Documented is announcing the expansion of its product, research and innovation efforts with several new team members – signaling a new chapter in its work to advance how immigrants and other underserved communities access and receive information pertinent to their day to day lives.
These team members will be focused within Documented on continuing to expand and improve the newsroom’s multiplatform work and reporting in four languages at a time when getting accurate and actionable information to immigrant New Yorkers couldn’t be more crucial. Externally, they will be codifying learnings and developing and delivering an in-depth training program to expand the capacity of newsrooms across America looking to invest in new editorial approaches and product innovation for multilingual audiences, recently highlighted in an article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review.
Elite Truong joins Documented as Product Lead. Elite is one of the most renowned product experts in the journalism industry, coming to Documented from her previous role as Vice President of Product Strategy at the American Press Institute and prior to that serving as Director of Strategic Initiatives at The Washington Post and product manager of partnerships and new platforms at Vox Media. She currently serves on the board of the New Product Alliance. At Documented, Elite will be responsible for upgrading existing channels with a focus on Documented’s Community Driven Journalism products serving the city’s three largest immigrant groups: Spanish-speaking, Chinese-speaking and Caribbean communities.
Maria Arce becomes Program Manager, leading the delivery of Documented’s national training and capacity building work for newsrooms across the country. Maria joins from America Amplified where she worked as an Engagement Journalism Trainer, providing ongoing guidance to public media stations implementing community-centered journalism approaches, ensuring they meet audiences’ information needs.
In her role, Maria will lead in the delivery of Documented’s new cohort training and education program with the support of a substantial multiyear grant from the Knight Foundation. The program will establish a community of practice of over a dozen news websites, radio stations, alternative weeklies and other forms of local media committed to expanding community driven reporting and audience development for their local immigrant communities.
‘It is an incredible vote of confidence in the work of Documented that Elite and Maria have decided to join us from more mainstream and larger media organizations – including the Washington Post, Vox and public radio stations across America,’ says Executive Director Mazin Sidahmed. ‘It is a testament to their belief in our mission to produce journalism that uplifts the voices and needs of immigrant communities and serves as a bridge between them and the decisionmakers that determine the policies that impact their lives at a time that this work couldn’t be more critical.’
Documented is also collaborating with Shaydanay (Shay) Urbani as consulting curriculum designer, guiding the development of training and education materials for the cohort and with the intention to develop open source resources that anybody can access. Shay is currently Partnerships Manager with Brown University’s Information Futures Lab, where Documented’s Chief Product and Education Officer Nicolás Ríos served as a visiting fellow focusing on turning effective community journalism approaches and tactics into accessible tools for other organizations seeking to more deeply engage with and inform their communities.
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Shay previously led on training and partnerships at First Draft, where she worked with NGOs and media organizations to understand and respond to misinformation more ethically and effectively and was a researcher at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University investigating and reporting on disinformation on the web.
Ríos will continue to oversee both Documented’s Product and Education teams and the delivery of national programs made possible by the Knight Foundation grant.
Applications for newsrooms interested in participating in our inaugural training program will open this fall. Participating organizations will receive grant funding to support their time and cohort based training to better understand their local immigrant communities’ needs, support their editorial processes and the way they communicate and build engagement and support for this work, and, as needed, help them develop new products and platforms to better serve their local communities.
