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SAJA Newshole

The Buzz Moves, Awards, Honors

• Shankar Vedantam, a staff writer at the Washington Post and Donald C. Drake (a former colleague from his days at the Philadelphia Inquirer) are having their play's world premiere
  at The Brick Playhouse in Philadelphia, April 7-25. It's called "Tom, Dick and Harriet" and won the Second Annual
  Brick Playhouse Award for Outstanding Writing. More about this "menage-a-trois with DNA, the NRA, & the GOP" at
  http://brickplay.home.comcast.net/wsb/html/view.cgi-home.html-.html
• Mohamed Bazzi, Newsday's Middle East bureau chief and Raja Mishra of the Boston Globe are among the winners of this year's James Aronson Awards for Social Justice
  Journalism. Bazzi won for In-depth coverage of the Iraq war; Mishra was part of a three-person team that wrote about deaths from preventable diseases. List of winners (and links to the stories)http://filmmedia.hunter.cuny.edu:16080/aronson/winners.html
• March 17: Ameet Sachdev of the Chicago Tribune has been elected to a two-year term as a member of the governing board of AAJA, the Asian American Journalists Assn. He is one of 11 people on the board and is the only South Asian.
• March 1: Nikhil Deogun has been named deputy chief of the Wall Street Journal Washington bureau. One SAJAer observed that it is one of the top 10 jobs in U.S. political journalism.
   
  Romesh Ratnesar, 28, has been named World editor of Time magazine. Among his recent assignments, reporting from Iraq.
   
