These 15 young journalists have all been shortlisted because of the considerable impact they have made in the journalism sector.
The One Young World Journalist of the Year Award recognises five of the world's most outstanding journalists between the ages of 18 - 35, who are using their stories to have a positive impact on people in their communities and countries. Through their courageous work, these candidates highlight the importance having diverse voices in media.
The shortlisted nominees are currently being reviewed by One Young World’s expert judging panel, who will decide the final five winners.
The winners will be announced in mid-March and will be presented with this award at the One Young World 2022 Summit.
The Shortlist
Ali Tabrizi, United Kingdom/Iran
Ali is a British-Iranian filmmaker and director of the critically acclaimed Netflix Original Documentary ‘Seaspiracy’. His work as an investigative filmmaker has catapulted him into the centre of conversations around sustainability and he has become a figurehead for the Ocean Conservation movement.
Antonia Hylton, United States
An Emmy award-winning correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC, Antonia reports on politics, race and justice. She co-wrote and co-hosted “Southlake,” the hit podcast exploring how an idyllic Texas town became the poster child for a national fight over race, history, and education.
Aye Min Thant, Myanmar
Aye Min Thant is a Pulitzer-winning journalist who works as a features editor at Frontier Myanmar. They have previously led a team to combat disinformation and hate speech in Myanmar at Phandeeyar, a tech focused Myanmar NGO and won the 2018 Reuters Journalist of the Year Award for Story of the Year.
Daniel Villatoro, Guatemala
As coordinator of the Latin American LGBTI Journalism Initiative by the International Women’s Media Foundation, Villatoro has trained hundreds of journalists across Latin America in gender perspective and diversity reporting. He is also the founder of Impronta, a Central American queer culture magazine which advocates for inclusive reporting.
Isobel Yeung, United Kingdom
Isobel Yeung is an award-winning reporter, who has made documentary and long-form reports for Vice, HBO, Showtime and Hulu. She was one of the first to uncover mass human rights atrocities among China’s Uyghur Muslims and has recently investigated the Taliban’s security breaches in Afghanistan.
Jehan Casinader, New Zealand
For more than a decade, Jehan has specialised in reporting on complex social issues like sexual trauma, racial conflict and mental health. A widely respected journalist, he was awarded Broadcast Reporter of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards 2020 for his extensive coverage of the Christchurch terror attack.
Larry Madowo, Kenya
Larry Madowo is an award-winning Kenyan broadcaster, writer, and speaker who was named Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum in 2020. As an International Correspondent at CNN, he has covered the pandemic on the ground in three different continents and covered the summer of protests following the murder of George Floyd.
Lotfullah Najafizada, Afghanistan
Lotfullah Najafizada is an award-winning journalist and the former director of TOLOnews TV, leading Afghanistan's top news channel for over a decade until the fall of Kabul last August. On World Press Freedom Day 2016, Reporters without Borders awarded him with the prestigious medal of Press Freedom Hero for his fight for free press in Afghanistan.
Manisha Ganguly, United Kingdom
Manisha is a multi-award-winning investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker, specialising in combining open-source intelligence techniques with fieldwork to expose human rights abuses in conflict and war. She is a Forbes Under 30 media honouree and has been nominated for/won 17 international awards, including an Amnesty Award, with her investigations broadcast to over 300 million worldwide.
Marianna Spring, United Kingdom
Marianna is the BBC’s first specialist disinformation and social media reporter, who investigates the real-life consequences of viral conspiracy theories, falsehoods and abuse shared on social media. She has reached millions around the world with impactful, exclusive reports and has gone on to influence the policies of social media sites and the government.
María Paulina Baena, Colombia
María Paulina Baena is a journalist for El Espectador, the oldest newspaper in Colombia. She is one of the creators, writers and presenters of the popular satirical video column bringing news to young audiences, La Pulla. The project challenges traditional formats of the media and was awarded the Simón Bolivar prize for being the best TV opinion show in 2016.
Megha Rajagopalan, United States
As an investigative journalist for BuzzFeed News, Megha focuses on the intersection between technology and human rights. In 2021, along with architect Alison Killing and programmer Christo Buschek, she was awarded the first Pulitzer Prize for Buzzfeed News in International Reporting for a series that documented the scope and scale of China’s mass imprisonment of ethnic minorities.
Sana Safi, Afghanistan
A Senior presenter for the daily BBC News Pashto TV news programme (BBC World Right Now), Sana Safi is also the host of World of Wisdom, a BBC World Service podcast. Before joining the BBC, Sana worked as the only female journalist in Jalalabad’s state-run radio and television station, RTAJ. She also headed an educational institution in Jalalabad, which provided literacy and numeracy classes for women and children deprived of education under the first Taliban regime.
Shiori Ito, Japan
Shiori Ito is a journalist, writer and documentary filmmaker. In 2017, she wrote the book Black Box based upon her personal experience, which revealed the sexism in Japan’s society and institutions. For her contribution to Japan’s #MeToo movement, she was listed as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2020.
Simon Allison, South Africa
Simon Allison is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Continent, Africa’s most widely distributed newspaper. It won the 2020 Africa Digital Media Award for Best News Service and has been credited with saving thousands of lives through its hard-hitting public interest journalism. He is also an experienced foreign correspondent working on major global investigations including the Pandora Papers and the Facebook Leaks.