeera America, the BBC Online, Reuters, and UPI, and is seen by more than 15 million readers each month. The News Service enables GPI to derive revenue from the sale of our sought-after news content and to accelerate our social impact by dramatically expanding our readership.
Three links for reference:
globalpressinstitute.org
globalpressjournal.com
globalpressnewsservice.com
Hegranes' bio:
Cristi Hegranes is the Founder and Executive Director of Global Press Institute (GPI) and the Publisher and Executive Editor of Global Press Journal (GPJ). A 2013 Ashoka Fellow, Cristi is an experienced social entrepreneur, a media innovation pioneer, and a renowned international journalism trainer. GPI is an award-winning, high-impact social venture that uses journalism as a development tool to educate, employ, and empower women in developing media markets to produce professional local news coverage that elevates global awareness and catalyzes social change. GPI has trained and employed 159 journalists across 26 developing countries, including Guatemala, Cameroon, India, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mexico, and Sri Lanka. After serving as a foreign correspondent in Nepal, Cristi founded GPI in 2006 to demonstrate a new way forward for the field of international journalism. Cognizant of the gender disparity in media and the one-dimensional portrait of developing communities often painted by Western news outlets, Cristi created GPI to provide a professional training opportunity and a global platform for local people to report on their communities for a global audience .Cristi has also developed a dynamic new business model for international journalism through Global Press News Service (GPNS), a state-of-the-art syndication service that enables GPI to magnify its social impact and drive revenue from the sale of GPJ news content to media organizations, corporations, and NGOs. GPNS meets a market need by providing professional, diverse, affordable international news content to its partners. All of the revenue from GPNS is reinvested into GPI trainings and GPJ content creation in order to create a holistic social enterprise.Previously, Cristi had a successful career as a journalist for Village Voice Media in New York and San Francisco. She has a Master’s degree in Journalism from New York University and a Bachelor’s degree from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Cristi also served as a fellow-in-residence at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg and has taught courses in entrepreneurship and journalism at San Francisco State University and California State University, East Bay.Recognized for developing a high-quality, sustainable model of international journalism that is rooted in the perspective of local communities, Cristi has received a wide range of prestigious social entrepreneurship and journalism accolades. She is the recipient of the Grinnell College Young Innovator for Social Justice Prize, the Jefferson Award for Public Service, the Society of Professional Journalists Journalism Innovation Prize, a New Media Web Award, a Clarion Award for Investigative Journalism, and a Lifestyle Journalism Prize. She will also be recognized as the 2015 Distinguished Young Alumni of New York University next April. Cristi lives and works in San Francisco with her new baby bulldog, Louise.
