It’s time for another update from the newsroom — the place your stories go before they are published on Global Voices.

Something awesome this way comes…

Our executive editor Ivan Sigal will be sharing some exciting news soon regarding an innovative project that we will be launching. Stay tuned!

Global Voices podcast

Zombie a-podcast-lypse? Global Voices once had an excellent podcast (check it out on the Global Voices Soundcloud page), but for various reasons it eventually fizzled out. Fast forward a few years, and we’ve now brought it back and turned it into a review of the many engaging stories we’ve published in the week gone by.

Check out the first two episodes:

• Episode 1: Paranoid Patriotism
• Episode 2: The Elephant in the Room

Instagram

In November, we relaunched our Instagram account as a community initiative.  Since then we have switched hands over 20 times, visiting dozens of cities through the unique lens of fellow GVers. Here are some of the beautiful places and stories brought to us by Mahsa, Juan, Marianna, Pernille, Lena, Prudence, Jillian, Arzu, Thalia, Georgia, Rezwan, Palash, Pauline, Firuzeh, Nevin, and Thalia.

After a successful but tiring day, we went to relax to Yarinacocha, a lagoon near the city of Pucallpa. It is a very touristic place and quite visited. Unfortunately, its port is in the midst of renovations, but we rented a boat and took a small tour of observation of local wildlife, especially birds. Then, with time being propitious, we stayed to watch the sunset. Don't envy us. #amazonia #travel #igerspucallpa #pucallpa #ucayali #peru #instagv #dayinthelifeofgv #viajes #travelpics #tourism #sunset #atardecer #charapa #instasunset #instamood #Yarinacocha #laguna #lagoon #amazonjungle #sunsets #sunsetsofinstagram #today

A photo posted by Global Voices (@globalvoicesonline) on Mar 15, 2016 at 1:29pm PDT

This week our Instagram reins are in Claire’s hands. If you’d like to run the account for a week, add your name to this spreadsheet.

Staff changes

We had a few changes in the newsroom within the last few months.

Danica Radisic stepped down as Central and Eastern Europe editor, and longtime contributor Filip Stojanovski stepped up to fill her shoes. Mary Aviles also handed over the role of Latin America editor to Laura Vidal, formerly LatAm community manager, and Elizabeth Rivera, longtime contributor and recent GV social media extraordinaire. The two will share the editorship.

A big thank you to Danica and Mary for all the wonderful, diligent work they put in over the years! We’ll miss you as editors, and look forward to seeing you around the community.

Sana Saleem also came aboard as Pakistan editor to experiment with ways to improve our coverage.

And Caribbean editor Janine Mendes-Franco joined our weekend sub-editing team.

Introducing the Global Voices sub-editing team

Before posts are published on Global Voices, they’re often looked at by a sub-editor, who might suggest a new headline, make some copy edits, or help shape the post in a way that a global audience can understand. This has been part of our recent efforts to make sure our content always supports our mission — building bridges of understanding around the world —  and our editorial code.

If you’ve ever written a story for GV, you’ve probably encountered these sub-editors. But who are they?

We created a short video to introduce the community to our small global team of sub-editors.

And remember, editing and sub-editing should always be a conversation. For more insight into the editing process, take a look at this Community Blog post: A Conversation on Editing.

Newsroom group chats

In February, our 22 newsroom editors broke into four groups for a series of in-depth discussions. We brainstormed about creative ways to recruit contributors (GIFs, anyone?) and the different roles that contributors can play at GV beyond the author and translator titles.

Community-wide collaborative posts

We're making an effort to showcase our passionate and diverse community to the world by working together on community-wide collaborative posts more often. Here are some of the stories we've put together since late October 2015:

• Carrot Syrup, Potato Compresses and Nutmeg Necklaces: Grandma's Remedies From Around the World
• The Best Stories of 2015, Handpicked by the Global Voices Community
• Expand Your Movie-Watching Horizons With These 16 Films From Around the World
• 64 More Movies Recommended by the Global Voices Community

Top stories

Here’s a list of our top 10 visited stories since November:

