Josephine Schmidt

About

I love a good story. Especially one that informs a more fair, honest and tolerant world. At The New York Times for 18 years, I edited such stories and built teams and products to inform and engage global audiences. As the leader of two nonprofit newsrooms, I've balanced operational and financial realities against calm moral outrage and outsized ambition to produce sustainable, impactful coverage -- from war zones, the frontlines of climate change, from Afghanistan to Haiti to the southern US border to Myanmar and Ethiopia. In the Czech Republic, I helped build a nonprofit newsroom that reported across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, chronicling post-Soviet change. We connected long-silenced voices and local reporting to governments and policy makers. We didn't realize what a luxury it was to be funded by a hands-off donor who didn't ask much about audience and revenue. At The New York Times, I commissioned and edited news, opinion, and analysis journalism. I also built and led teams on five continents, working with publishers and editors to launch print and digital magazines, news sites and interactive features. Creating these new revenue streams meant answering lots of questions about audience and revenue. Anticipating and managing the technical, ethical and business twists and turns of a 24/7 media world were part of the day-to-day. So were editing Nobel laureates and Chinese dissidents, setting up partnerships and figuring out workflows across platforms and timezones and languages. I learned the news business as it turned inside out. And I learned the craft of impactful editing from master editors: facts first, but without a story that connects to heads and hearts, those facts mean little.As the first editor in chief of The New Humanitarian, the world's only independent newsroom dedicated to reporting on and from humanitarian crises, I've built and led a passionate, diverse team that covers some of the most urgent and potentially impactful stories around. I've put in place editorial, ethics, and innovation frameworks that center the voices and authority of local journalists and communities. Investigations and reports have chronicled war crimes, influenced how aid groups and governments respond to famine and floods, and highlighted the needs of women trying to raise families, go to school or simply stay safe. The work reaches audiences who use it to change policies, mindsets and lives. It attracts donors, too. That's my story, so far. Tell me yours -- especially if you believe journalism can change the world.