2023 SCHOLARSHIP AWARDEE

Anthony Esguerra (Philippines)

Anthony Esguerra is a Filipino multimedia journalist and an aspiring journalism innovator. He is passionate about connecting newsrooms with their audiences and exploring ways to deliver the journalism that resonates with the people. He is the founder and executive editor of Factual, an independent nonprofit newsroom that started as fact-check chatbot during the pandemic. Anthony currently attends New York University where he is taking an MA Journalism program that focuses on journalism innovation, audience and news products.

He was most recently a Southeast Asia Reporter for VICE and VICE World News, where he produced investigative and in-depth reporting on the intersection of health and politics. He is also a stringer for the Voice of America, reporting on text, TV and radio platforms. As a broadcast journalist for Philippines’ largest broadcaster GMA Network, Anthony sought to address disinformation by providing in-depth and timely reports for the Filipino millennials on the award-winning "Stand for Truth" newscast.

Anthony has also worked as a reporter for INQUIRER.net, the online platform of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. In 2018, he was a Hurford Youth Fellow of the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, D.C. where he explored strategies to combat disinformation. He is also an alumnus of the Asia Young Leaders for Democracy program at Taiwan Foundation for Democracy.

His recent project involved setting up a digital newsroom in his northern Philippines hometown, operated by high school students he trained during the summer of 2023.