Team

The Intajour team consists of permanent staff, freelance lecturers and guest speakers from all continents

Werner Eggert

The International Academy of Journalism, founded in 2010, is led by Werner Eggert, an experienced coach and journalist who has worked for newspapers, television and online media for many years. He is Director and Chairman of the Management Board of Intajour. From 2003 to 2007, he worked at the International Institute for Journalism (now part of GIZ) in Berlin, where he was responsible for designing and organising training courses in multimedia, online journalism, business journalism and media ethics. In the 1990s, Eggert lived for several years in southern Africa, where he worked as a coach and consultant for the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation in Windhoek. Prior to joining Intajour, Eggert was Editor-in-Chief and Managing Director of TIDE, an educational channel for TV and Radio in Hamburg. Werner Eggert studied journalism, political science and economics in Hamburg and London.

Nicole Boenigk

Nicole Boenigk is working for Intajour as Personal Assistant to the Director. She did her master’s degree in Media Science and Literature at the University in Paderborn and at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA, after having finished her apprenticeship at Bertelsmann AG in Gütersloh. She has been working as Personal Assistant to the Director of the Reinhard Mohn Fellowship, a former Fellowship Program at Bertelsmann AG, and as project manager in the Bertelsmann Survey Services team.

Alida Mahmoud

Alida Mahmoud is working for Intajour as a Junior Program Officer. She studied law at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich before completing a Postgraduate Legal Traineeship and taking her bar exam at the High Court in Berlin. She has been working with journalist groups for various organisations in Berlin and Jakarta and gained further international experience by working for a lawyers' office in Tel Aviv during her traineeship. Prior to that, she worked on the Americas and Central Asia for Amnesty International.

Claus Hesseling

Claus Hesseling is a journalist and journalism trainer based in Hamburg and acts as Chief Lecturer for Intajour. He made his first contact with the internet in 1994 during a school trip to Poland where his host showed him some HTML commands. Some month later he coded his first HTML website (a fan page for the local handball club) and put it on the net. During his years at Hamburg University where he received his Diploma (M.Sc.) in Political Science and History he started to work for dpa German News Agency, Financial Times Germany (FTD) and on September 10^th 2001 he began his job at one of Germany’s leading news websites, tagesschau.de. Since 2008 he works as a reporter and producer for public TV and broadcasting with a focus on business reporting and internet related topics.

Joachim Vögele

Joachim Vögele is an online journalist and journalism trainer based in Stuttgart and acts as Chief Lecturer for Intajour. He is currently working with the online department of the City of Stuttgart managing content for the website and developing new formats. For almost a decade he has been a freelance instructor, training journalists in online journalism and multimedia techniques. Previously he was with the internet division of the Stuttgarter Zeitung, holding the position of Deputy Director. For the online training division of the Furtwangen University of Applied Science (now HFU Academy) he developed and tutored a 9-week E-Learning course. Joachim Vögele holds a M.A. in Communications of Hildesheim University. He also holds the Certificate in Online Education and Training of the University of London.

Alison Bethel McKenzie

Alison Bethel McKenzie is the Director of the International Press Institute (IPI), based in Vienna. Alison has over 25 years experience in journalism, as a reporter, bureau chief, senior editor and trainer. From 1995-2000 she was Senior Assistant City Editor at the Boston Globe, supervising a reporting staff that covered City Hall, urban affairs and transportation. In 2000, she joined The Detroit News as Features Editor, and then became the paper’s Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief from 2001 to 2006, overseeing coverage of the White House and members of Michigan’s congressional delegation. She joined the Legal Times in Washington, D.C. in 2006 as Executive Editor, moving on in 2007 to the Nassau Guardian, in the Bahamas, as Managing Editor. Before joining the IPI in August 2009, she spent a year in Accra, Ghana, for the Washington, D.C.-based International Center for Journalists, as a Knight International Journalism Fellow, helping Ghanaian journalists improve their reporting skills in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election.

