Online journalist and strategist, Vienna, Austria
Project: Develop a new model for reader comments, discussion and interaction around online news stories.
Anita Zielina jumped into journalism right out of high school, working as an intern for several Austrian newspapers and magazines. While a full-time law student at the University of Vienna she worked for two years as a freelance journalist. Longing for feedback and collaboration, she browsed through job postings for derStandard.at, one of her favorite online newspapers. She discovered the paper was seeking someone to develop an online education platform. She applied and was quickly hired. For the next four years, she worked and continued her law studies full time and received a Master of Law degree from the University of Vienna in 2006. Zielina was promoted to head of derStandard’s Austrian politics and education department, by far the youngest department head at the paper. She now teaches media convergence and online journalism at the University of Applied Sciences in Vienna, and speaks and conducts seminars on social media and online journalism.
Knight Talk: Anita Zielina
Zielina makes a compelling case for freeing readers from the commenting threads that run below new site stories — and often devolve into name-calling.
Information on this page is from the fellowship year.