  Anup Bagaria became the CEO of New York magazine after it was aquired by Wasserstain group, making him the highest ranking South Asian on the business side of a major U.S. publication. His bio: http://www.wasserco.com/view/team/team_details.aspx?ic=1&position=4
• Sharmeen Obaid won a Gracie award from American Women in Radio and  Television for Individual Achievement for Best Reporter/Correspondent for her documentary, "Terror's Children."
• Feb 28: Jigsha Desai, online producer of Knoxville News Sentinel has been selected by the Newspaper Association of America as one 10 newspaper-industry professionals to participate in its 2004 New Media Fellowship program. The yearlong program is designed to develop the leadership and business skills of newspaper professionals.
• Feb. 18: Raywat Deonandan, a Toronto-based epidemiologist and freelance writer, had his second book, "Divine Elementa," published by TSAR Books in November, 2003.
• Feb. 18: Hari Sreenivasan, founder of OMpower Media and formerly of KTVU and Cnet, has moved to NYC to become an anchor and correspondent for ABC News Live, the network's broadband venture.
• Feb. 4, 2004: Kalpana Ramgopal is now a page designer at The Leder, Lakeland, Florida.
• Feb. 4, 2004: Purva Patel is now a business reporter at The Houston Chronicle (moving from South Florida Sun-Sentinel).
• Dec. 5, 2003: Joya Dass, freelance financial correspondent with CNN, has signed with the Discovery Channel to host a financial reality show called "Money Makers." The show airs early next year.
• Dec. 1, 2003: Mamta Popat, one of the few South Asian women photojournalists in the U.S., is moving to the Arizona Daily Star in Tuscon, AZ, as a staff photographer.
• Nov. 1, 2003: Leela Jacinto of ABCNEWS.com won a Front Page Award from the Newswomen's Club for the second year in a row.
  The story: Taking on the Tradition: One Kenyan Girl Confronts A Cruel World About Her Circumcision - by Leela Jacinto - http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/Primetime/fgm030312.htm
  See her writings at http://www.sugarpictures.com/leelajacinto.html
• Nov. 1, 2003: Vandana Sinha moves to the American Press Institute's new Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism. She's a former business reporter for The Virginian-Pilot and an associate editor and reporter for The Washington Post Co.'s technology magazines and is the Reynolds Center's project manager and associate Web editor.
• Sept. 16, 2003: Arun Kristian Das has been promoted to a newswriter and field producer at WNYW-TV/Fox 5 in New York City.
• Sept. 15, 2003: P. Mona Khanna, MD, MPH, jumps 154 markets to become the new medical correspondent for CBS O & O KTVT-TV in Dallas. Dr. Mona is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, the University of Illinois College of Medicine, and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her e-mail: pmkhanna at pol.net
• Sept. 15, 2003: Amitabh Pal, formerly of the Progressive Media Project, is now the managing editor of a sister publication, The Progressive, one of the oldest magazines of politics and current affairs in the United States. Pal comes up with story ideas, assigns articles, goes over submissions and writes often. His e-mail is amitpal at progressive.org.
• July 1, 2003: Reena Ninan, formerly of the Washington Post's television operations, moves onto a job as a producer at Fox News Channel in Washington.
• Oct 10, 2002: Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, signed a deal with ABC News to appear regularly on the "This Week" roundtable and on other ABC shows. He is the first South Asian to regularly appear on "This Week." See his SAJA Profile.
• Oct 9, 2002: Tunku Varadarajan becomes editorial features editor of The Wall Street Journal, end a six-month run as chief TV and media critic. He is the first South Asian staffer at the WSJ editorial page, where he has worked since 2000. See his SAJA Profile.
• Sept. 27, 2002: S. Mitra Kalita, a Newsday business reporter, won the Mike Hendricks Young Journalist of the Year Award, named for the former Albany AP News Editor, now editor of the Capital District Business Review. The award, designed to recognize New York journalists with less than three year's experience, carries a $500 prize. She won for her series of stories about the 10th anniversary of India's economic liberalization, "New India." The category was judged by Chris Peck, Belo Distinguished Chair in Journalism at Southern Methodist University. He wrote of the entry: "(It)
  is a remarkable work of reporting for any journalist, of any age." See her personal site.
• May 5, 2002:  Led by SAJA member and medical reporter Sanjay Bhatt, The Palm Beach Post staff won first place in the 52nd Annual Green Eyeshade Excellence in Journalism Awards, sponsored by The Society of Professional Journalists, the nation's largest association of journalists. The Green Eyeshade Awards contest is open to journalists in 11 southeastern states. The Post received the first place award in non-deadline newspaper reporting for its coverage of last fall's anthrax attacks.
• Dec. 19, 2001: Kumar (Kem) Balani has become most likely the first Asian to not only have three of his crossword puzzles syndicated on Dec 8, 9 and 16 by Universal Press Syndicate, one of the largest distributors of cartoons, columns and puzzles, but also the first Asian to have puzzles accepted by crossword editors of three major standard-setting publications: The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Sunday Washington Post Magazine. all within a 30-day period. Balani also recently won the Editors' Choice Award from the International Library of Poetry for his love sonnet When Two Become One, which was published in a poetry book "Rhyme and Reason." See his SAJA Profile.