Dan Gillmor

Dan Gillmor, an internationally recognized author and leader in new media and citizen-based journalism, is the founding Director of the new Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship in Phoenix, Arizona, and the Kauffman Professor of Digital Media Entrepreneurship. Gillmor joined the San Jose Mercury News in 1994, writing a widely read column and blog that chronicled the dot-com revolution in Silicon Valley, and technology’s wider impact on policy and society. His blog is believed to have been the first by a journalist for a mainstream journalism organization. He is the author of “We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People,” and “Mediactive”, books on citizen journalism that are widely recognized as the first to explain how the collision of journalism and technology has democratised the creation of and access to media, and why it matters. He has been an early-stage investor in several new media startups including Silicon Valley-based Wikia Inc., founded by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, and Seesmic, an online video company. He also co-founded and continues to advise the Knight-funded Citizen Media Law Project.

Manfred Redelfs

Manfred Redelfs, born 1961 in Germany, is the Head of the Research & Investigations Unit at Greenpeace Germany. A journalist by training, he has worked for the news program at Norddeutscher Rundfunk in Hamburg before concentrating on investigations. He studied political science and journalism in Hamburg, Washington, Berkeley and Oxford. His PhD thesis is about Investigative Reporting in the United States. Besides his Greenpeace job in Hamburg, Manfred works as research trainer for several publishing houses and vocational training programs for journalists.

David Röthler

David Röthler is a trainer, consultant and journalist in the fields of political communication and media. He teaches at journalism schools in Austria and Germany. His focus is on participatory journalism, social media and new funding schemes, e.g. crowd funding and social payment. Furthermore, David Röthler has profound experience with the management of international projects. He worked for Arche – Platform for Intercultural Projects in Vienna and at Liberal Forum, an organization for further training for politicians. David Röthler is founder of the consultancy PROJEKTkompetenz.eu GmbH in Salzburg, Austria.

Barbara Trionfi

Barbara Trionfi coordinates the Vienna-based International Press Institute's press freedom activities in the Asia-Pacific region. Her responsibilities include advising and reporting on press freedom issues, preparing reports, coordinating press freedom missions and campaigns, as well as acting as a liaison with international organizations. Her specific areas of expertise include media ethics and self-regulatory media accountability systems. Holder of a master’s degree in Oriental Studies from Ca’ Foscari University in Venice and a master’s degree in International Relations from Webster University in Vienna, she also studied contemporary Chinese politics and literature at the University of Shanghai and Shandong University. She has taught media ethics and media literacy at Webster University in Vienna.

Winfried von Wilmsdorff

Winfried von Wilmsdorff has been a lecturer for camera and picture design at the RTL School of Journalism in Cologne since 2001. He also works as 1^st Cameraman with special scope of duties at the RTL Television headquarter in Cologne. His job includes shooting news features and reports, usually longer ones, for RTL. He is also in charge of coverage and live feeds as a Camera Operator for Light at major events in Germany and abroad. After completing his professional training in Bonn, Winfried von Wilmsdorff initially worked as a freelance cameraman for ORF, TF 1, Antenne2, ARD, ABC, ZDF and RTL. From 1990 until 1998, he worked at the RTL studios in Bonn as 1^st Cameraman.

Volker Albers

Volker Albers works as Editor-in-Chief for the RTL Nachtjournal news show. After having studied at the University of Cologne, he worked as a trainee at RTL Aktuell from 1991 to 1993. Since 1993, he has served as editor and special correspondent for RTL Aktuell/Nachtjournal all over the world, e.g. in the Middle East, Russia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. From 2004 to 2010 he worked as a foreign correspondent in the USA, a time during which he was one of the few journalists allowed to report from the infamous prison complex in Guantanamo. Due to his own experience of the dangers of reporting from war-torn regions he is a fervent supporter of colleagues in danger.

Michael Anti

Michael Anti (a.k.a. ZHAO Jing) is a veteran journalist and popular political columnist for various Chinese and English media outlets. He won the M100 Sanssouci Media Award in 2011. Michael Anti was a Chinese war reporter in Baghdad in March 2003 and then worked with the Beijing Bureau of the New York Times and the Washington Post. His well-known MSN blog on Chinese politics was removed by Microsoft in December 2005 under pressure from the Chinese government. Michael Anti received a Wolfson Press Fellowship at Cambridge University (2007), a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University (2008), and was a visiting scholar at University of Tokyo, invited by the Japan Foundation in 2010. As a public advocate for internet freedom and online public diplomacy, he is one of the most influencial bloggers/microbloggers in China.

