Melissa Bell, a co-founder of the explanatory news website Vox.com, has joined the programme for the World Editors Forum, to be held alongside the World News Media Congress in Washington, D.C., from 1 to 3 June next.
Vox.com, whose slogan is "Understand the News", is pioneering new digital storytelling techniques that are drawing huge audiences. Ms Bell, who founded the site in 2014 with another Washington Post alumnus, Ezra Klein, will participate in an Editors Forum session on "Storytelling rebooted", which also includes Emily Banks, lead news editor for mobile content at The Wall Street Journal, and Lou Ferrara, Vice President for Sports, Business, Interactive and Entertainment News at The Associated Press.
"Storytelling rebooted", which features the pioneers who are using algorithms, explanatory journalism and new formats for enhanced storytelling, is among the highlights of the 22nd World Editors Forum, 67th World News Media Congress, and 25th World Advertising Forum, the global summit meetings of the world's newspapers and news publishers.
More than 1,000 publishers, chief editors, managing directors, CEOs and other senior news publishing executives are expected in Washington for the events, organised by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) in cooperation with the Newspaper Association of America. Full details, including the programme, speaker biographies and registration information, can be found at http://www.wan-ifra.org/DC2015
Melissa Bell was director of digital platforms at The Washington Post and one of the Post's most read bloggers when she and Mr Klein left to found Vox.com in early 2014. At Vox, she holds both a technology and editorial title as Senior Product Manager and Executive Editor.
Before joining the Post, she helped launch Mint, a Wall Street Journal subsidiary in India, where she lived for four years.
Vox.com is part of a wave of new, online explanatory journalism news media, mostly started by veteran reporters at traditional media companies. One of its compelling innovation are its Vox Cards, which offer context to articles and explanations of key concepts. They are linked to keywords in articles and also available separately, providing guides to ongoing news stories.
Other speakers include:
-- Vivian Schiller, former President and CEO of National Public Radio and former global chair of news at Twitter and one of the world's most compelling executives at the forefront of media and technology;
-- Torry Pedersen, the CEO and Editor-in-chief of Verdens Gang, the leading news site/newspaper in Norway that is among the most profitable news organisations in Europe;
-- Martin Baron, Executive Editor of The Washington Post, who oversees The Post's print and digital operations. Under Baron's leadership, The Post newsroom won two Pulitzer Prizes in 2014, including the prestigious public service medal for a series of stories based on classified documents leaked by Edward Snowden that exposed the National Security Agency's massive global surveillance programs.
-- Emily Bell, Director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, whose speech to the Reuters Institute last year was nothing less than the year's most definitive statement on the future of journalism;
-- Troy Young, President of Hearst Magazines Digital Media, who oversees the digital content, technology, operations, product and business development strategies for 18 brand websites such as Cosmopolitan, Popular Mechanics, ELLE, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Harper's Bazaar and Seventeen, which attract more than 100 million unique visitors and 740 million page views monthly.
