News-Decoder intern Maryam Touimi Benjelloun shows off our new website, standing near Le Louvre in Paris.

By Nelson Graves

Today News-Decoder takes a big step forward with a new website design that will better showcase the work of our correspondents and our students around the world.

The website is a window onto our world where young people and experts tackle critical, sometimes intractable, issues in the interests of greater global understanding.

The new website, designed by intern Maryam Touimi Benjelloun with the help of Savannah Jenkins, is sleeker than our original digital home, in keeping with the youthful cast of mind of our main demographic.

More importantly, it will allow us to highlight the work of students at the 18 institutions in 11 countries that are our academic partners.

In coming months, the students will be tackling big themes with articles, photo reports, podcasts, video and webinars. The themes include climate change, human rights, nationalism, Africa, the future of democracy, immigration, the South China Sea and globalization.

We’ll be showcasing their work and work by our correspondents on our new home page and in a special section called “Themes.” Keep in mind that all content on News-Decoder is original and unique — no curation or aggregation of other sites’ work.

Students and faculty at our partners have exclusive access to private sections of the website that offer an online discussion board with chat, an eLearning platform and archived webinars. This is where students build the News-Decoder community, which is premised on respectful, civil dialog, and also where they hone their writing and speaking skills.

Special thanks to Maryam and Savannah for putting together the new site. They, too, are in our target demographic of young people between the ages of 18 and 30.

From the start I’ve said News-Decoder intends to involve young people in all aspects of its operations, and it brings me special pleasure to have worked with these talented young women on a project of such strategic importance to our not-for-profit’s future.

Nelson Graves is the founder of News-Decoder. He was a correspondent, bureau chief and regional managing editor at Reuters, holding posts in Washington, Paris, New Delhi, Kuala Lumpur, Milan and Tokyo. He later served as admissions director at Johns Hopkins University’s graduate program in international relations in Europe, and has worked with schools around the world as a teacher and trustee.