New York City Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani has appointed journalist and media entrepreneur **Mazin Sidahmed** as executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Ethnic and Community Media. With nearly 15 years of experience in journalism and community media, Sidahmed will lead the city’s paid media, advertising and marketing efforts across various city agencies in his new role.
The appointment is aimed at ensuring that language, ethnicity or community differences do not prevent New Yorkers from accessing information about city government services and programs. Particular emphasis will be placed on reaching immigrants, multilingual communities and working New Yorkers through trusted media outlets and communication platforms they already use.
The Mayor’s Office of Ethnic and Community Media works with ethnic and community news organizations, community-based groups and nonprofit organizations across New York City’s five boroughs to disseminate information about city services and programs.
Established under **Local Law 83 of 2021**, the office is the first mayoral office of its kind in the United States. Under the law, each city agency is required to work toward allocating at least **50 percent of its total advertising spending to ethnic and community media**.
Mayor Mamdani said government services are meaningful only when information about those services reaches the people who need them. He noted that the people who most need government information and services are often the ones who have the greatest difficulty accessing that information.
Referring to Sidahmed’s work building trusted journalism for immigrant New Yorkers in their own languages and through the platforms they use, Mamdani said that how government reaches people is just as important as the message itself.
For New York’s large immigrant and multilingual population, local newspapers, radio stations, digital platforms and WhatsApp groups are important sources of everyday information. In his new role, Sidahmed will work to make the city’s advertising and public-service information more effective in reaching these communities while also strengthening relationships between the city administration and ethnic and community media organizations.
Sidahmed said he founded **Documented** with the goal of connecting immigrant New Yorkers with essential—and in some cases life-saving—services and information. In his new position, he said he hopes to expand that work citywide while also strengthening New York’s diverse ethnic and community media sector.
## Journalism and Community Media Background
Sidahmed is a journalist, media entrepreneur and organizer who has worked extensively on behalf of local journalism and immigrant communities. He is the co-founder and executive director of **Documented**, a nonprofit multilingual news organization that publishes news and essential information for immigrant New Yorkers in **English, Spanish, Chinese and Haitian Creole**.
Founded in 2018, Documented has centered the needs and perspectives of immigrant communities in its journalism.
Through Documented’s **“Bridging the Relationship”** program, news organizations across the United States are trained in community-centered journalism models focused on immigrant communities.
Sidahmed is also a co-founder of the **Immigrant News Coalition** and co-chair of the **News Futures Gardening Club**.
His journalism has received recognition from organizations and programs including the **Edward R. Murrow Awards, Deadline Club, Online Journalism Awards and LION Awards**. In 2024, he received the **Local Champion Award** from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
His investigative reporting on immigration courts as a co-founder of Documented also earned him an **Edward R. Murrow Award**.
Before founding Documented, Sidahmed worked as a journalist for **The Guardian US** in New York. His reporting included coverage of the 2016 U.S. election, surveillance, the criminal justice system and hate crimes. He has also written for **POLITICO New York**.
He began his journalism career at **The Daily Star** in Lebanon, where he reported on the Syrian refugee crisis, arms transfers in Lebanon and the conditions faced by migrant domestic workers.
Sidahmed’s appointment comes at an office whose mission is directly connected to New York City’s linguistic and ethnic diversity. In his new position, he will play a role in making city government information and services more accessible to New Yorkers across different linguistic and ethnic communities.
At the same time, strengthening the city government’s relationships with ethnic and community media—including in the areas of public advertising, information distribution and communications—will be a key part of his responsibilities.