Anas Aremeyaw Anas

Anas Aremeyaw Anas works as an investigative journalist at the Ghanaian newspaper The New Crusading Guide and for Al-Jazeera. His pieces have uncovered several scandals and won him several prizes, among others the Nafali Prize for Journalism. Born in 1978 in Accra, he attended the Ghana Institute of Journalism and later went through law school. The main topics of his work are human rights violations in the region of Western Africa. Anas doesn' t like to be photographed, mainly because he often conducts his investigations by posing as a civilian and collecting the information secretly. It is his belief that a journalist’s job includes providing evidence for misbehavior and criminal conduct, in order to strengthen civil society.

Tarek Atia

A journalist and early online innovator in Egypt in the late 1990s, Tarek Atia founded web portals cairolive.com and zahma.com, was Assistant Editor in Chief of Al-Ahram Weekly, and has had his writing published in prominent international media outlets including The Washington Post and Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Since 2006, he has worked in media development, designing and implementing capacity building programs for over 5,000 journalists, editors and mangers working across print, broadcast and online platforms. He has also been an adjunct lecturer at Cairo University’s Faculty of Mass Communications. He now heads the new media training consultancy EMDP (Egypt Media Development Program) in Cairo, which offers professional development and management consulting services to the Egyptian and regional media sector.

Guido Baumhauer

Guido Baumhauer has worked as Director of Strategy, Marketing and Distribution at Deutsche Welle (DW) Headquarters in Bonn since 2006. Prior to that, he served as Editor-in-Chief of the DW website, turning it into a multimedia online platform available in 30 languages. Under his direction, dw-world.de became one of the most multi-faceted and modern portals on the Internet. The trade magazine Cable & Satellite recognised him as one of the top 50 experts in the world for broadband and pay TV. Guido participates as panelist, speaker and moderator in international conferences like the Arab Advisors Council, New York Media Summit and African Media Leaders Forum. He is a member of the Global Agenda Council on the Future of Journalism of the World Economic Forum, and a Program Advisor for the Center for Innovation and Communication at Stanford University.

Christian Beissel

Christian Beissel is Head of Department for video, community management and content services at RTL Interactive in Cologne. He studied political sciences, sociology, broadcasting and journalism at the universities of Bonn and Tennessee in Knoxville (USA). During his studies he worked at the local newspaper Bonner Rundschau, followed by stints at several broadcasting stations. In the USA he was an intern in the news section at WBIR-TV Channel 10 in Knoxville. He also did an internship at ZDF in Washington, D.C. during the US presidential elections in 2000, and at RTL in 2004 for the elections in New York. From 1997 he worked as an editor at RTL News (Online). From 2002 to 2007 he was Editor-in-Chief of the broadcaster’s homepage RTL.de.

Hosam El Sokkari

Hosam El Sokkari works as Head of Audience for Yahoo! Middle East. Currently, he is working with various Yahoo! teams to build a richer content portfolio for Yahoo! Middle East Arabic and English gateways, merge user experience across platforms and develop a stronger tie between media and community channels. Previously, he spent 15 years with the BBC being the first Arab to become head of BBC Arabic. In 1996, Hosam El Sokkari joined Al Jazeera as a member of its launch team. Mr El Sokkari was named by Digital Broadcast magazine as one of "the 20 individuals shaping the region’s digital media, broadcast and telecommunications industries", and has appeared several times on Arabian Business magazine’s list of the world's most influential Arabs.

Barbara Franck

Barbara Franck has been Editor-in-Chief of Frauenzimmer.de, a page for womens' issues, at RTL Interactive Cologne since 2011. She studied media psychology and theater sciences at the University of Cologne, spending time in New York, London and Vienna for research purposes. During her studies, she freelanced for Super RTL and WDR in the children’s media/online departments. In 2005 she was a student trainee at Children’s BBC in London, followed by an internship as online editor at RTL Interactive, where she has worked as a sub-editor since 2009.

