At SAJA, we've watched South Asian journalists become a bigger part of the media landscape than we could have imagined when we got started 18+ years ago. Not only are reporters and anchors much more commonplace, they are also covering some of the biggest stories of our time - in all sorts of fields.
This morning, around 9 am ET, Americans tuned into two of the biggest sports channels - ESPN and ESPN2 - for coverage of breaking news about the Penn State scandal report by former FBI chief Freeh. And there were two South Asians on set helping explain the report.
On ESPN, Kevin Negandhi (@KNegandhiESPN), co-anchor of the 9 am-noon edition of "SportsCenter" talked to football expert and Penn State alum Matt Millen. Over on ESPN2, Adnan Virk (@AdnanESPN) was guest-hosting "Mike & Mike" with Buster Olney and discussing the Free report, too.
Both Negandhi and Virk did a terrific job handling the live, breaking news in a calm, collected, helpful manner for viewers without letting their own reactions to the horrifying details of the report cloud their professionalism. Good work, gents.
You might recall that both have been fixtures (along with fellow SAJA ESPN anchors Zubin Mehenti and Anish Shroff - yes, four South Asian anchors ESPN) on the annual SAJA-SAMMA Super Bowl Sunday webcasts each February. You can listen to the 2012 version, featuring Negandhi, Virk and Mehenti at this link.
