About the Author

Nilanjana Gupta © 2011 David Trotman Wilkins

Nilanjana Gupta is a news producer and a multimedia journalist.  She currently works as a Senior Web Journalist/Videographer with Khaleej Times newspaper in Dubai, UAE. She has worked as a News Desk Editor at CNN’s Indian affiliate in Noida for two years.

Before joining CNN-IBN, she worked as an Intern at Al Jazeera English in Washington DC. She assisted in guest booking, researched, wrote for news and social media, pitched story ideas and helped in producing the channel’s leading current affairs show ‘Inside Story’.  She was later offered a full-time Associate Producer position at Al Jazeera America’s daily social media show “The Stream”.

Prior to producing for Al Jazeera, Nilanjana worked for WAMU 88.5 FM (NPR affiliate in Washington, DC) as a news intern. Her role included pitching story ideas, booking interviews, writing scripts, voicing stories and editing audio.

Nilanjana has produced pieces for CONNECT, a university public affairs magazine that aired on WSYR-TV 9.2. She has produced stories for NPR affiliate WAER in Syracuse. During Spring 2012, she interned with producers in the newsroom of WETM/NBC Elmira, NY. The experience included working alongside the newscast producer and she learned how to manage rundowns under tight deadlines.

Nilanjana’s greatest strengths are in producing and writing. She developed a passion for enterprising original stories from her various reporting classes. In addition, she has been actively using social media – Facebook, Twitter, Storify, Batchgeo — as a news medium. While Nilanjana has much to learn, she is confident in her professional abilities to conduct interviews, research, write, and produce stories on deadline.

Born and raised in India, she has always been very interested in learning about national and international issues. She hopes to give a fresh and global perspective on issues in the largest democracy.

In the long term, Nilanjana sees herself working at the Indian bureau of an international news channel. She hopes to cover stories that are not covered extensively by the Indian news channels. There are many stories in India, in its villages and small towns, which she thinks can be of interest to an international audience. Most of the time, she thinks local and regional stories in India take a back seat. Instead national and political stories get maximum coverage.

Nilanjana pursued her M.S. in Broadcast/Digital Journalism from Syracuse University in New York. Prior to her graduate studies, she completed her undergraduate degree in IT engineering where she developed strong analytical and technical skills which are so required in the field of journalism. Nilanjana followed it up with work experience in market research, features writing and online journalism over a period of two years. She freelanced for India Today Group’s ‘ Good Housekeeping’ magazine and her stories were published every month. She later worked in the online department of NewsX, a national news channel in India, as a web producer. She was also the author of the channel’s health blog.

Nilanjana is a member of the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA).

When she’s not telling your stories, Nilanjana can be found playing guitar (and singing!), spending time with friends, family and her cats.