One year ago, Iranian protesters outraged by an apparently fraudulent presidential election filled the streets of Tehran to vent their anger. And when the Western media was muzzled by authorities, citizen journalists used cellphones, blogs and Youtube to tell the rest of the world about what would become known as the Iranian uprising.
The demonstrations culminated in tragic and bloody clashes between protesters and riot police. Many were killed, including a beautiful young demonstrator named Neda who became an instant symbol of the cause when the video of her dying on a Tehran street went viral on the Internet.
Now, one year later, the Iranian regime's brutal crackdown on the protests has seemingly succeeded; demonstrations are few and far between, and many of the citizen journalists who documented the uprising have been imprisoned or gone underground, their voices silenced. The government led by hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad remains firmly in power.
But Kelly Golnoush Niknejad, founder of a small, web-based news outlet known as Tehran Bureau, remains as committed as ever to covering Iran in all its facets, even if doing so is tougher than ever.
"The Iranians did a better job than anyone else of telling the story of what was happening last year, they were right in the thick of it," Niknejad recalls.
"But the government has done a very effective job of squelching the press," she adds. "They've cracked down on the protesters, executed people, rounded up journalists. There are far fewer opportunities to document what's happening. And the Internet speed in Iran has been reduced greatly so you can't upload videos or pictures."
Niknejad, 43, grew up in Iran, but her family emigrated to the U.S. when she was a teen. She worked her way through a variety of reporting jobs in the U.S. and the Middle East, from covering cops and courts in San Diego to writing about diplomatic affairs at an English-language newspaper in Abu Dhabi. Along the way she racked up several master's degrees from Columbia's J-school.
A Blog's Beginnings
But Niknejad always felt the complexity and nuance of modern Iran was missing from most press coverage, so in 2008 she started Tehran Bureau as a blog chronicling the country's politics and culture. The blog soon evolved into a website, and during the uprising it quickly became a go-to clearinghouse for breaking news, commentary and analysis.
As pageviews increased so did the rave reviews; one veteran journalist called it the Huffington Post of Iran. Tehran Bureau's content started appearing in papers like The New York Times. And last fall "Frontline," the acclaimed PBS documentary show, partnered with Tehran Bureau, providing it with some financing and editorial support. Niknejad in turn was an associate producer for several "Frontline" documentaries, including "A Death in Tehran," about Neda, the young woman gunned down at one of the protests.
Still, Tehran Bureau's resources are modest. It has a small corps of freelancers based both inside and outside Iran (writers working inside the country use pseudonyms to avoid arrest.) Niknejad, who lives in Boston, is constantly on the hunt for more contributors, and is trying to find money to hire a translator to report on what Iran's hardline press is saying.
"I set up Tehran Bureau when Iran wasn't a big story, and we got thrown into covering the uprising," she says. "Now we're just doing the best with what we have, and are always trying to find ways to improve."
Niknejad makes it clear she's no advocacy journalist; she wants to cover all sides of Iran's political spectrum, even Ahmadinejad supporters. But doing so is infinitely more difficult when so many who opposed the government are now terrified to speak out.
"The story isn't on the streets anymore; the penalties are too high for protests," she says. "This has been a year of reading and writing about rape and torture and people who are missing, people getting beaten up and living in constant fear."
One day, she adds, "I'd like to have a real bureau in Iran, one where people could write under their own names. That alone would reflect the kind of society that a lot of Iranian people aspire to."
