SAJAforum

TV: Arun Venugopal discusses #OccupyWallStreet on PBS Newshour

Arun Venugopal (@ArunNYC), reporter for WNYC Radio and former editor of SAJAForum, was interviewed yesterday about the Occupy Wall Street protests. In this video, you can see his updates of what's been going on, along with what the coverage has been like.

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

CONV: Q&A With Kevin Noblet, Dow Jones

Despite rapid changes in the media landscape, the fundamental strengths of being a clear thinker and writer are still necessary for journalists, says Kevin Noblet, managing editor of wealth management coverage at Dow Jones Newswires.

He should know.

In an eventful 28-year career with Associated Press, Noblet worked multiple roles from business to deputy international editor and, also, directed coverage for two stories that won Pulitzer Prizes. SAJAForum's Rakesh Sharma caught up with Noblet, who will be conducting a workshop about business reporting at SAJA's convention this year.

SF: How did you get started with journalism?

KN: I was an English major in college and decided journalism was one way to get paid for my major after graduation. It was as simple as that.

SF: You have covered events at the local level (with community newspapers in Connecticut) as well as at the international level (with AP). What is the difference in approach?

KN: In some ways, it is very much the same because ultimately you are writing about people. However, events in the international story are larger in scale and you also have to deal with another language and culture. Most importantly, you are also distant from your audience. In a community newspaper, you have the luxury of readers calling or dropping in. This helps you gauge feedback. Of course, that might not hold true any longer because your audience is electronically closer, thanks to the Internet.

SF: Is there a difference between business journalism and other kinds of journalism?

KN: One of the great things about business journalism is that there are concrete objective measures you can rely on to test the accuracy of sources. This is different from political reporting where it is much more difficult to test accuracies. That said, I do believe that business journalism is also about people and has its own ethical, moral, and social issues.

SF: Which place was most memorable for you in international reporting?

KN: Haiti. I spent a year there (over the course of three years) during the early 1990s. This was a time of great political turmoil. Social and poverty issues were pretty widespread and dramatic. I also reported about the earthquake from there last year. Given their problems, I must say Haitians are an extremely resilient people.

SF: Can you tell us a little bit about your experience directing coverage for stories that won Pulitzers?

KN: Both experiences were quite different. The first Pulitzer was awarded to a very talented AP reporter covering the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. He was a talented writer, and, as an editor, my job was to simply help shepherd his copy to the wire and make sure no heavy-handed copy editor messed with it! The second prize was for a very long, painstaking and sometimes just painful investigation into a wartime massacre in Korea some 50 years earlier. Our team of reporters and editors worked on it for many months. There was a bigger sense of accomplishment when that project was finally done.

FOOD: Choudry Ali's Magic Fountain makes waves on Long Island

At a time when all the stories you see in the U.S. press about Muslims are connected to the proposed Islamic community center near Ground Zero and items dealing with Pakistan are all about the floods or the violence in that country, I was pleased to see a different sort of item about a Pakistani immigrant named Choudry Ali, owner of Magic Fountain, a Long Island ice cream shop.

From Jennifer Glickel's piece in DNAinfo.com (a Manhattan news site I write for):

Magic Fountain, a shop selling homemade ice cream in Mattituck, is a favorite spot for New York City refugees and locals alike. “It’s absolutely wonderful ice cream,” said Nancy Daly, who lives in Midtown. “It’s homemade and you can really tell.”  Ali, 43, offers 100 unique flavors of ice cream that he makes from scratch with fresh ingredients each day in the back room of his store. When he bought the shop three-and-a-half years ago, patrons could choose from a much smaller selection of flavors: vanilla, chocolate, or mint chocolate chip. “Vanilla, chocolate and mint chip became boring, frankly,” Ali said. “So I decided to get creative.”

That creativity resulted in many flavors (see a long list below and at his official site), including Guiness, Chocolate Chili, andy, yes, keeping with his South Asian roots, Kulfi, a traditional ice cream made in Pakistan and northern India. 

Ali draws inspiration for his ice cream from every aspect of his life, from walking down the aisles in the grocery store to his childhood growing up on a farm in Pakistan, from where he immigrated to the States in 1985.

You can see a full slideshow of Ali at work here.

See the flavor list and post your comments below.