1. The Streets of Paris Are as Familiar to Me as the Streets of Beirut by Joey Ayoub
2. The Big Laughs of Mexico's ISIS Threat by Elizabeth
3. Why Are Students in Ethiopia Protesting Against a Capital City Expansion Plan? by Endalk
4. The Remarkable, Forgotten Story of How a Soviet Town Disposed of Its Dead by Kevin Rothrock
5. There's a Prison in Russia Making Viral YouTube Videos by Kevin Rothrock
6. The Conflict in the Middle East Is Not Between Sunnis and Shias and Doesn't ‘Date Back Millennia’ by Amira Al Hussaini
7. An Indigenous Toddler Was Murdered in Cold Blood, but Brazil Barely Took Notice by Fernanda Canofre
8. Viral Story About Special Train Service for Hokkaido Schoolgirl Causes Problems for Student by Nevin Thompson
9. Starving to Death: Images from Madaya, Syria, You Don't Want to See by Amira Al Hussaini
10. Inside Ethiopia's Self-Defeating Crackdown on Oromo Musicians by Endalk

Partnerships

Here are some highlights from our existing partnerships:

• PRI republished 24 of our stories since November.
• Hong Kong Free Press republished 26 of our stories since November.
• And the Guardian republished at least five of our stories since November:
  • What would Tanzania's cost-cutting president do? Twitter responds
  • No, thanks. Armenia's opposition rallies against referendum
  • Violent clashes in Ethiopia over ‘master plan’ to expand Addis
  • Cat calendar featuring Russian orthodox priests goes viral
  • Radio silence: Burundi's media targeted in ongoing political crisis

Special coverage

Since November, we published three new special coverage pages: one on protests in Ethiopia, one summarizing our end-of-2015 coverage, and another on violence targeting secular bloggers in Bangladesh. Check them out:

• Bloggers Under Fire: The Fatal Consequences of Free Thinking in Bangladesh
• Dive Into Our Most Essential and Engaging Stories of 2015
• Ethiopian Protesters Endure Brutality and Censorship Amid Land Struggle

Writing tips

For the last year and a half, we’ve been handing off the Weekly Writing Tips to different newsroom editors each month.

In November, Lauren Finch took a trip down memory lane to remind us of past tips on good writing practices, keeping your writing simple, and writing for a global audience.

Mary Aviles took over in December, explaining the importance of the who and curating some of the best writing advice she’s read throughout her career.

In January, Amira Al Hussaini innovated on the regular Weekly Writing Tips style, making them an interactive exercise for the entire community. We learned all the important steps that go into selecting photos and tweets and using Facebook as part of our reporting, and received two collaborative posts in the process: Ringing in 2016 with Global Voices Contributors and GVers Pick their Favourite Tweets In Tribute to David Bowie.

Ndesanjo Macha took over the tips during February and March. He taught us the art of writing and psychology, what common mistakes to avoid to speed up the editing process and how to become a regular GV author.

GV represent!

Our contributors were busy in the last few months receiving attention from other media outlets and bringing their expertise to conferences, panels and more.

• South Asia editor Rezwan’s post Why I went into exile: A Bangladeshi blogger tells his story was republished by the Daily Dot.
• Iran editor Mahsa Alimardani appeared in the German documentary “Mein Iran: Einblicke in die Islamische Republik” and was profiled by German magazine Emma as one of five women “programming the future”.
• BBC Trending talked to Caribbean editor Janine Mendes-Franco about the outcry over a Trinidad and Tobago mayor's victim-blaming comments in the murder of a Carnival masquerader.
• RuNet Echo editor Kevin Rothrock commented in Washington Post story about Russian social media responses to Turkish Air Force incident in Syria. He also participated in  a RuNet-themed panel at the 2015 ASEEES conference.
• Fellow RuNet Echo editor Tanya Lokot commented on the Sinai Russian plane crash for AJ Listening Post as well as spoke about GV at a civic journalism conference in Lviv, Ukraine.
• MENA editor Amira Al Hussaini gave two-day training for Bahraini human rights activists on how to protect themselves.
• Central and Eastern Europe editor Filip Stojanovski spoke at meeting for a project of http://actionsee.org.
• Contributor Aric Toler spoke at the New America Foundation Future of War conference on March 10, about OSINT and his Ukraine work.
• Colombian newspaper El Espectador republished the Spanish version of author Florencia Goldsman's post The YouTube Women: Delivering Hard-Hitting Digital Video Activism.

Did we miss anything? Let us know so we can give a well-deserved shout-out.