This is a candidate for the 2025-26 ONA Board of Directors election.
Imaeyen Ibanga is a presenter, documentarian, and senior producer with AJ+, the digital video arm of Al Jazeera. In October 2021 she debuted her new series “ZIP Codes with Imaeyen,” a show about how where we live instructs how we live.
Prior to AJ+, Imaeyen produced text stories, social media, and breaking news video stories during her tenures at NBC News, CNN, and ABC News.
Imaeyen Ibanga was made for the internet, which means she’s team kitty cats, comment sections, and memes are her love language.
Imaeyen’s vision for the future of digital journalism
The future of digital journalism is transparent, functional, easily accessible, and contextual. It also is the elimination of the word “digital” as an adjective to journalism. We are and have been in the digital era this entire 21st century.
Journalism in the future will be unsuccessful without a sharp focus on the laborers who produce and distribute the work, and the audiences who need and consume it. The industry needs to gain communities’ trust. It must help spread media literacy. One example is for it to lead the way in the standardizing the ethics of AI usage in newsrooms, and another is ensuring journalism is accessible to disabled people, impoverished people, and people living in a news desert.
I work toward an industry that is equitable simultaneously in staffing, leadership, and in coverage.