MOVES: Jyoti Thottam named Time's South Asia bureau chief

UPDATE: Listen to a recording of a webcast with Jyoti Thottam a week before her big move. She discussed her appointment; the current state of newsweeklies; some of what she'd like to cover; and her career.

Jyoti Thottam, former SAJA president and Time magazine senior editor, has been named the magazine's South Asia bureau chief. From a memo by Rick Stengel, managing editor, and Michael Elliott, editor of Time International (see below for the full memo):

Next month, Jyoti Thottam will leave New York and relocate to New Delhi as our bureau chief there. Jyoti was born in India, but raised mostly in suburban Houston. She now lives with her husband and daughter in Brooklyn. She came to TIME from On magazine/Time Digital, and before that was a newspaper reporter in Queens and in Jacksonville, Florida. (She is the co-author of a play, Interrogations, based partly on her crime reporting in Queens.) Jyoti got her start as an intern at the Wall Street Journal, and her writing has also appeared in the Believer and the Village Voice. She graduated from Yale, where she studied religion and economics, and she also has a master's degree from Columbia, where she studied international affairs and learned Hindi. All those skills were indispensable during the year she spent as a freelancer traveling around India after grad school, and she's looking forward to using them again covering South Asia for TIME.

Asked why this move now, Thottam told SAJAforum: “South Asia is one of the most exciting places in the world right now, and after 10 years in New York City, I was ready to try something new. I can’t imagine a better place to be a journalist, and I’m looking forward to covering the region's stories, big and small.”

She and her family leave in mid-June. Press queries can be sent via saja[at]columbia.edu (subject="for Jyoti Thottam") - click on the photo for a high-rez version.

While at Time, her most high-profile story was her March 1, 2004, cover story on outsourcing, "Is Your Job Going Abroad." She appeared on the PBS show "Charlie Rose" that week to discuss the issue, along with Columbia University professor Jagdish Bhagwati.

Time HQ has been a very hospitable home for South Asians. Here are just some of the folks there now:

• Romesh Ratnesar, is one of two deputy managing editors, under Rick Stengel
• Bobby Ghosh, world (foreign) editor
• Ratu Kamlani, chief of reporters

Thottam replaces Simon Robinson, who was the South Asia bureau chief since 2006. He now moves to the  London office to be a senior editor there. The memo below also notes that Zoher Abdoolcarim is the new Asia editor of Time International.

Zoher's family has been in Hong Kong since the 19th century, and he speaks Cantonese as well as Gujarati. He becomes TIME’s first Asia editor who is a native of the city we are proud to call our Asian home.

These moves are just the latest among a series of high-profile new appointments of South Asians at major U.S. publications in 2008:

• Davan Maharaj named managing editor of the Los Angeles Times 
• Vindu Goel named deputy technology editor of The New York Times
• Stephanie Mehta named global editor of Fortune

NOTE: In a sign of the times and all the interest in South Asia, this means two of the five presidents in the history of SAJA will be based there at the same time. Thottam joins S. Mitra Kalita of the Washington Post (currently on leave and working in at the Delhi business daily, Mint, as a columnist and editor. That leaves just current president, Sandeep Junnarkar and former presidents Deepti Hajela and I to hold down the NYC fort.

Other Indian-American journalists working full-time in the subcontinent as correspondents for major U.S. media outlets include:

• Manjeet Kripalani of BusinessWeek
• Somini Sengupta of The New York Times

Post your comments below. The full Time memo is also below.

Thottam, who has worked as a journalist in India doesn't need 'em, but SAJA has recently compiled a list of tips for Americans going to South Asia for the first time. Take a look, including some from tips from S. Mitra Kalita of the WP and Mint).

Memo from Rick Stengel, managing editor of Time and Michel Elliott, editor of Time International:

June 4, 2008

From: Rick Stengel and Mike Elliott
To: All TIME Edit

We're delighted to announce some appointments in our international editions.

Effective immediately, Zoher Abdoolcarim becomes Asia Editor of TIME International. One of Asia's most well-known and experienced journalists, Zoher has traveled the region, as a reporter and editor, for more than 25 years. He joined AsiaWeek in 1980, and in two spells at the magazine spent a total of 16 years there, rising from a trainee writer to managing editor.  When AsiaWeek ceased publication in 2001, Zoher stayed in the Time Inc. family and moved over to TIME Asia as a senior editor. In the last seven years, he has supervised many of TIME’s signature special issues in the region, including the annual summer journey double issue and our coverage of the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to China. For the last year, he and the indispensable Jim Erickson have done a brilliant job maintaining the reputation for quality journalism of Asia's leading newsmagazine.

Zoher graduated from the University of Wisconsin and is proud to be a cheesehead. But as anyone who has spent any time with Zoher and his wife at the Jockey Club knows, he is a true son of Hong Kong, never happier than when at the races. (Though he is an awful bettor.) Zoher's family has been in Hong Kong since the 19th century, and he speaks Cantonese as well as Gujarati. He becomes TIME’s first Asia editor who is a native of the city we are proud to call our Asian home.

