Maria Ressa's 'How to Stand Up to a Dictator' is a memoir and manifesto
In 2013, Ressa laid out her forward-looking vision for the future of public service journalism to me. Her book traces a humbling, harrowing journey from social media advocate to democracy defender.
Maria Ressa laid out her vision for the future of public service journalism over a dinner in a Japanese restaurant in Manila in 2013. Ressa, who made her name in Asia as a correspondent for CNN, had helped launch Rappler, a digital news start-up, on a Facebook page two years earlier.
Over sushi and beer, she told me her plan was to harness social media and Big Data to finance investigative journalism and create online communities in her native Philippines to help solve some of the country's major problems, including political corruption.
It was forward-looking, idealistic and sounded like a magic bullet.
Several years later, we caught
