Company: Transterra Media Country: Lebanon Industry: News Founders: Jonathan Giesen, Eli Andrews Ages: 41, 39 Established in: Sept 2012 Number of Employees: 17 Revenues: ½ million Capital raised: 1.3 million Awards: Red Herring Top 100 Asia 2013 “Two years ago it was like journalism was killed,” says Transterra Media CEO and co-founder Jonathan Giesen, referring to the flood of citizen journalism with the rise of social media that shadowed the Arab Spring. This appeared, Giesen says, as the final deadly blow to the media industry, which had been struggling since the 2008 recession slashed advertising prices, its main form of revenue. But citizen journalism has not replaced old school reporting. Without a screening process to make sense of the world of online content, it has become at times chaotic. Transterra Media recognized this with the launch of their Beta website in Cairo, three days before the Egyptian revolution. The
