Adi Renaldi

Adi Renaldi is a freelance multimedia journalist based in Jakarta. Prior to being a freelancer, he was an in-depth editor at Tirto.ID and a staff writer at VICE Indonesia for four years, where he produced long-form journalism ranging from religious extremism, environment, to culture. Before his stint at VICE he joined Jakarta-based news platform Concord Review, overseeing Global Jihad column.

His investigation in late 2018 on how Indonesian presidential candidates hired PR agencies to deploy cyber troops to manipulate public opinion ahead of election was the first to appear in media and later gained international attention. Later in the same year he hosted a VICE video documentary investigating how Indonesia’s poor fishing industry has forced thousands of local fishermen to migrate to Malaysia, risking their lives of being kidnapped by Southeast Asia’s ISIS-linked terrorist group Abu Sayyaf. During the first two months of COVID-19 outbreak, he reported from Indonesia’s epicenter, where he spent weeks on the frontline following medical workers, hearse driver, undertakers, and family members losing their loved ones.

He has contributed to WIRED UK, National Geographic, MIT Technology Review, LA Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, Al Jazeera English, 101 East, Rest of World, Courier Magazine, SCMP News, Nikkei Asia, Jakarta Post, NPR, China Dialogue, Mongabay, Coconuts Jakarta, New Naratif, Asia Democracy Chronicles, and other publications. His story about Indonesia’s mass female circumcision was nominated for the Excellence in Reporting on Child Rights, Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) 2020 Award. Renaldi was a 2018 Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) Journalist Fellow and has received various reporting grants from Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Internews’ Earth Journalism Network (EJN), Oxfam, and Innovation For Change (I4C).

He is currently experimenting with mobile journalism as a way to tell stories through short documentary video. In his spare time, he produces audio podcast discussing literature and philosophy.