Preethi Nallu has achieved significant milestones in her first year leading Report for the World. The program has expanded its presence in newsrooms across the globe — beginning with Brazil, India and Nigeria, it now boasts 45 reporting corps members in 32 newsrooms across Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe.
Report for the World has also taken the international stage at a number of journalism conferences, like the FIPP World Media Conference in Portugal, where Nallu recently offered solutions to the challenges faced by independent newsrooms. In Italy, at the International Journalism Festival, she discussed building communities through critical beat reporting.
Nallu isn’t looking back though.
“Into my second year, I look forward to leading our strategic expansion at Report for the World. As our global cohort grows in size, we are curating regional and thematic networks to foster the professional skills of our reporters and the long-term sustainability of our newsroom partners,” Nallu said.
And she’ll do so with a newly-earned title: executive director.
“We are delighted to recognize Preethi for her incredible leadership in bringing our model to the world. Preethi has been a strong ambassador for our work, a champion of the power of local news, and a defender of our values that put independent newsrooms and their communities at the center of our work,” said Rob Zeaske, CEO and president of The GroundTruth Project, the nonprofit home of Report for the Word. “Her promotion reflects her success launching Report for the World and our confidence in her as we continue to grow the impact of this program.”
Report for the World’s future efforts will be centered on Nallu’s philosophy that collaborative journalism is the only tenable path forward. As the program grows, she sees opportunities to connect journalists and newsrooms working on similar projects to help them reach larger audiences.
For example, Marco Zero sought to expand a local story they had done recently about the health and social consequences of having a wind farm near a farming community in Brazil. They knew that these cases were replicated in other parts of the country and wanted to show that although green energy has great benefits, it can also cause disruptions for nearby communities if they are not properly regulated.
Report for the World helped them develop a more ambitious story with a local-global angle. The collaboration was a laboratory for corps members to develop their narrative and reporting skills and to learn how to craft a story for a wider audience — which resulted in being featured by Mongabay, a science and conservation news platform that leverages more than 800 correspondents in some 70 countries.
Professional development and collaboration will remain paramount moving forward, said Nallu. Training sessions with tangible outcomes and collaborative workshops with specialized media outlets are in the works.
In the coming weeks, Report for the World will invite independent news organizations from across the Pacific Islands to apply for a soon-to-be-announced partnership aimed at bolstering financial investigative journalism.
Report for the World’s growth is fueled thanks to a growing network of philanthropic support, including Google News Initiative, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Microsoft, Journalism Fund Europe, and individual contributors from around the globe. To follow or support Report for the World’s work, visit reportfortheworld.org.
About Report for the World
Report for the World is an international journalism program that matches local newsrooms with talented journalists to report on undercovered issues around the globe. By creating a more sustainable and impactful media ecosystem, Report for the World informs, engages, and enables communities through public service journalism. Report for the World is an initiative of The GroundTruth Project, an award-winning nonprofit journalism organization dedicated to rebuilding journalism from the ground up.
