Maria Ressa is the award-winning journalist who has been at the centre of high-profile legal battles in the Philippines and is now the recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize.
In 2012, Ms Ressa co-founded the online news site Rappler, merging "rap" meaning to talk and "ripples", to make waves.
Rappler is now the biggest news site in the Philippines and has more than 4.5 million followers on Facebook.
If you want to know anything about the Philippines, and especially the nitty gritty and the underbelly then Rappler is the go to and is universally known for its intelligent analysis and hard-hitting investigations.
While celebrating Filipino news Rappler is also one of the few Philippine media organisations to be openly critical of President Duterte and his policies.
The president even banned Rappler's reporters from covering his official activities.
Long before becoming The Beagle editor I did several foreign aid assignments into The Philippines and enjoyed adding Rappler to the list of daily must reads along with the Hindustan Times.
When it first started up it was simply a website, run from a couple of laptops out of a cafe in Pasig in Manila. One of my assignments was to offer support in simplifying the processes of producing The Jeepney Magazine, which is a street newspaper (similar to The Big Issue ) sold by the poor and homeless in the Philippines.
I had started an online Tuross Head weekly newsletter mailed out to the community in 1999. This lasted for 18 months before it was pared back to monthly due to the demands of being overseas much of the time and still producing it from a wide variety of locations whilst on various assignments.
And all the while Rappler inspired - a website - a blog - managed by just a few from laptops in a cafe. Five years ago The Beagle was born in the model of Rappler. One guy, one laptop, from any cafe in the world.
The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded for using freedom of expression to "expose abuse of power, use of violence and growing authoritarianism in her native country".
Between 1992 and 2021 87 journalists have been killed in Philippines for writing about the Government and for revealing abuse of power.
While The Beagle is just small change by comparison it too is spurned by civic leaders, it places a spot light on civic decisions and it too is not invited to press calls.
Maria Ressa Photo by Joshua Lim