• Nov. 17, 2001: Jyoti Thottam, SAJA president; Shashi Tharoor, author; and George Thottam, president of Association of the Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication received the Kerala Center of New York's annual awards for journalism, arts & letters and education, respectively. See the press release.
• Oct. 15, 2001: S. Mitra Kalita of Newsday and Deepa Babington of Reuters won the 2001 Newswomen's Club of New York awards for best new newspaper reporter and best new wire service reporter in New York, respectively. See press release
• 6/24/2001: Sumana Chatterjee & Sudarsan Raghavan of Knight-Ridder newspapers worked together on an expose of the chocolate industry that ran in 32 papers around the U.S. Read about the story and the series itself. STOP PRESS: They won a 2002 George Polk award for the series as well.
• 4/30/2001: Shoba Narayan, freelance writer, won the 2001 M.F.K. Fisher award for Distinguished Food Writing, the most presitigious prize in the world of food writing. Read the story in her SAJA Profile.
• 4/16/2001: Peter Bhatia, executive editor of The Oregonian leads his paper to two 2001 Pulitzer Prizes. See details in his SAJA Profile. Also, more on South Asians and Pulitzers.
• 4/17/2001: Rajiv Vyas, a reporter for Orange County Business Journal, has won a 2001 Society of Business Editors & Writers Award for an exclusive story he wrote while at the Atlanta Business Chronicle, "State's economy showing cracks.'' Judges comments: "This story by Rajiv Vyas took a sprawling and complex subject and, through solid reporting and clear writing, presented his readers with a valuable look forward at signs that Georgia's robust economy was heading for a stumble."
• 9/21/2000: Sreenath Sreenivasan, a Columbia Journalism professor, was the keynote speaker at an evening celebrating South Asian Heritage & Culture at the New York's City Hall. Read his speech.
• 9/1/2000: Hanson Hosein, an Israel-based producer for NBC Nightly News shared in two major awards this year for his work out of Kosovo: an Emmy for "Outstanding Coverage of a Continuing News Story in a Regularly Scheduled Program," and a prize from the Overseas Press Club. Read more about Hanson in his SAJA Profile.
• 5/18/2000: Congrats to Barkha Dutt, who won India's "Media person of the Year" Award for her outstanding reporting during the Kargil War. Read more about Barkha in her SAJA Profile.
• 5/1/2000: M.K. Srinivasan, co-founder of SAJA and editor of Masala.com was selected to participate in the annual Minority Writers Seminar of the National Conference of Editorial Writers.
• 5/1/99: Smita Paul, a freelance new media journalist and photographer, won a bronze medal in the cultrual journalism category of the national Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition, run by the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation, for a story she did on Bhutan. Read about Smita by checking out her site among the SAJA Profiles.
• 11/24/98: Seema Mehta, a MetPro (Minority Editorial Training Program) trainee at the LA Times and a recent grad of Syracuse University, won three awards this year: Third Place, News Story of the Year, Associated Collegiate Press; 10th place, Spot News, Hearst Journalism Competition; and 11th place, In-Depth Reporting, Hearst Journalism Competition.
• 11/13/98: Freelance writer Suketu Mehta won a 1998 O. Henry Award for his short story "Gare du Nord" (Harper's Magazine, August 1997). Stories by O. Henry winners run in an annual anthology of the 20 best stories published in North America the previous year. Suketu, who also won the prestigious Whiting Award last year (and a $7,000 1998 New York Foundation for the Arts), moved with his family from New York to Mumbai to work on a book based on his Granta article on Mumbai. Read about Suketu in his SAJA profile.
• 10/24/98: Columbia J-school prof Sreenath Sreenivasan won the Society of Professional Journalists annual prize for "Outstanding Campus Adviser of the Year." The award, presented at the SPJ convention in Los Angeles, goes to one faculty adviser of the 200 campus chapters of the SPJ.
• 9/23/98: Freelancer Shoba Narayan won a New York Times contest for her essay on a "meal that played an important part in your life." NYT restaurant critic Ruth Reichl picked the winners and Shoba received a $1,000 Amex gift certificate.
• 6/1/98: Congrats to SAJAer Gaiutra Bahadur, who won first place for business writing from the New Jersey chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (for a piece she wrote last year while at the Jersey Journal; she's now a reporter for the Philly Inquirer).
• 3/9/98: Congrats to SAJAer Jai Singh, executive editor of News.com for winning best news site at the annual Webby Awards.
• 10/22/97: Journalism prof. Anantha Babbili of Texas Christian University was named 1997 Texas Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Dr. Babbili was selected from among 39 nominees representing 29 Texas schools. You can read more about him in his SAJA profile.
• 3/9/97: Sadanand Dhume of MSNBC won a 1997 national student Emmy award for a team documentary he executed while he was a student at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism last year. His team received their award in a tux-filled affair in Los Angeles.
• 3/1/97: Naresh Fernandes, a student at the Columbia Journalism School, won the second prize at the Foreign Press Association of New York student scholarship awards.

