Hossein Derakhshan, also known as Hoder, is an Iranian-Canadian blogger, journalist, and researcher who was imprisoned in Tehran from November 2008 to November 2014. He is credited with starting the blogging revolution in Iran and is called the father of Persian blogging by many journalists. He also helped to promote podcasting in Iran. Derakhshan was arrested on November 1, 2008 and sentenced to 19½ years in prison on September 28, 2010. His sentence was reduced to 17 years in October 2013. He was pardoned by Iran's supreme leader and on November 19, 2014 was released from Evin prison.
The mass media in Iran are privately and publicly owned but is subject to censorship. As of 2016, Iran had 178 newspapers, 83 magazines, 15,000 information sites and 2 million blogs. A special court has authority to monitor the print media and may suspend publication or revoke the licenses of papers or journals that a jury finds guilty of publishing anti-religious material, slander, or information detrimental to the national interest. The Iranian media is prohibited from criticizing the Islamic doctrines.
Following a crackdown on Iranian media beginning in 2000 many Iranians turned to weblogging to provide and find political news. The first Persian language blog is thought to have been created by Hossein Derakhshan,, in 2001. Derakhshan also provided readers with a simple instruction manual in Persian on how to start a blog. In 2004, a census of blogs around the world by the NITLE found 64,000 Persian language blogs. In that year the Islamic government also began to arrest and charge bloggers as political dissidents and by 2005 dozens of bloggers had been arrested.
Farnaz Fassihi is an Iranian-American journalist. She writes about Middle Eastern affairs for The New York Times. Previously she was a senior writer for The Wall Street Journal for 17 years and a conflict reporter based in the Middle East.
Robert Earle Parry was an American investigative journalist. He was best known for his role in covering the Iran-Contra affair for the Associated Press (AP) and Newsweek, including breaking the Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare and the CIA involvement in Contra cocaine trafficking in the U.S. scandal in 1985.
Dan Froomkin is the editor of Press Watch, an independent website previously known as White House Watch. He previously was a senior writer and Washington editor for The Intercept. Prior to that, he was a writer and editor for the The Huffington Post.
Andy Carvin was National Public Radio's senior product manager for online communities. He accepted a position at First Look Media in February, 2014. Carvin was the founding editor and former coordinator of the Digital Divide Network, an online community of more than 10,000 Internet activists in over 140 countries working to bridge the digital divide. He is also an active blogger as well as a field correspondent to the vlog Rocketboom.
Adam Matthew J. Tinworth is a journalist and writer who co-authored two major role-playing games, Demon: The Fallen and Werewolf: The Forsaken from White Wolf Publishing. He was also an extensive contributor to Hunter: The Reckoning, a game line that was subsequently ported to video games.
Brian Patrick Stelter is an American TV anchor who is the chief media correspondent for CNN and host of the CNN program Reliable Sources. Stelter is a former media reporter for The New York Times and the editor of TVNewser.
The Daily Beast is an American news website focused on politics, media and pop culture, founded in 2008.
The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting is an American news media organization established in 2006 that sponsors independent reporting on global issues that other media outlets are less willing or able to undertake on their own. The center's goal is to raise the standard of coverage of international systemic crises, and to do so in a way that engages both the broad public and government policy-makers. The organization is based in Washington, D.C.
Iason Athanasiadis is a writer, photographer, political analyst, and television producer who has contributed to a range of media, including the BBC, Al Jazeera English, and Channel 4. He specializes in the Middle East.
Ramita Navai is an Emmy and Robert F. Kennedy award-winning British-Iranian journalist, documentary producer and author. She has reported from over forty countries and has a reputation for investigations and work in hostile environments.
Major Elliott Garrett is an American journalist who is chief Washington correspondent for CBS News. Garrett is the host of The Takeout podcast and was a correspondent for National Journal. Prior to joining National Journal, he was the senior White House correspondent for Fox News. He covered the 2004 presidential election, the War on Terror, and the 2008 presidential election.
Professor Paul Bradshaw is an online journalist and blogger, who leads the MA in Data, Multiplatform and Mobile Journalism at Birmingham City University. He manages his own blog, the Online Journalism Blog (OJB), and was the co-founder of Help Me Investigate, an investigative journalism website funded by Channel 4 and Screen WM. He has written for journalism.co.uk, Press Gazette, The Guardian's Data Blog, Nieman Reports and the Poynter Institute in the US. From 2010 to 2015 he was also a Visiting Professor at City University's School of Journalism in London. Since 2015 he has worked with the BBC England data unit.
The Awl was a website about "news, ideas and obscure Internet minutiae of the day" based in New York City. Its motto was "Be Less Stupid."
Rappler is a Philippine online news website based in Pasig, Manila founded by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa along with a group of fellow Filipino journalists. It started as a Facebook page named MovePH in August 2011 and later evolved into a complete website on January 1, 2012.
Circa News, also known as Circa, is a defunct American online newspaper and entertainment service. The site was founded in 2012 by Matt Galligan, Ben Huh and Arsenio Santos. The service had news stories and features consisting of individual bits of information.
Vox is an American news and opinion website owned by Vox Media. The website was founded in April 2014 by Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, and Melissa Bell, and is noted for its concept of explanatory journalism. Vox's media presence also includes a YouTube channel, several podcasts, and a show presented on Netflix. Vox has been described as left-of-center and progressive.
Shereen Marisol Meraji is an American journalist, podcaster, and educator. She is an assistant professor of race in journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and a member of the Nieman Fellowship. She was formerly the co-host and senior producer of Code Switch, a critically acclaimed podcast covering race, culture and diversity issues, one of NPR's highest rated podcasts in 2020.
