🚀 Author, Mobile Journalism textbook
🎬 Director, Smart Film School in Berlin
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Robb Montgomery
Robb Montgomery is an American journalist, documentary filmmaker, and visual media anthropologist known for his contributions to mobile journalism and media development programs.
He is a former Chicago newspaper editor who builds immersive cultural heritage experiences that mesh journalism ethics, documentary film, spatial computing, ethnography, and shoe-leather reporting.
He spent three weeks in Ukraine in 2023, leading internally displaced journalists to produce 18 short documentary films during the full-scale invasion.
He founded the Smart Film School in 2015 and has trained reporters in more than 30 countries, including broadcast journalists at CNN, Channel News Asia, VRT, Reuters, and The New York Times.
He is the author of Mobile Journalism (2020-2025, Visual Editors, Chicago) and Smartphone Video Storytelling (2018, Taylor & Francis – New York & London) textbooks.
He founded Visual Editors, NFP in 2004 as a public charity to support visual journalism literacy.
Montgomery’s documentary films have won top prizes at festivals in L.A., Moscow, and Berlin. His work is cited in academic literature on media democratization, newsroom innovation, and digital storytelling pedagogy.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Eastern Illinois University (1990) and is expected to earn a master’s degree in visual media anthropology from Media University in Berlin in 2026.
His cultural heritage project on virtual intimacy was recently published in the Journal of Visual and Media Anthropology, Vol. 9, 2025, ISSN 2366-4975
CREDENTIALS
• Former editor: Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times
• Journalism professor
• Digital Transformation consultant for United Nations, Thomson Reuters Foundation, Red Cross, InterNews, IREX, WAN-IFRA, and HT Media.
• Filmmaker / Winner of Film Festivals in L.A., Berlin and Moscow.
• Chair, Mobile Journalism Awards
BOOKS
Smartphone Video Storytelling (2018 Taylor & Francis, New York & London)
Videos mit dem Smartphone (2019 dPunkt Verlag – German language edition)
Mobile Journalism (2020 Visual Editors, Chicago)
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