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7. Rebecca McKinnon - Global voices
By Jillian C. York
 Rebecca MacKinnon is a distinguished American journalist, professor, expert on the Chinese Internet landscape, and blogging visionary whose decision to leave professional journalism at the beginning of the blogging boom resulted in the creation of Global Voices, a project which has grown to become an incredible experiment in global news, and surely the only place where one can find information on a comedy festival in Amman, the FARC’s online presence, and an idea called “naked marriage” in China.
Born in California, MacKinnon spent most of her youth in Asia due to her parents’ academic research; following her graduation from Harvard University, MacKinnon traveled to Taiwan on a Fulbright scholarship, then to mainland China, where she joined CNN in 1992. She became the Beijing bureau chief in 1998 and the bureau chief of Tokyo in 2001.
From there, MacKinnon put her degree in Government and journalism experience to use as a fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Fatefully, she joined the Berkman Center for Internet & Society as a fellow that same summer and never looked back, resigning from CNN after three months.
It was there that MacKinnon, along with Ethan Zuckerman, had the idea to pull bloggers from around the world together in conversation, inviting bloggers to Cambridge to discuss their idea. That meeting resulted in the Global Voices Manifesto, which quickly spun into Global Voices, a site which amplifies the voices of bloggers from around the world and which has since grown into a vast network of activists, bloggers, translators, and most importantly, friends. MacKinnon has since moved on from a daily role in Global Voices, but remains an active blogger, discussing a wide variety of Internet and society issues on her blog, RConversation.
MacKinnon is now one of the foremost experts on the Chinese Internet landscape and the filtering practices of the Chinese government, and until recently, conducted research and taught online journalism at The University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Centre. She is on the boards of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Global Network Initiative, and Global Voices.
She is currently writing a book about the Chinese Internet with funding from the Open Society Institute and just began a one-semester fellowship at the Center for Information and Technology Policy at Princeton University.
As a writer for Global Voices, I continue to be impressed with every facet of the project. I also read Rebecca’s blog frequently – whenever I need information on the Chinese Internet landscape, it’s the first place I go. I salute Rebecca as a visionary, and a as a tireless advocate for free speech.
Jillian C. York is writer, blogger, and activist based in Boston. She is an author at Global Voices Online.
Follow Rebecca on Twitter
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Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaaronfarr/1958072747/
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