Turkey Online Master Class: Visual Storytelling for New Formats (Dec. 7, 2022)

Visual short-form content, particularly short documentaries and video explainers, have proven to be a popular format for independent journalists in Turkey. In this fourth master class for IPI’s Turkey Digital News Accelerator, we host Natalia Guerrero, a senior journalist at BBC Reel. Guerrero will take us on a deep dive into the crucial role of video explainers and how to adopt different formats in visual storytelling. As a commissioning editor at BBC Reel, she will present strategic tools for independent media and freelance journalists in digital video and short-form documentaries.

The session hosted by Istanbul-based journalist Gülsin Harman.

Meet the trainer

Natalia Guerrero, Senior Journalist, BBC Reel

Natalia Guerrero is a senior journalist and commissioning editor at BBC Reel, the BBC’s short documentaries destination. She previously worked for ten years as a multimedia reporter for BBC News Mundo and produced a wide range of award-winning and impactful stories in video, audio, and text. She is a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University (2020), originally from Colombia, and lives in NYC.

Facilitator and host: Gülsin Harman, IPI Turkey, Journalist

Gülsin Harman is an Istanbul-based journalist who frequently contributes to the New York Times and BBC Monitoring. After the Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University in 2020, she received a grant from the European Journalism Center to develop a newsletter. She was selected to join the Product Immersion Program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and invited to the News Product Alliance Product Expansion Program.

As a researcher, she looked into the online harassment of journalists in Turkey for the International Press Institute in 2016. The detailed investigation resulted in a public database and case profiles featured in a report published by the Institute for the Future. In 2020, Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society (BKC) at Harvard University selected her to be a participant in the Assembly Fellowship program which brings members of the cohort of technologists and public policy leads to develop interventions in the areas of disinformation.