Deepa Fernandes
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Deepa Fernandes
United States Fellow
deepaf@stanford.edu
journalist, founder, People's Production House
New York, N.Y.
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Project: Develop technology infrastructure enabling collaboration between citizen journalists and traditional newsrooms.
Deepa Fernandes began her reporting career as a freelance foreign correspondent for the BBC World Service and Australian Broadcasting Corporation from several locations, including Cuba, the jungles of Mexico, the slums of Bombay and the ghettos of South Africa. From her early experiences, she saw a deep need for gender and ethnic diversity among those who were reporting the news. In 2000, she set out to do something about this - founding a nonprofit journalism training and production institute. People's Production House has trained hundreds of new reporters of color, most of whom come from low-income backgrounds. Major news outlets, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, have published their work and People's-Production-House-trained journalists have been hired by USA Today, NPR, Pacifica Radio and several local public radio stations. While she was doing this, Fernandes earned a master's degree from Columbia University and continued to do high-impact stories for radio and print, focusing on immigration issues and the lingering impact of Hurricane Katrina.
