April 8, 2016
11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Nieman Foundation for Journalism
One Francis Ave, Cambridge, Mass.
Jon Williams
Join us for a conversation with Jon Williams, managing editor for international news at ABC News. Williams has been involved in covering some of the biggest stories in the United Kingdom and around the world for more than 20 years.
Williams will discuss international news, the challenges of reporting in hostile environments, handling hostage negotiations (he was involved in negotiating the release of the BBC correspondent Alan Johnson in Gaza), and covering Syria. He’ll also talk about disruption in the news business and the state of the U.S. news industry today.
Tim de Gier
Prior to joining ABC, Williams spent seven years as world editor at the BBC, where he managed a staff of 200 people in 30 countries, shaping the organization’s news coverage and strategy. He led the BBC’s coverage of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Israel-Lebanon War, the 2008 Olympics and the U.S. presidential elections.
In 2007, the BBC’s coverage of the Israel-Lebanon conflict won an international Emmy in the news category. More recently, Williams oversaw the BBC’s reporting of the civil war in Syria, which was honored with the 2013 International Prize by the Royal Television Society. He additionally served as the BBC’s U.K. news editor during the 2005 general election and the terror attacks on the London transport network, which was recognized with a BAFTA award.
From 2000-2003, he served as the main broadcast producer on the BBC’s “Six O’Clock News” — the U.K.’s most-watched news program — during 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Before joining the BBC, Williams worked for ITN, where he played a central role in the launch of Channel 5 News in 1996.
In 2012, Foreign Policy magazine named Williams (@WilliamsJon) one of the “Top 100 Twitterati.”
Nieman Fellow Tim de Gier, head of digital and a staff writer for the Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland, will moderate the talk.
