What I need from you

Critical feedback and ideas
Founding members
Grants and donations to get started

History

As a developing photojournalist, with only minimal on-the-job experience working for a university news paper, I've found it difficult to gain journalistic access to many events. Reasons for denial include because I'm not a full-time journalist or working on behalf of an established outlet. I want to change this, remain a freelancer, and in a way that it benefits others. A top priority is that I want to make it easier for anyone to get a legitimate press credential.

Desperate to attend the NATO Summit 2025 in The Hague, Netherlands, in May 2025 I started emailing several media outlets in and around the Netherlands if I could exchange my time and photographic media for a "letter from the editor" for NATO's press pass application. I had learned that President Zelenskyy and President Trump would be in attendance, and it seemed like an incredible opportunity to photograph them at such a pivitol time in European history. Sadly, all of my emails were ignored. Even my email to a Maastricht University newspaper, where I would be a law student starting in Septmeber. Still determined, I took the chance to apply for my own media pass on behalf of my Dutch freelance company. With only two days before the NATO Summit, I received approval! My NATO Summit expereince pushed me into a new phase of development-- development of a simple idea that I'd been working on for a little over a year.

The idea

The Fedizen

Future home: fedizen.org

My evolving idea for The Fedizen is to create a new type of news organization made up of anyone who agrees to a set of principles -- based on the International Federation of Journalist's Global Charter of Ethics for Journalists. That's it. A completely decentralized organization made up of volunteers who want to help change the world by documenting what goes on around us and holding the powerful to account. The organization's purpose includes:

Provide a media credential to anyone who meets baseline criteria (see the Baseline Critera below).
Provide fediverse hosting training, legal training, and operational security training to members.
Provide a publishing platform that will:
- Highlight journalist's work that is hosted on their fediverse platforms.
- Host anonymous journalists who are working in dangerous places.
- Host an offline-by-default copy of journalist's work that can be put online in the event journalist's work is taken offline due to regional legal issues.
- Host a SecureDrop instance for whistleblowers that wish to anonymously leak documents to the press.

Because I have a background in cybersecurity, I have a particular interest in getting a press credential into the hands of hackers and security researchers who want to publish their work in a more legally defensible way. I also have a long history of being an activist, online and offline. Getting press credentials into the hands of activists to help them uncover truths is also very important to me.

Legal protections

I've had success with Emerald Onion, my first U.S. 501(c)(3) human rights not-for-profit. Emerald Onion started with healthy design princicples centered on U.S. law and transparency. I moved to the Netherlands to start a Dutch freelance company, Polyhedra B.V., and so The Fedizen will at first be incubated as a program under Polyhedra where a goal is to reach a minimum level of sustainability. I anticipate The Fedizen to eventually spin off into its own legal structure and nonprofit foundation or collective. However, since I am still learning about EU law and Dutch law, doing it this way for now will keep things simple.

The Fedizen will design itself to be resistant to abuses of legal systems. The Netherlands has:

Clearly established freedom of expression in Article 7 of the Dutch Constitution.
Strong press freedom being ranked third in the World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders.
Strong source protection according to the Columbia Global Freedom of Expression
Strong whistleblower protection according to the Dutch Whistleblowers Authority.

Baseline criteria

The Fedizen has voluntary membership and members must sign a contract limiting the liability of The Fedizen and agreeing to the Charter. The Fedizen will also have permission to republish the work of their members.
Individual members are fully autonomous and are able to individually profit from their work so long as they agree to and follow the baseline criteria. Members may self-identify as being their own journalistic entity or they may self-identify as being a journalist of The Fedizen, whatever helps them and their situation. If members self-identify as being their own entity, members should identify somewhere they they ascribe to The Fedizen Charter.
Members must have a fediverse account from which they publish news, interviews, or research content. Their fediverse account does not need to be their primary audience.
Members are encouraged to form partnerships and help each other. For example, as a photojournalist, i'd be interested to contribute still media to other's work.

Steps to Establish