In the NewsStories about SAJA

• 2002 Convention & Daniel Pearl Tribute
  Columbia Univ story
• India-West on SAJA post-9/11
  Report on SAJA's activities
• Rediff on Jyoti Thottam, SAJA's new president
  A change of guard at SAJA (Jan 2001)
• Rediff on SAJA 2001 Convention
  A report on opening day
• MSNBC reports on parts of a SAJA panel
  A report on a business reporting panel at Convention 2001
• Rediff profile of SAJA / May 1999
  A feature story about the fifth anniversary of SAJA

SAJAers and BooksSAJA members who have published books recently or have book contracts

• Vijay Vaitheeswaran, global energy correspondent for the Economist, had his first book, "Power to the People" published in Nov. 2003.
• S. Mitra Kalita, SAJA president and Washington Post reporter, had her first book published in Nov. 2003. The title is "Suburban Sahibs: Three Immigrant Families and Their Passage from India to America."
• Sanjay Kaul, Professor of Technology and Energy Policy at Fitchburg State College, MA has his second book published on Sustainable Mobility by Praeger Publishers, Connecticut. (August,2003).
• Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek International will have his third book, The Future of Freedom, published in April 2003.
• Shoba Narayan, a freelance writer, will have her first book, "Monsoon Diary," a food memoir, published in April 2003.
• Tanuja Desai Hidier, a freelance writer in London (and formerly of New York), had her book, "Born Confused" published by Scholastic Press in Oct. 2002.
• Minal Hajratwala, a former editor at the San Jose Mercury News, has had her book about the the Indian diaspora acquired by Houghton Mifflin (May 2002).
• Udayan Gupta, a former WSJ business reporter has edited a book from Harvard Business Press (September 1999) called "Done Deals," about the venture capital business. Read his SAJA profile.
• Suketu Mehta has two book contracts from Knopf: one for a nonfiction book on Mumbai and the other a novel called "Alphabet." The first book is expected in the fall of 2001. Read his SAJA profile.
• Zahid Sardar, architecture and design editor of the San Francisco Examiner Magazine published a major book about Bay Area homes. "San Francisco Modern: Interiors, Architecture & Design'' (with photos by J.D. Peterson; Chronicle Books, $40, November 1998) is a tour of 32 residences. The Houston Chronicle called it "a treat for anyone with modern taste." Read his SAJA profile.

In MemoriamSee separate page of tributes to journalists who have passed away

SAJAers and WeddingsJournalists marrying journalists (no room for journalists marrying others)

• March 1999: Tunku Varadarajan, freelancer, married Amy Finnerty of The New York Times Magazine.
• 3/5/99: Bala Murali Krishna of India Abroad in New York and Vidya Ganapathy, till recently of Indian Express, were married in India.
• 2/22/97: Pallavi Gogoi of AP-Dow Jones and Alok Jha of WBIS+ got married in India

Future Member Alert?Since 1994, we've had 35 SAJA babies...

• The latest: Sreenath Sreenivasan of Columbia University & WABC, and his wife, Roopa Unnikrishnan, had twins Durga (a girl) and Krishna (a boy) in 2003.
  
• Asha Beh, formerly of CNBC.com in Fort Lee, N.J., and her husband, Matt Beh, of The Bond Buyer newspaper ("I'm not a journalist, I'm just married to one and work at a newspaper"), gave birth to a baby boy, Anand Edward Beh, in
  2002. Anand came into the world at 7 lbs, 3 oz., 21½ inches, and with a full shock of dark hair. Asha is spending her time on baby sabbatical and looking forward to accompanying Matt on boondoggle business
  trips. Matt is pulling the covers over his head, saying, "can't you change him?" And finally, Anand reports that he doesn't mind his portentous birthday -- his father was born on October 29, Black Tuesday, and his mother was born October, 22, the date President Kennedy charged the Soviets with installing missiles in Cuba.
  
  
• Dipti of The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., and her husband have given their elder daughter a baby brother in 2001. Dipti says she is a liberal mom, and will let the little darlings make their own choices in life (as long as they both become doctors, learn classical Indian dance and
  music, and marry someone their parents approve of!)
  
  
• Nikhil Deogun of The Wall Street Journal, and his wife, Allison Kimmich, had Maya K. Deogun in 2001. Daddy reports that Maya loves newspapers -- ripping them up and chewing them.
  
  
• Swapna Venugopal, formerly of the Home News Tribune, and husband Sanjay Ramaswamy of McKinsey & Company, had a baby girl in 2000.
  
