User talk:Sugataraju

Sugata Srinivasaraju is a journalist, writer and translator. As a journalist he has worked for a quarter of a century in some of India's finest newsrooms. Currently, he is the Editorial Director of Asianet News Network, which has two television channels (Asianet News, Suvarna News) and a broadsheet (Kannada Prabha). Earlier, he was Editor-in-Chief of Vijay Karnataka, a Times Group broadsheet with over four million average daily readership. Prior to entering regional language newsrooms to reform, redesign and modernise them, Sugata worked in the English language press. He was with the national newsmagazine Outlook for close to a decade, and worked under the stewardship of Vinod Mehta, one of India's most respected editors of the past century. In Outlook, he was a Senior Associate Editor put in-charge of the politically and culturally vibrant southern states of India (Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and undivided Andhra Pradesh). Before he joined Outlook, he was part of the founding team of Hindustan Times in Jaipur as its News Editor. However, he began his journalistic career with Deccan Herald in Bangalore as a staff writer under the editorship of K N Hari Kumar. Besides the papers that he has worked for he has written for the Caravan, Times of India and The Irish Times.

Sugata has also been a teacher of journalism, he was a founding faculty member (Associate Professor) of the Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media in Bangalore. At present, he is Adjunct Professor of the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism at the Mangalore University.

Sugata is an accomplished bilingual who has held leadership positions in both English and regional language newsrooms, something extremely rare in the Indian context. He is also among the very few who has had the opportunity to lead print, digital and television newsrooms. He has worked in challenging start up environments all through his career building young teams; turning around news products with innovative linguistic experiments, media convergence, reader interactivity, visual narratives, superior design, and high ethical standards.

Even amidst a busy journalistic career Sugata has found time to write, translate and edit books both in English, and his mother tongue Kannada. His publications include:

SWARGAKKE MOORE MAILI - Essays of Jeremy Seabrook on development, globalisation and human dignity (Edited and translated volume in Kannada, 2016, with Rosy D’Souza)

PICKLES FROM HOME - The Worlds of A Bilingual (2012) Praise for the book: “A wise guide to the intricate individuality of modern Indian life” - Ian Jack, British Writer, columnist for the Guardian and former Editor of Granta “Whenever and wherever I find Sugata’s writings I read it with great interest and care… He captures the cultural and social complexity of issues he writes on with a refined ease” - Sunil Gangopadhyay, Bengali writer “Sugata’s essays provide a nuanced response to the bewildering linguistic situation of contemporary Indians… These essays should be a must for everybody who speaks a language that feels threatened even remotely” - G N Devy, linguist and activist

A WINDOW ON THE WALL - Quit India Prison Diary of a 19-Year-Old by H Y Sharada Prasad (Edited volume, 2010) Researching the private papers of H Y Sharada Prasad, who served as Information Advisor to three Indian prime ministers. This is the first of the couple of more volumes planned.

KEEPING FAITH WITH THE MOTHER TONGUE – The Anxieties of a Local Culture (2008) Praise for the book: “Sugata makes a case for a rooted cosmopolitanism that I for one found deeply persuasive” - Ramachandra Guha, Historian. “This book deserves to be read wherever cultures are threatened; and that means everywhere... Sugata is an exceptional ambassador between cultures” - Jeremy Seabrook, British Writer. “Sugata’s scholarship and his natural restraint makes the book one of the most illuminating and stimulating commentaries on contemporary Indian society” - Ashokamitran, Tamil writer.

PHOENIX AND FOUR OTHER MIME PLAYS (Translation, 2005) Won the translation prize of the Karnataka Sahitya Academy (Karnataka Academy of Letters)

EKUSHEY FEBRUARY (Edited volume in Kannada on Bangladesh’s mother tongue movement, 2004)