Barkha in “Time” list of 14 journos equally comfortable in classical & social media

Barkha Dutt, President Board of Editors of NDTV

" Barkha has been included in this Roll of Honour in recognition of her excellent domestic and foreign reportage and of the impact of her Tweets in influencing online debates on current news."

| by B.Raman

( March 27, 2012, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Time magazine’s 2012 Roll of Honour of 140 prominent organisations and personalities from different disciplines who have distinguished themselves in their respective disciplines and at the same time made an impact in influencing online debates through their Tweets is out.

2. This Roll of Honour is announced every year. Whereas in previous years no Indian or American of Indian origin had figured, this year’s list honours a famous Indian journo Barkha Dutt, President Board of Editors of NDTV, and a US citizen from a family of Indian origin Dr.Sanjay Gupta, the popular medical commentator of CNN.

3. While Dr. Gupta has been honoured under the category “Experts”, Barkha has been honoured under the category “News & Information”. Fourteen individual journos and nine organisations have been honoured under this category.

4. Of the 14 individual journos honoured, 12 are Americans, one is British and Barkha is Indian. Barring one (or possibly two), who are in their early 50s, the remaining are in their early 40s or even younger and belong to the new generation of journos who came of age in their profession in the late 1990s or in the early years of the 2000s.

5. They distinguished themselves initially as classical journos, but when journalism went digital, adapted themselves with equal felicity to a new role as online opinion-makers and builders, essentially by using the medium of Tweets.

6. The brevity required of Tweeters did not come in their way. They made brevity “so posh”, said the “Time”. They did not allow their preoccupation with the traditional media for which they worked to come in the way of their building closely-knit and well-informed communities of Tweetizens with whom they had continuous interactions on current news.

7. Barkha has been included in this Roll of Honour in recognition of her excellent domestic and foreign reportage and of the impact of her Tweets in influencing online debates on current news.

8. Other journos honoured are:

Andy Revkin : Was writing about environment for The New York Times from 1995 to 2009. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Pace Academy for Applied Environmental Studies at Pace University and continues to write for The Times Op-Ed section. He had also worked as senior editor in the Discover Magazine and in Science Digest.

Lisa Ling: A co-host of ABC's The View ( 1999–2002), host of National Geographic Explorer, reporter on Channel One News, and special correspondent for the Oprah Winfrey Show and CNN.

Pat Kiernan: A Canadian-born television host, appearing as the morning news anchor of NY1 since 1997. Kiernan has also appeared in films.

Andy Carvin : National Public Radio's senior product manager for online communities. He was the founding editor and former coordinator of the Digital Divide Network, an online community of Internet activists in over 140 countries.

Tim Pool: A free-lancer. His 21-hour marathon reporting earned him fame during the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Brian Stelter : The New York Times’ TV and digital media reporter. Former Editor of the news-related blog TVNewser.com. He figured in the 2011 documentary titled “ Page One: Inside the New York Times.”

Anderson Cooper : Anchor of the CNN news show Anderson Cooper 360°. The program is normally broadcast live from a New York City studio. Since September 2011, he also appears as the host of a syndicated daytime talk show titled “ Anderson”.

Matthew Keys : Deputy Social Media Editor of Reuters. He was recently nominated for an Online News Association award in the category of “Breaking News excellence” for his coverage of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.

Rachel Zoll :National religion writer of the Associated Press

Jorge Ramos : News anchor for a Spanish language network.

Maria Popova: Editor of Brain Pickings, a column she contributes to “The Atlantic”.

Richard Betts: A climate scientist in the U.K. who writes on interactions between human health and urban areas or agriculture and natural ecosystems.

Maggie Koerth-Baker : A science editor.

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com Twitter : @SORBONNE75 )