Rodney Dean Sieh is an award-winning journalist, editor, and publisher of Liberia’s largest independent print and online daily, FrontPageAfrica, a ground-breaking publication that has brought down senior government figures and exposed political corruption. He is a co-founder of New Narratives and board director.
Jailed twice for publishing dissenting articles about the powerful Liberian government and its Supreme Court, Rodney, a former Correspondent for the BBC, faced final sentencing of 5,000 years in prison in 2013. The ruling sparked an international outcry and prompted support from numerous high-profile journalist-rights organizations, inspiring Sieh’s now-infamous op-ed in “The New York Times” entitled Jailed for Journalism and leading to his eventual release.
Fearless in his quest to speak truth to power and push the bounds of investigative journalism, Rodney is the recipient of multiple journalism and press-freedom awards across the world, including Journalist of the Year. In 2014, he was named one of Reporters Without Borders top 100 “Information Heroes” and is the bestselling author of Journalist on Trial: Fighting Corruption, Media Muzzling and a 5,000-Year Prison Sentence in Liberia.
The FrontPage Africa/New Narratives team has won a string of national awards including Journalist of the Year and Media House of the Year. It has also won major international awards including the Committee to Protect Journalists’ Press Freedom Award, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression Award, a Dag Hammarskjold fellowship, the German Development Media prize for Africa and two Pulitzer fellowships. Their work has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, Newsweek, the PBS NewsHour and elsewhere.
A graduate with honors in Media Studies from Hunter College, Sieh has worked with several U.S. newspapers including Newport News, Syracuse Post Standard and the Daily Record. He worked as an intern at the Newark Star Ledger and the Kansas City Star. At Hunter Sieh was among the pilot team that launched the first online college newspaper, The Word, which many students past and present use to build their resumes and journalism credentials.
Sieh, and a small dedicated team, launched FrontPageAfrica.com in 2005 and the print edition in 2009. In a short time it has become the most widely read newspaper in Liberia and the website enjoys almost 20 millions visits a month.