Tawanda Kanhema is a journalist and product manager with a background in reporting across Africa and leading product strategy in Silicon Valley. He previously worked at Mozilla on Pocket and Firefox, connecting millions of users to high-quality content. As a board member of the News Product Alliance, Tawanda focuses on fostering innovation and community among news product builders, helping newsrooms adapt and thrive in the digital age.
The News Product Alliance is a community of product thinkers focused on shaping the future of news. They explore ways to empower newsrooms to strengthen relationships with their communities and design products that enhance how they reach audiences. Tawanda highlights the importance of supporting small newsrooms with limited resources to come up with innovative ways to use available technologies to expand their reach, strengthen their credibility, and establish scalable business models.
One of Tawanda’s favorite internet rabbit holes is Codrops, a community of animation designers and front-end developers sharing demos for others to remix or build on. He finds inspiration for digital storytelling from this site. Additionally, he mentions threejs.org, a JavaScript library and API for creating 3D graphics, which NASA even used for their Mars landing simulation.
Tawanda doesn’t regret closing tabs as he uses Pocket to save all his favorite resources from sites like Codrops and three.js. This allows him to revisit them anytime. He is currently obsessed with three.js and A-Frame, a web framework that allows users to build 3D virtual worlds in the browser.
His first online community engagement was with Google’s Earth Outreach program, focusing on using geospatial tools to effect change and enhance the representation of communities on maps. This experience sparked his passion for mapping and documenting underrepresented places.
Tawanda has started creating his own corner of the internet with Unmapped Planet, an interactive archive of his photography from mapping projects. The site allows users to experience virtual reality tours of the places he has mapped. His goal is to create a visual archive and eventually make it more community-focused.
In terms of articles and videos he’s waiting to read/watch, Tawanda is interested in imaging technologies in the generative AI space and how AI is being ethically used in newsrooms. He mentions The Baltimore Times‚ initiative to use generative AI to create audio versions of their text stories, expanding access and making their content more accessible to the community.
With the News Product Alliance creating space for news product builders to connect, Tawanda believes that nurturing a community like this can help shape the future of the internet. By designing online experiences that create support networks and connect product thinkers worldwide, they are building programs that establish a cycle of support and bridge the gap between data-driven decision-making and traditional editorial judgment.
Overall, Tawanda Kanhema’s work with the News Product Alliance showcases his dedication to empowering newsrooms to thrive online and fostering innovation and community among news product builders. His passion for technology, storytelling, and community shines through in his efforts to shape the future of the internet.