Katja Gloger

Katja Gloger works as Special Correspondent for Stern magazine, based in Hamburg. She studied Eastern European history and political science in Hamburg and Moscow and has an MBA from Purdue University, Ind. She started her career as a reporter for German Television ARD. As Moscow Bureau Chief for Stern she witnessed the fall of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia. She also worked as Foreign Editor for Stern and was posted as Senior Political Correspondent in Washington, D.C. until the end of 2008. She won the German Henri Nannen Award for best Documentary reporting in 2010 and is proud to be a board member of the German section of Reporters without Borders, a human rights organization defending the freedom of the press.

Monica Hsueh

Monica Hsueh is the script writer, project manager and presenter at Next Media Animation in Taipeh. As a script writer and project manager, Monica is responsible for generating story ideas and working with a team of writers, content officers, animators, editors, as well as with the sound effect team. As a presenter, Monica chooses a current affair (usually on China-Taiwan Relations or Culture), writes up a script (live action and animation) then shoots and produces them. Brought up in Taiwan and educated in the United States and in the UK, Monica has worked for various publications, including Dex.tv and the Thomson Foundation in the UK. Monica holds a MA in International Journalism of Cardiff University, Wales.

Hans-Ulrich Jörges

Hans-Ulrich Jörges is one of the Editors-in-Chief of the German magazine Stern and based in Berlin. With his weekly column in Stern and his regular appearances on national television, Hans-Ulrich Jörges is regarded as being one of the most influential political journalists in Germany. Right after his training as a business reporter at the German news agency VWD and his studies of social sciences, he became the Deputy Head of German National News at Reuters news agency. In 1985 he moved to Stern as a correspondent in the former German capital Bonn before he went on to serving as deputy Editor-in-Chief of the magazine at its headquarters in Hamburg. In the 1990s he worked for the weekly Die Woche as Head of the Political Department and later on as Editor-in-Chief, before returning to Stern magazine in 2002 as a deputy Editor-in-Chief and Head of the Berlin bureau. Hans-Ulrich Jörges has started and continues to support various initiatives on press freedom.

Rick Nieman

From the moment he wrote his first article for the high-school newspaper at age 13, Rick Nieman knew he wanted to be a journalist. In the 30-plus years since then, his career has led him past stints at CNN, the Financial Times, Dutch public broadcasters and, since 1996, RTL Netherlands. There, he anchors the main evening newscasts, hosts election debates, interviews prominent Dutch and international government and business leaders and occasionally takes a detour, making programs about lighter subjects such as the Tour de France. He was educated in the U.S. (B.A. and M.A. in Journalism and International Relations), has written books on TV-journalism and management gurus (based on a series of interviews for TV), is a regular contributor to a leading Dutch management magazine and frequently speaks to aspiring young journalists.

Giannina Segnini

Giannina Segnini is the founder and coordinator of the investigative unit of the Costa Rican daily La Nación, where she has worked since 1994. Born in 1970, Giannina majored in Mass Communications at the University of Costa Rica and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2001-2002. Using her method of data journalism, her investigative unit uncovered corruption scandals, which led to the opening of the criminal proceedings against and the arrest of two former Presidents of Costa Rica. Her accomplishments in investigative journalism have won her honors such as the Ortega y Gasset Prize, the Best Journalistic Investigation (TILAC), and a special citation in the Maria Moors Cabot awards. She is a jury member of the Data Journalism Awards organised by the Global Editors Network and Google.

Joe Thloloe

Joe Thloloe is the South African Press Ombudsman, based in Johannesburg. He was the chairperson and founding member of the South African National Editors’ Forum. Born in Soweto, he joined the Pan African Congress (PAC) while still at high school. In 1960, he was sentenced to prison for his role in the PAC anti-pass campaign and came into contact with professional journalism through Drum/Post reporter Matthew Nkoane. After his release he became a reporter for World (then Bantu World) in 1961 and has since worked for several newspapers. Joseph was elected president of the Union of Black Journalists from 1975 until it was banned in 1977. Due to his continuing commit- ment for the black civil rights movement he spent years in prison during the 1970s and 1980s. In 1994 he joined the Television news of the public service South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) as editor-in-chief, moving to the private television channel e.tv in 2001. Joe received various prestigious awards and was awarded the honorary doctorate in Law from Rhodes University.