Adi Renaldi is a Jakarta-based freelance multimedia journalist with more than a decade of experience. He works across multiple platforms that combines audio-visual and in-depth reporting, focusing on the intersection of the environment, politics, technology, culture and human rights. Previously he served as an in-depth managing editor at Tirto.id and spent almost four years as a staff writer at VICE Indonesia, where he produced long-form journalism ranging from religious extremism to culture.

He has traveled extensively throughout the archipelago to report on various topics, from displacement of local indigenous community due to mass tourism boom, impacts on climate and human rights of nickel mining, to how LGBTQ community struggle to express their religious belief. He is currently working on his first book about the fate of small islands across Indonesia in times of climate change, extractive tourism, and reckless mining operations, which combines travelogue and reportage inspired by travel writings of Chatwin, Theroux, Waugh, and Grann. It is scheduled to be finished in 2024.

In March 2024, Renaldi founded The Archipelago Dispatch, a non-profit media organization aims to showcase underreported, hyperlocal stories from the region, where he writes, commissions, and edits travelogues and long-form journalism pieces on various topics. He also aggregates, curates, and edits the weekly newsletter.

Since early 2020, he has contributed to more than two dozen international outlets such as WIRED UK, MIT Technology Review, National Geographic both magazine and online, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The New Humanitarian, Christian Science Monitor, Al Jazeera’s flagship documentary program 101 East, Al Jazeera English, South China Morning Post, Rest of World, Nikkei Asia, NPR, Courier Magazine, The Jakarta Post, China Dialogue, Mongabay, Initium Media, New Naratif, Asia Democracy Chronicle, Project Multatuli, China Global South Project, Coconuts, and other publications. He also has provided research and consultancy service for Global Witness, Climate Rights International, Associated Press, Le Monde, The Gecko Project, and more.

During the delta variant outbreak he joined forces with Al Jazeera’s 101 East and Judith Neilson Institute for a documentary investigating the medical waste catastrophe in Southeast Asia that won Silver during the 43rd Telly Awards 2022, New York in General-Sustainability category. He was part of a team of reporters, photographers, and videographers commissioned by Rest of World for the Global Gig Workers project launched in September 2021, examining the socio-economic impact of digitally-mediated gig work that surveyed almost 5,000 gig workers across the globe, which won the Excellence in Regional Technology Reporting SOPA Awards 2022.

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. In late 2018 he investigated how Indonesian presidential candidates hired PR agencies to deploy cyber troops to manipulate public opinion ahead of election. The three-part series titled Mass Confusion published by VICE was among 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.

As a researcher, he conducted investigation and research into the nickel mining industry in North Maluku and its subsequent impacts toward climate, human rights, and the environment for Climate Rights International, in which he interviewed more than 50 sources and studied regulations, company documents, and public complaints. The result is a 100+-page report that was launched in January 2024 titled Nickel Unearthed: The Human and Climate Costs of Indonesia's Nickel Industry. 

Renaldi was a 2018 Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) Journalist Fellow and has received various reporting grants from Journalism Fund Europe, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Internews’ Earth Journalism Network, Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism, and Civicus Innovation For Change (I4C). He is also a member of the Overseas Press Club of America and Society of Environmental Journalists and has completed HEFAT training conducted by Rainforest Journalism Fund, Key Objectives, and WAN IFRA.

In his spare time, Renaldi likes to knob-wiggling with his collection of synthesizers and riding on his tried-and-true Surly gravel bike.