Yo por mucho tiempo estuve apagada, hasta el día en que te conocí no pensé quererte tanto ni en tan poco tiempo, pero sucedió, fue como encontrar una lámpara mágica abandonada en la cual yo pudiese pedir los deseos que yo quisiera. Hace mucho tiempo pedí un hombre como tú, siempre he sido inconformista nunca me he conformado con lo que se me presenta si no con lo que yo quiero tener.

By bringing different voices into the debate on religious matters, Nicola Menzie wants to fight stereotypes. And she has the credentials to talk about that: Nicola is a Christian journalist, a reggae and tofu lover, a Jamaican who grew to be an authentic New Yorker, and a student that juggles entrepreneurial journalism at CUNY while pursuing a master’s degree in theology. Her new venture, hopefully, will reinforce the fact that not all religious people think the same way about everything, and that there is more to be told than the dominant male/white opinions that get space in the media most of the time.

“There  are so many other voices that are not being heard. Not every Christian person is anti-gay, anti-Muslim, for example”, she says. As a reporter writing for The Christian Post over the last years, she felt that in the media debate on such important matters, the most extreme and conservative opinions are getting most of the space. Women and minorities, as well as liberal Christians, should be more frequent in her Faithfully Magazine, a fun, bold and inclusive platform she will be developing for the next months.

Her goal is, with a more balanced range of opinions, to reduce the extremism and the misinterpretation reflected on ultraconservative readers comments on topics such as refugees and Muslims.

Ghazala Irshad went to Egypt in search of journalism. And she found it in a huge way.

On January 20, 2011, Ghazala landed in Egypt to start her master’s program in TV and Digital Journalism at the American University in Cairo. Five days later, more than 50,000 Egyptian protesters flooded Tahrir Square, setting in motion what would be known around the world as the Arab Spring. The school shut down and ordered all foreigners to fly back home. But Ghazala stayed put.

“History is happening here, and I can’t miss this,” she said. “This is the reason I’m here.”

From Egypt, Libya, and Gaza, she live-tweeted street protests, democratic elections, bomb explosions. “It was nonstop. News was breaking ten times a day. I basically got whiplash. It was traumatizing, so I liked to share the bright things, too.” Interesting characters, family gatherings, music concerts, for instance.

After 2 ½ years in the Middle East, she held social media positions at a United Arab Emirates-produced, social media-driven travel show called Peeta Planet, where the audience got to decide the hosts’ itinerary, and The GroundTruth Project, a nonprofit that helps young journalists around the world produce in-depth stories from on the ground.

Throughout her social media career, her philosophy is clear: “If it’s not funny, interesting or useful, I won’t tweet it.”

Currently, Ghazala is at the Tow Knight program to concretize her passion for multiculturalism and social media into a business. She’s thinking of producing a video series featuring the experiences of first-generation U.S.-born Americans traveling to their parents’ native countries.

So how exactly will she do this?

By bringing different voices into the debate on religious matters, Nicola Menzie wants to fight stereotypes. And she has the credentials to talk about that: Nicola is a Christian journalist, a reggae and tofu lover, a Jamaican who grew to be an authentic New Yorker, and a student that juggles entrepreneurial journalism at CUNY while pursuing a master’s degree in theology. Her new venture, hopefully, will reinforce the truth that not all religious people think the same way about everything, and that there is more to be told than the dominant male/white opinions that get space in the media most of the time.

“There  are so many other voices that are not being heard. Not every Christian person is anti-gay, anti-Muslim, for example”, she says. As a reporter writing for The Christian Post over the last years, she felt that in the media debate on such important matters, the most extreme and conservative opinions are getting most of the space. Women and minorities, as well as liberal Christians, should be more frequent in her Faithfully Magazine, a fun, bold and inclusive platform she will be developing for the next months.

Her goal is, with a more balanced range of opinions, to reduce the extremism and the misinterpretation reflected on ultraconservative readers comments on topics such as refugees and Muslims.

Issa Mansaray is a determined international journalist. “At an early age I loved the media,” said Mansary, who grew up in Sierra Leone and is now the Executive Editor of The AfricaPaper. His father printed newspapers, but the political climate in his country was not supportive of it.

“At the height of the dictatorship, they couldn’t read papers that were critical of the government in public, or they would arrest you,” said Mansaray. As a child, he remembers finding all sorts of different newspapers bundled up in his father’s room.

Mansaray went to high school at Milton Margai College of Education and Technology. He started helping his father distribute newspapers, and was writing about mining and politics in the south of the country for For that People Newspaper.

He quickly became the editor of Solidar Press University Newspaper. “That was when I sensed the power of media,” said Mansaray, as people in authority began responding to his work. “I had a passion for advocating for press freedom for students who were not treated fairly, and for human rights.”

While Sierra Leone was at war, Mansaray went to Austria to study at Webster University, and eventually ended up at Columbia University to obtain a masters in journalism as a Pulitzer Fellow. He started The AfricaPaper in the United States with other African journalists, which they saw as a “common newspaper for Africa and the U.S. with reporters from each country reporting their own stories.”

Mansaray sees his work as necessary. “For me it’s not just a passion. It’s to address the pressing issues in my country and continent, and to leave my mark addressing issues that are pressing for journalists,” he said.