The JSK Journalism Fellowships at Stanford (jsk.stanford.edu) each year brings 20 outstanding journalists and journalism innovators to pursue their ideas for improving journalism. JSK Fellowships focuses on journalism innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership, as JSK fellows create new models, tools and approaches that are redefining journalism. Each fellow comes to Stanford with a “journalism challenge”: a question they seek to answer, a problem they seek to solve, an opportunity they seek to explore. JSK Fellows collaborate with each other, with students, with faculty, researchers and Silicon Valley innovator and entrepreneurs.

They are a diverse group, representing traditional news organizations like The Washington Post and Southern California Public Radio, as well as newer ventures like Vox or Re/code. Seven of them are international fellows, some coming from countries where the news media is well established, and others from countries like Ukraine and Venezuela, where independent journalists often are under siege. This class marks the 50th year of journalism fellowships at Stanford and the seventh under the program’s heightened emphasis on journalism innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership.

Oleksandr Akymenko: From Yanukovych Leaks to Implementing New Business Models to Sustain Independent Media in Ukraine

Oleksandr Akymenko is a Ukrainian entrepreneur, journalist with experience in online, television and magazine reporting. Cofounder of http://platfor.ma, a media website aimed at the Creative Class. In 2014, Akymenko participated in YanukovychLeaks, a collaborative effort by journalists to salvage and publish the archives of former Ukranian president Viktor Yanukoyvch that had been dumped in a river. Akymenko had previously created and led the investigative department of Forbes Ukraine, where his reporting included a 2-year investigation of a young oligarch, Sergey Kurchenko. When Kurchenko bought the magazine’s parent company in mid-2013, Akymenko and several other staff members resigned in protest. Before joining Forbes, Akymenko had helped found Svidomo, which produces investigative projects and worked at an investigative program on one of Ukraine’s largest television channels. Twitter: @akymenko_o

Subramaniam Vincent: The Digital Public of Bangalore

Subramaniam Vincent is a software engineer turned journalist entrepreneur. He first came to the United States to pursue a master’s in computer engineering at the University of Southern California. After graduating, he worked at Cisco Systems in San Jose, California. He kept up with news of home by reading Indian newspapers online. When he and a friend became frustrated with their coverage of socio-economic issues, they decided in 1998 to start India Together, an e-journal focused on tracking campaigns for reform in India. Five years later, in Bangalore, they turned India Together into the country’s first reader-financed publication covering development. He later co-founded and is also editor-in-chief of Citizen Matters, a Bangalore-focused civic newsmagazine that uses the work of citizen and professional journalists. It is owned by Oorvani Media, of which he is CEO and co-founder. Currently, the journalism in both publications is funded by the non-profit Oorvani Foundation, where he is a trustee. Journalism in Citizen Matters and India Together has been awarded 10 times in 11 years. Twitter: @subbuvincent

Jacob Fenton: Open Data for Political Accountability in the U.S.

Jacob Fenton is a journalism and software developer who's worked in newsrooms and nonprofits the U.S. for the last decade. Most recently, Fenton was an editorial engineer for the Sunlight Foundation in Washington, D.C. where he worked extensively on campaign finance, TV ad disclosure, and congressional expenditure reporting. His responsibilities were split between developing new web sites and transparency tools, and using them as a journalist. He led the development of Sunlight’s real-time, federal campaign finance site, which was widely cited in the 2012 and 2014 election cycles. He previously has worked as a software developer in Palo Alto, California, a reporter in the Philadelphia suburbs and in a variety of roles that drew on his reporting and coding skills. He was database editor at The Morning Call newspaper, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he started the paper’s data center and wrote some of its first news applications. In 2010, he was selected as the first director of computer-assisted reporting at the Investigative Reporting Workshop, a nonprofit investigative news startup at American University’s School of Communications. http://www.jacobfenton.com/

Activists push a ball reading "constitution reformation" during a sit-in to mark the one-year anniversary of the start of the Sunflower Movement outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei March 18, 2015.

Activists push a ball reading "constitutional reform" during a sit-in to mark the one-year anniversary of the start of the Sunflower Movement outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei March 18, 2015. Reuters/Pichi Chuang

These are unsettled times in Taiwanese politics. In recent months, prominent voices from across the spectrum have called for fundamental changes to the structure of Taiwan’s political system, ranging from simple reforms such as lowering the voting age to 18 to fundamental ones such as adopting a full presidential or parliamentary regime.

The impetus for constitutional reform has multiple sources. But at its core is a deeply problematic relationship between the executive and the legislature. When different parties controlled the two branches during the final years of the Chen Shui-bian administration, cooperation came to a standstill and governance suffered.  

More surprisingly, executive-legislative confrontation returned with a vengeance in President Ma Ying-jeou’s second term, even though the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) held both the executive and a majority in the legislature. The prolonged struggle over cross-Strait agreements is only the most prominent of a series of political conflicts that have blocked the adoption of new policies and threatened the legitimacy of those that do pass. And it is not clear that the next administration and legislature will fare any better than previous ones.

For the 10^th Annual Conference on Taiwan Democracy, we will consider proposals for reforms in the context of the strengths and weaknesses of Taiwan’s current constitutional structure. Among the topics to be considered at the conference are:

1. Diagnosing the problems: What have been the sources and implications of political strife in Taiwan in recent years, both under divided and unified one-party control? What reforms, if any, might make these conflicts easier to resolve and increase the legitimacy of government policy-making?
2. Executive type: Would switching to a different type of executive—presidential, parliamentary, or another form of semi-presidentialism—mitigate some of the disadvantages of Taiwan’s current system?
3. Electoral systems: What are the problems with Taiwan’s current electoral system? What changes might mitigate some of the disadvantages?
4. Direct democracy: What functions do Taiwan’s referendum and recall laws serve in practice? How would changes to these laws affect Taiwan’s democracy?
5. Accountability institutions: How have Taiwan’s judiciary, Control Yuan, and prosecutorial agencies performed during periods of partisan conflict between the executive and legislative branches? How might their effectiveness be improved?
6. Comparative perspectives: How does Taiwan’s recent experience with divided government and institutional reform compare to other Third Wave democracies in the region (e.g. South Korea, SE Asia) and more broadly (e.g. Latin America, Eastern Europe)?

Conference participants will help to develop a set of recommendations for a non-partisan reform agenda for Taiwan, one that is informed by a clear understanding of both the most pressing challenges facing Taiwan’s democracy and of best practices in other successful young democracies. 

Conference Resources

Presentations

Conference Papers