Press Release
February 27, 2018
New York – February 27, 2018 – Coda Media, Inc., and The Interpreter today announced that the two nonprofit companies have entered into a strategic partnership to closely cooperate, share resources, and expand the scope of their journalism. Coda’s award-winning single-issue crisis reporting platform, Coda Story will host The Interpreter and the two publications will cross-post, co-commission, and cross-promote stories on topics of mutual interest.
“The bridging of Coda’s storytelling and The Interpreter’s approach to explaining Russian politics and anatomizing disinformation campaigns is the beginning of what we hope will be a long and fruitful partnership,” said Ilan Greenberg, Publisher and Editorial Director of Coda. “One that allows both publications to expand their influence and create new relationships.”
Michael Weiss, a prominent national security journalist and analyst who is an expert on Russian disinformation tactics, has been appointed Coda’s Consulting Executive Editor. In his new role, he will provide guidance and thought leadership to Coda’s senior editorial management and will contribute his own journalism to both publications. Weiss will continue to manage the operations and edit the editorial published in The Interpreter, an online investigative and aggregation publication he founded in 2013.
“I’m thrilled to be joining a news site helmed by some of the Russia-focused writers and journalists I most admire and who cover this often murky space with rigor and sobriety,” said Weiss. “It’s my hope that our deep-dive approach to headline news and major geopolitical developments will be a boon to Coda and its team as they continue their award-winning journalism.”
Coda’s efforts to promote a deeper understanding of the crises that shape our world fit well with the Interpreter’s emphasis on shedding light on the inside politics informing global affairs. “We’re thrilled to bring both Michael and The Interpreter into the Coda’s burgeoning editorial offerings,” said Natalia Antelava, Chief Executive and Editor-in-Chief of Coda.
About Coda Story
Coda Story is an award-winning single-issue crisis reporting platform that allows the public to engage more deeply with stories that shape our world. Coda takes one crisis at a time and deploy a team of local and international journalists to stay on the story for up to a year, covering it from many different angles. Coda’s mission is to produce high-quality, original narrative storytelling that attracts a wide readership via traditional text, features and video, as well as distinct, innovative and inventive digital formats. Founded by a team of seasoned journalists, Coda is for those who believe that understanding a crisis is essential to addressing it and those who want to know what happened after the spotlight moved on.
Since launching in January 2016, Coda has grown exponentially, launching two editions on the refugee crisis in Europe, and Russian disinformation in Eurasia. Coda has chronicled Russian disinformation–articles, videos, radio programs, social media animations, and in an upcoming graphic nonfiction app—that exposes, explains, and illuminates the crisis of disinformation in its many facets and complexity.
Coda amplifies its audience reach through editorial partnerships including Reveal at the Center for Investigative Reporting, Newsy, World Policy Journal, and Foreign Affairs, and a number of independent newsrooms throughout the former Soviet Union. Its journalism has been a recipient of a 2018 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award and is shortlisted for a 2018 Innovation Award from the European Press Prize. In 2016, Coda was shortlisted for Excellence and Innovation in Visual Digital Storytelling Award from the Online News Association, and in 2015 the Global Editors Network named Coda its News Start Up of the Year.
Coda Story is a 501(c)3 U.S non-profit with offices in New York City and Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia. Coda is supported by foundation grants and private donations. Further revenue is generated by animation and video production for clients producing journalism in the public interest.
About The Interpreter
Founded in May 2013, The Interpreter set out with the modest goal of translating articles from the Russian press, the better to lower the language barrier that separates journalists, analysts, policymakers, diplomats and interested laymen in the English-speaking world from events taking place inside the Russian Federation.
The Interpreter translated into English two major reports on the alleged corruption behind the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014; the first co-written by the Leonid Martinyuk and Boris Nemtsov, the latter of whom was brutally assassinated in Moscow a year later; the second by Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation.
It also published two internationally discussed stand-alone studies, “The Menace of Unreality,” a look at contemporary Kremlin disinformation and propaganda, and “An Invasion by Any Other Name,” a near-comprehensive history of the Kremlin’s “dirty war” in Ukraine that relied heavily on what Russian investigators and activists had uncovered about their own government’s deception.
Every day since violence first erupted in Kiev’s Independence Square, The Interpreter’s Ukraine live-blog has documented a revolution that became a war on European soil, often breaking news stories about Russia’s annexation of Crimea, its maskirovka insurgency in the Donbas, its cross-border shelling of Ukraine, the downing of MH17, and the Minsk II “cease-fire.”
The Interpreter has also scrutinized Russia’s claims about its intervention in Syria, purportedly waged to eliminate ISIS terrorists, showing instances where the actual targets of Russia’s campaign have been U.S.-backed rebel groups and civilians in non-ISIS-held areas of the country.
About Michael Weiss
Michael Weiss is the co-author of the New York Times-bestselling ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror and a National Security Analyst for CNN. A specialist on the Islamic State and broader Syria conflict, he also has published widely on Russian disinformation and espionage. His work has appeared in The Daily Beast, CNN.com and Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, Slate, The New York Times and elsewhere. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security as well as an advisory board member of the Kleptocracy Initiative. In February 2018, The Interpreter, the online translation and analysis journal he established, merged with Coda.
For press inquiries: Mariam Kiparoidze, kiparoidze@codastory.com