The following excerpt was sent out from The New York Times‘ Solana Pyne and Mark Scheffler:
We are thrilled to welcome Aric Toler, Arijeta Lajka, Neil Bedi and Nader Ibrahim to the Video team.
Aric Toler
Aric Toler joins Visual Investigations as a video journalist. Previously, he was the director of research and training at Bellingcat, where he oversaw the organization’s investigative work using groundbreaking open-source techniques.
In his nine years at Bellingcat, Aric helped expand the organization from a small group of volunteers to an entity synonymous with open-source investigations. He also created and led workshops that taught digital sleuthing to hundreds of journalists and researchers across the globe.
Aric, a fluent Russian speaker, graduated from the University of Kansas in Lawrence with a master’s in Slavic languages and literature.
Arijeta Lajka (Photo: Adrian Perovic)
Arijeta Lajka joins the team as a video journalist reporting on news with a focus on identifying, geolocating and verifying open-source video.
She arrives at The Times from The Associated Press, where she spent several years working as a visual verification reporter, tackling online misinformation and vetting user-generated videos on everything from hurricane seasons to the war in Ukraine.
Most recently, Arijeta worked as a video producer, where she coordinated with teams on live coverage and produced breaking news on the biggest national stories of the day.
Before The A.P., Arijeta produced digital and broadcast documentaries for CBS. She also worked for BBC News in Washington, creating videos on trending news, including President Donald Trump’s White House.
Fluent in Albanian, Arijeta started her career writing about culture and politics in Prishtina, Kosovo, for the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network. She is a native of New York and a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Neil Bedi
Neil Bedi will join the Visual Investigations team as a video journalist, working on open-source reporting and accountability journalism.
Neil is a dogged and highly versatile reporter coming to us from ProPublica, where he investigated corporate malfeasance and lapses in government oversight, including stories about a problematic life-sustaining medical device and the continued use of asbestos in American chemical plants. Before that, he was an investigative reporter at The Tampa Bay Times.
In 2021, his work with Kathleen McGrory on a local sheriff’s predictive policing initiative was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting. Their 2018 reporting on deaths and complications at a Johns Hopkins pediatric heart surgery center earned a George Polk Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.
Neil has also taught journalism at Princeton University and Georgetown University. Born and raised in New Jersey, he studied computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and was a software developer at JP Morgan before he became a journalist.
Nader Ibrahim
Nader Ibrahim will start as a senior video journalist in London on Nov. 1, marking the expansion of our video coverage into a global, 24-hour operation.
He joins us from the BBC World Service’s investigations unit, where he specializes in the use of digital open-source investigative techniques, combined with traditional journalism and field work, to report on conflict and humanitarian violations in the Middle East, Africa and Ukraine.
He’s also reported from Sudan, Egypt and other parts of Europe and the Middle East. He speaks fluent Arabic.
Aric and Arijeta start today; Neil joins the team Sept. 25 and Nader on Nov. 1.
