We are thrilled to announce that Ethar El-Katatney is joining Documented as our new Editor-in-Chief. Ethar’s first day is October 15.
Ethar brings a wealth of experience to this role and will usher in the beginning of an exciting new chapter for Documented. Her news product experience will help elevate our growing range of products aimed at serving immigrant communities with news and information.
Ethar’s skills and experience as a digital newsroom manager and strategist, and her passion, align so well with this position and our team at Documented. Her two decades of journalism experience span a variety of roles. Most recently, at Bloomberg, Ethar served as News Product Strategy Lead for the Americas. Previously, she was the former Young Audiences Editor at The Wall Street Journal and the executive producer overseeing the AJ+ newsroom, the digital video arm of Al-Jazeera she helped pilot, launch and lead. Ethar has received a CNN African Journalist of the Year Award, a Samir Kassir Freedom of the Press Award, and an Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Journalist Award. She is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at The Brown Institute for Media Innovation, and sits on the board of the Online News Association.
In addition, Ethar has served on Documented’s Board for the past two years, and is deeply familiar with the organization’s mission and our commitment to letting immigrant communities lead on what is most important for us to cover.
“As an immigrant myself, Documented’s mission has always deeply resonated with me,” said Ethar. “It is so incredibly rare to see a newsroom truly center their audiences’ voices and concerns at the heart of their reporting, let alone for an audience that is often underrepresented and misrepresented, especially in a tumultuous election year. I am beyond excited to build on the incredible work that has been taking place at Documented over the last few years, and to help scale our work and deepen our impact.”
In more great news, Lam Thuy Vo has joined Documented as a contributing investigative reporter who will be helping to expand our work investigating sources of digitally distributed misinformation and the harm it creates, as well as expanding our business accountability journalism. Lam first began working with Documented in 2021, helping to make sense of the first tranche of data we received from the New York State Department of Labor after filing a Freedom of Information Law request with them for data on their wage theft investigations. She will be working with Max Siegelbaum, co-founder and Special Projects Editor of Documented.
Lam Thuy Vo is a journalist who marries data analysis with on-the-ground reporting to examine how systems and policies affect individuals. She is currently an associate professor of data journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. Previously, she was a journalist at The Markup, BuzzFeed News, The Wall Street Journal, Al Jazeera America and NPR’s Planet Money.
Lam Thuy Vo said: “I’ve long admired and loved the work that the journalists at Documented do. There are very few organizations that have been able to attract the audiences that Documented has and I’m so excited to be part of this incredible roster of dedicated journalists.”
Documented’s Co-Founders welcomed the news. “Ethar’s unique blend of experience across our industry makes her the perfect candidate to take our organization to the next level. As we aim to become the leading news source for immigrant New Yorkers, we need editorial leadership that can build on the success of our one-of-a-kind newsroom. In Ethar, we’ve found a leader who is deeply committed to our mission and can bring fresh new perspectives to this work,” said Co-Founder Mazin Sidahmed. “Adding Lam to our team as a contributing investigative reporter will elevate the caliber of our reporting. Lam is one of very few journalists who combine a commitment to being in service to readers with pure investigative chops. Her values are deeply aligned with that of the organization and we’re really excited to have her on the team.”
Co-Founder Max Siegelbaum, who led the search, said: “Ethar has been an integral member of our board and I am thrilled that she will be joining us to run our newsroom. Her mix of editorial experience and newsroom leadership will help bring Documented into a new era and I am excited to see our organization grow. And Lam is a veteran data journalist and educator; I am thrilled to more officially welcome her to our newsroom. We have worked together for three years analyzing the wage theft data. She will be able to dedicate more time to covering essential labor issues in New York City and provide mentorship to our newsroom. I can’t wait to see what she uncovers.”
These hires are aligned with Documented’s recently released Strategic Plan. The new Editor-in-Chief role will allow us to deepen our groundbreaking work in unifying community engagement and reporting, beat reporting and audience teams, and centering the voices and needs of low-wage immigrants throughout. It also allows our Co-Founder Max Siegelbaum to build out a Special Projects team that will dive deeper into high impact investigative reporting that centers low-wage immigrant concerns, including expanding our Wage Theft reporting and monitor, mis- and disinformation on platforms used by immigrants and in other languages, climate impacts on immigrant communities and more.