• Writer Marina Budhos & her husband, Marc Aronson of New York, report that their son was born in 2000.
  
• Kavita Chandran of Bridge News and her husband, Rahul, had a baby girl in 2000 in New Jersey. All three are living in Switzerland for a year.
  
• Pallavi Gogoi of AP-Dow Jones & Alok Jha of McKinsey (and a former journalist himself), had a baby girl in 1999. In her own words: "I want to be as tall as my dad (who's 6'2") but right now I'm only 20 inches. My name means stream (of joy). I've not decided whether I want to become a journalist or not but I thought I should introduce my tiny self to the tiny newsholers."
  
• Sandeep Junnarkar, New York correspondent for CNET News.com, and his wife Shobana Ram, had a baby girl in 1999. The proud dad calls the process of announcing Krithi's birth "the best scoop of my life."
• Neena Samuel of Reader's Digest and her husband, Bobby had twins in 1999. The mom reports that they're both happy, active, thriving babies who very considerately take turns crying.
  
• Tunku Varadarajan, freelance writer, and his wife, Amy Shull of The New York Times Magazine, had a baby boy in 1999 in in Manhattan.
  
• Fareed Zakaria, managing editor of Foreign Affairs, and his wife, Paula Throckmorton Zakaria, had a son in 1999.
  
• Doumentarian Lajwanti Waghray and her husband Rakesh had a baby boy in 1999. Says the proud mom: "We are excited and completely in love with him! How wonderful that he picked to be his parents in this vast vast world!"
  
• Nikhil Hutheesing, Forbes technology associate editor, and his wife Anita Khosla have given first son a new brother named Remy in 1999. It's no reflection on the parents that each child is named after an alcoholic beverage!
  
• Anusha Shrivastava, a freelancer writing mainly for The Wire on Roosevelt Island, NY, and husband Apurva Varma, a management consultant with Mitchell Madison Group, had a baby boy in 1999. He weighed in at 6 pounds and is all of nineteen inches tall. The proud mom declares, "his fingers are really long - it is said that all creative people have such fingers so may be he will become a journalist after all!"
  
• Devi Laskar, a reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, gave birth to a girl in 1998. "After 40 hours of labor and an emergency c-section," the mother reports. She also says "mom and baby are having a wonderful time getting acquainted."
  
• Shivani Khullar, formerly of ABC (and now a computer engineer), and husband Vikram, had a new baby daughter in 1998.
  
• Jyotsna Sreenivasan, a novelist and nonfiction writer, and her husband Mark Winstein brought their son into the world in 1998. Jyotsna is in the process of transitioning out of her job as newsletter editor at the Feminist Majority in Arlington, VA. She is currently trying to sell a novel she wrote while pregnant, and is researching a nonfiction book.
  
• Dilip Massand of Masala and Sophia Massand of Random House are proud parents of a baby boy in 1998.
  
• Krishnan Anantharaman of The Wall Street Journal and his wife Aparna had a baby daughter in 1998.
  
• Freelancer Suketu Mehta and his wife Sunita have given their first son a brother in 1997. The name was picked by his aunt, SAJAer Monica Mehta.
  
• Mukul Pandya of New Jersey Business & freelancer Hema Nair returned in December 1997 from India with Tara Nair Pandya, their adopted daughter. The beaming dad promises to "teach her to transcribe interview tapes as soon as she will learn. But seriously, she's a healthy, beautiful child and we are very, very happy."
  
• Freelancer Shoba Narayan and hubby Narayan "Ram" Ramachandran had a baby girl in 1997.
  
• Bonnie Subramaniam of Time magazine and hubby Arvind Raghunathan had twin girls in 1996.
  
  Sunita Wadekar Bhargava of Business Week and her husband, Neeraj, had a baby boy in 1995.
  
• Asha Blake of KNBC and her husband Mark Dusbabek has a baby girl in 1995.
  
• Houston-based freelancer Seema Kachru and hubby Anil Kachru had a baby daughter in 1994. In 1997 Little Princess Beauty Pageant, won "Most Beautiful Face of Texas."