As a Fulbright Specialist, I worked with the Nest Center for Journalism Innovation and Development in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, from May 13 to June 23. Here is information on my project activities.

Data journalism training

I held three three-day data journalism workshops at the Press Institute of Mongolia: on May 19-21; May 28-30; and June 4-6. We trained 140 journalists how to find, clean, analyze and visualize data for their news stories.

I organized all of my training materials, including dozens of data sets, and posted them online in both English and Mongolian. The Nest Center and the journalists who attended the workshops will be able to use these resources in the future.

I awarded certificates of completion to the participating journalists in a ceremony on June 16. At the event, the journalists presented their work. Representatives of the U.S. Embassy attended the ceremony.

After the workshops, I worked with journalists on two stories: one about migration from the countryside to Ulaanbaatar; the other about why women outnumber men in Mongolian universities. We published those stories on a Mongolian-language website, and I pitched English-language versions to international news platforms.

Assisting the Mongolian Fact-Checking Center

I held a workshop on information verification for the Mongolian Fact-Checking Center (a Nest Center project) on June 14.

I provided advice on fact-checking certain social media posts being vetted by the MFCC.

In mid-June, Meta announced that it had designated the MFCC as the official fact-checkers for information posted on Facebook and Instagram in Mongolia and Kazakhstan. I publicized the announcement online.

I helped organize and spoke at a news conference that the Nest Center held on June 7 to discuss the Meta announcement. More than 20 news outlets covered the event at the Press Institute of Mongolia.

Thanks to my outreach, the International Community subgroup of the Society of Professional Journalists held a webcast featuring the MFCC July 19. The “IC Talks” webcast featured Dulamkhorloo Baatar, co-founder of the Nest Center and the MFCC, and Ferdi Ferhat Özsoy, program manager for the International Fact-Checking Network. I will moderated the discussion, which was free and open to the public.

NETWORKING WITH MONGOLIAN NEWS OUTLETS

Besides meeting about 140 journalists at our workshops and working closely with about a dozen journalists on the team projects, I visited several newsrooms to help the Nest Center solidify relationships with them. The newsrooms included:

• Forbes Mongolia magazine
• Bloomberg TV Mongolia
• Ikon News
• MNB — Mongolian National Broadcaster. I was interviewed for a segment of Sightline, a show on MNB World, the network’s international service.
• Mongolian Weekly
• Mongolian Economy magazine

In addition, Nest Center officials and I participated in a virtual discussion between U.S and Mongolian journalists on June 17.

I also organized a lunch and a gift for the executive director of the Press Institute to thank her for allowing us to use her institute’s facilities for our data journalism workshops.

CONSULTATION AND ADVISING FOR THE NEST CENTER

I helped Dulamkhorloo Baatar and Narantungalag Enkhtur, the center’s co-founders, present their pitch for funding in a startup competition hosted by Deutsche Welle, Germany’s international public broadcaster. The center’s pitch focused on its development of Uzeg, a publishing platform for freelance journalists. As a result of the presentation, Nest advanced to the finalist round of the competition.

I helped represent the Nest Center in meetings with organizations that may be able to offer funding or other support. They included:

• Faro Foundation
• International Republican Institute
• Mongolian Data Club
• National Statistics Office
• Spirit of America

I made a presentation at a workshop Duuya had organized for journalists on how to cover human trafficking.

In mid-June, I helped Nest do a soft launch of Uzeg.

I also helped create and populate the Nest Mongolia Slack channel — a new platform that will help the journalists who attended our data workshops, as well as others interested in Nest’s activities, stay in touch.

HOSTING A DOCUMENTARY FOR ‘AMERICAN DAYS’

The U.S. Embassy asked me to lead an event as part of American Days 2022, celebrating the 35th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Mongolia.

The celebration kicked off on June 15 with a screening of the documentary “Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People.” The U.S. Embassy asked me to introduce the film and moderate a panel discussion after the screening. About 150 people attended the event.

After the screening, I was invited to attend a reception, where I met several Embassy staff members and Mongolian officials.