In October 2021, Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov were named joint winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. Ressa is the founder and chief executive of Rappler, a digital media company focused on investigative journalism, while Muratov founded an independent newspaper, Novaja Gazeta, in 1993 in Russia and has been editor-in-chief since 1995. Ressa provided the keynote address to the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA) annual conference at RMIT University at the end of 2020. The global pandemic prevented her from attending in person, but the urgency of her advocacy for press freedom was underscored by the Nobel committee's subsequent decision. She became only the eighteenth woman to win in the 120 years of the Nobel Prize's history, and not since 1935 has a journalist won.