Robot Journalism: beyond the hype. How newsrooms in the Global South are using drones, sensors, and satellites for investigative journalism. They were initially dismissed as gadgets for geeks, but dr...
Justin Arenstein
Justin Arenstein is an award-winning journalist and media strategist who works with partners across Africa to help strengthen investigative reporting while also helping media owners adopt new technologies and build more robust business models. One of his newest projects is spearheading the continent's largest open data initiative, Code For Africa, with country programmes in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa.
Arenstein is a start-up junky. Beginning as an anti-corruption investigative journalist in South Africa, he launched the nation's first rural social justice wire-service, African Eye News Service (AENS), before helping pioneer the region's first rural lifestyle magazine publisher (HomeGrown Magazines) and Mpumalanga's first commercial radio station (MPowerFM).
He was also instrumental in establishing three major media non-profit organisations: the continental Forum for African Investigative Reporters (FAIR), the regional Association of Independent Publishers (AIP) in southern Africa, and the Southern African Freelance Association (SAFREA).
Arenstein spent 2009/10 on sabbatical as a Knight Fellow at Stanford University, where he explored data journalism, augmented reality and civic engagement media.
How back in Africa, Arenstein serves as a director or advisor on various media industry boards and think-tanks. He is also currently a consultant, as a Knight International Journalism Fellow, for the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) in Washington DC, where he advises on practical business models for mobile and digital publishing across Africa using geo-locative platforms, ranging from mobile gaming and mobile social networking, to data visualisation, augmented reality and aggregation or curation of content.
Outside of ICFJ work, Arenstein advises Google on data-driven journalism and digital newsroom strategies in Africa, and also leads the African Media Initiative (AMI) digital innovation programme.
Presentation of the innovateAFRICA project. Media pioneers and organizations in Africa will benefit from a new $1 million fund designed to spur digital innovation that can improve news distribution, ...
Irpileaks, Afrileaks, OCCRPLeaks, Whistleblowing.jp The Hermes Center, author of the GlobaLeaks project, and the investigative journalism centers IRPI (Italian), ANCIR (African), OCCRP (Balkan) wi...
Data journalism is evolving at a rapid pace. Since last year’s International Journalism Festival we have seen many data stories breaking and data projects appearing around the world. We’ve seen co...
A billion citizens and 800 million sim cards in circulation. With 50% of the population connected to the Internet via the mobile network - also used for payments and money transfers - and the prospect...