Next month, Jyoti Thottam will leave New York and relocate to New Delhi as our bureau chief there. Jyoti was born in India, but raised mostly in suburban Houston. She now lives with her husband and daughter in Brooklyn. She came to TIME from On magazine/Time Digital, and before that was a newspaper reporter in Queens and in Jacksonville, Florida. (She is the co-author of a play, Interrogations, based partly on her crime reporting in Queens.) Jyoti got her start as an intern at the Wall Street Journal, and her writing has also appeared in the Believer and the Village Voice. She graduated from Yale, where she studied religion and economics, and she also has a master's degree from Columbia, where she studied international affairs and learned Hindi. All those skills were indispensable during the year she spent as a freelancer traveling around India after grad school, and she's looking forward to using them again covering South Asia for TIME.

In India, Jyoti will replace Simon Robinson, who has been in New Delhi since 2006. Simon will move to London with his wife and two children and will become a senior editor at TIME Atlantic. He is a native of Sydney who joined TIME as a reporter for the SoPac edition in 1995. In 1999, Simon moved to Nairobi to cover sub-Saharan Africa. After 9/11, he reported in Afghanistan and Yemen and set up TIME’s temporary bureau in Kuwait ahead of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. When war broke out, the battalion Simon was assigned to was the first to enter eastern Baghdad, and on April 9, 2003, he reported the famous toppling of Saddam's statue live on CNN. From New Delhi, he has reported on the rise of the Indian economy, the civil war in Sri Lanka, the military government in Bangladesh and the political crisis in Pakistan, including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. A cricket tragic (if you don't know what that is, ask him), Simon studied filmmaking at Macquarie University, has had short fiction published in various anthologies, and is the co-writer and producer of Doing Good, an hour-long film that (he tells us) is a satire on journalists and aid workers in Africa.

Please join us in congratulating Zoher, Jyoti and Simon on their new assignments.

Comments

[Steve Mukherjee]

Congratulations! Great job indeed. I am sure you will love the new move and new challenges. From Delhi, but based in Virginia for the last 40 years. I would love to move back to the Nation's capitol. God willing.

Wishing you very best

Vice President - Association of Indians in America - DC Chapter

[Lisa Tsering]

Congratulations Jyoti! You and Mitra are certainly inspiring the rest of us to think about India's amazing opportunities.
If you blog about your experiences there, please keep us posted!

[Dr.Sony Jalarajan Raj,Dept of Media, Curtin University of Technology]

Congratulations Jyoti !
Really thrilled on hearing about a Malayale on the top of Time Magazine.Hope Kerala and Keralites will be in news stories of Time here after(earlier were blacked out in Time stories on India).
Myself being a Keralite is really proud of You.
Great going.
All the best wishes and prayers

[Chiranjibi Paudyal]

Congratulations Jyoti! for being able to be on such a high level positing of Time, the leading news magazine of the world.
South Asia is transforming a lot. And your stories will certainly help consolidate democracy in South Asia including Nepal where authiritarian Maoists are preparing to form government.
Freedom, the most important aspect of our way of life since ancient time,should get priority in all writing. That is our wish.
Thank you

[Amrit Kakaria]

Jyoti, with due respect to everyone else, is one of the brightest journalists
I ever met. She richly deserves this and future elevated assignments. Keep your fingers crossed that the ubiquitous glass ceiling is finally gone.

Amrit Kakaria

[Das Munshi]

The article "Behind the crisis for muslims" is not well thought. Who's responsible for their illiteracy, its them. Its their philosphy to have as many children as they could and how can you expect anyone raise 10 kids for instance? As you mentioned the Aligarh University is working great why cant it be replicated? Anything in moderation is great but some sections stuck to their extreme thoughts.

As a scholar in Pakistan mentioned before 1857 it was all muslims ruling and British destroyed it, it was all hindus ruling before Moghuls invaded so we should be asking to give back Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia

In this situation everybody is in crisis. I understand you were trying to be impartial but it really sounded one sided.

[Chithra KarunaKaran]

Jyoti Thottam and her Pakistani colleague both work for rightwing Time. Malcolm X had a choice phrase which describes their standing. Time censorship would prevent me from using his phrase here, but it is an excellently apt one for these two sellout so-called journalists.

South Asian colonial history is more critically appraised by subaltern writers -- Time magazine and its writers do not qualify.

Britain's role in West Asia and South Asia which continues particularly through its "special" relationship with the U.S.

It is interesting to note that rightwing Time completely fails to narrate the U.S. neo-imperial distortion of West Asian and South Asian sub-continental geopolitics,
beginning all the way back from the imposed establishment of the state of Israel in West Asia and the creation of SEATO in the Dulles era of the U.S. Sate Department.
That constitutes the more recent 60+years' dominant-power context update of the present terrorist activity, that Time cleverly fails to provide.

The US took over from the Brits and expanded its own supremacist control over these regions,
with a combination of the old divide-and-rule strategy & new capital gained from exploiting Global South resources.

The US 'model' of 'democracy' founded on slavery and genocide and advanced through 'free' market exploitation of emerging post-colonial sovereign liberatory nation-states, needs to be emphatically and critically rejected in policy and practice by Global South regional economies and nation-states.

South-South cooperation is essential and already underway.

http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Chithra KarunaKaran