This interview has been edited for clarity.
It was kind of a roundabout way. I was a disc jockey in high school and wanted to be one in the future. But in college i was taking a lot of theory courses not having anything to do with broadcast journalism but you could see a lot of the social science research and communications research that was blaming television for lots of things. And I thought it's just a tool or a medium. Also I looked around and there's really very little South Asian representation on TV. I mean the most popular South Asian name and face was Appu from the Simpsons.
I thought this was probably a cause for why we are misunderstood and maybe I can do something about it.
So, I started doing internships and got myself a good resume tape together and it was sort of game-on. I got the bug from the first time I went out on a story with somebody. I'd worked at my high school newspaper before so I had some idea of journalism but it was fantastic to see a story come together and eventually get out to hundreds of thousands of people.
Out of chaos comes opportunity and I think we're in a really huge period of chaos right now. There are a huge number of forces aligned against us, not least of which is the power of social platforms, the Presidency that considers us the enemy of the people and trying to reinvent models of trust and find revenue to sustain this craft. Those all sound like really horrible things and they are. But that also means these are opportunities for people to come up with solutions.
So, some part of those solutions are gonna be figuring out how to engage audiences on a community and local level and getting them to be your patrons and supporters. It's sort of like what public media has been doing for a long time but I think commercial media is going to have take some of the same lessons and apply it to the business and say how do we get these people to care about our magazine or our TV show or our webisode. I hope it's not over and I hope we don't just sit there and read the news that we like to read and stop supporting public media but I'm not confident that I have a solution.
There's this airport tarmac interview with Al Gore that wasn't really supposed to be. This was right at the government shutdown in 95 and I was in North Carolina. I don't know if it was because I was naive, foolhardy, young, or all of the above, but I just started yelling questions at him and he decided to come over. And The rest of the local press that were there weren't asking questions so I just kept asking more. It was one of those early moments where you realize that you're not going to know the answers if you don't ask. So that was a quick lesson for me. I think this is just a job that gives you a license to stay curious.
Seizing the opportunities to help direct and learn how to be in positions where you can influence editorial content is as important as doing solid work and being a good representative.
Hindsight is 2020 but I really cannot emphasize enough the importance of having a work life balance. Take risks early and when life catches up, give your family the time that they deserve.
I think diversity also comes from ideological background and understanding the people our skin color represents. What you don't want to be is the only minority at the table where people look at you as say "Oh well this is a minority story what do you think of that?"
I took an executive leadership program in 2003 with the Asian American Journalism Association and it was eye opening in that Asians have stereotypically been the quieter merit driven hardworking type of people. But that program, over one weekend, helped our entire class understand that there are other factors in how to advance in an organization and you should recognize you're a pawn in a chess game whether you choose to play it or not.
You get more credibility the more work that you do. No question about that. That said, when you're tasked with staffing a newsroom, if you're in any kind of hiring committee then put forward five names of women or people of color who are qualified to do the job. You have the option to make an editorial impact by including sources in your stories that are from diverse backgrounds. It helps change and shape the organization, and also the perception of the reader or consumer of your work. Ultimately the most powerful skill or influence we have is to frame the edges of the debate. It's who we let into our stories and who we use as experts that is an enormous power.