MOVES: Srinija Srinivasan, Yahoo editor-in-chief, leaving

Srinija Srinivasan, Yahoo's employee #5 and editor-in-chief, is leaving the company after 15 years. She's written a blog post and put together a video (see above). From "Reflecting Back, Looking Forward":

Today more than 15 years later, I’m proud to announce my graduation from Yahoo! employee to Yahoo! user. No blog post can capture the density of this experience, the richness of what I’ve learned, and the profound gratitude I’ll always have — for David and Jerry taking that leap of faith in me, and for the thousands of Yahoo! employees who have made this a place where magic happens. And above all, nothing I write can convey how humbled and inspired I’ve been by the hundreds of millions of you who share your time, extend your trust, and make Yahoo! a part of your lives. I’m glad to count myself among you.

Here are some pointers on how she'll be keeping busy:

As I turn in my employee badge, I’ll be devoting more time to my longstanding love for jazz. I chair the board of SFJAZZ, a nonprofit in San Francisco in the midst of an exciting phase of growth. On the opposite side of the country, my partner Josh and I are developing a performance and production center for creative music in Brooklyn. At Yahoo! I’ve witnessed the kinds of circumstances that give rise to great creativity, and I find the same holds true in music: bringing together diverse perspectives in a collaborative spirit, allowing each voice individual expression in service to the collective whole, striking just the right balance between structure and freedom, being mindful and respectful of the past but relentlessly looking forward to what’s next.

She has always been a great supporter of SAJA and we wish her the very best in her new adventures.

BTW, Srinivasan, who is known universally as Ninj, and I are not related, even though we both have fathers named T.P. Srinivasan/Sreenivasan and her brother's name is Sri Srinivasan (Sri is a high-profile lawyer who regularly argues cases at the Supreme Court). 

Your comments are welcome below.

LISTS: Desis in Inc's list of coolest young entrepreneurs

Four South Asians are in this year's collection of  "30 Under 30: America's Coolest Young Entrepreneurs" (there are more than 30 folks on the full list because, in some cases, more than one person represented the company in question. Some, like Naveen Sevadurai who co-founded Foursquare, run one of the hottest tech startups in the world, while others run companies just now getting noticed.

Below, you will find the at-a-glance looks at the four South Asians, and via the hyperlinks, you can read profiles of them:

• Naveen Selvadurai, Foursquare
• Ooshma Garg, Anapata
• Vikas Reddy, Occipital
• Sachin Agarwal, Posterous
  

Post your comments below.

 

EDUCATION: UPenn's Lauder Institute Adds India Focus to MBA Offerings

An unusual announcement regarding MBA classes at Wharton and the University of Pennsylvania:

The Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania announced today that they will add Hindi to their roster of programs in international business and culture. The Hindi Program, focused on doing business in India, will become the ninth Language and Culture offering at the Lauder Institute, a unique two-year, joint-degree course of study that combines a Wharton MBA with a Master of Arts in International Studies from the School of Arts & Sciences. Students undergo intensive, advanced-level language training and take courses aimed at a comprehensive understanding of the economic, political, and cultural context in which business takes place. They also spend several weeks at different locations around the world engaged in a rigorous experiential and action-oriented academic program of activities. The new Hindi Program will prepare MBA students for successful managerial careers in and with India, a region of increasing business and economic significance.

Full press release below. Post your comments, please.

BUSINESS: Ajit Jain in Warren Buffett's annual letter again

The most closely-watched letter issued each year is the one legendary investor Warren Buffet writes to shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway. Famous for their folksy style and insights into the company (each share of BRK-A is worth more than $100,000 at today's prices), the letters are pored over by millions in the corporate world (see a collection, going back to 1997, here). And in this year's letter, he once again raves about Ajit Jain, who runs one of the his major insurance units (and is considered someone in the running to succeed Buffet one day). From the 2010 letter:

A hugely important event in Berkshire’s history occurred on a Saturday in 1985. Ajit Jain came into our office in Omaha – and I immediately knew we had found a superstar. (He had been discovered by Mike Goldberg, now elevated to St. Mike.)

We immediately put Ajit in charge of National Indemnity’s small and struggling reinsurance operation.

Over the years, he has built this business into a one-of-a-kind giant in the insurance world.

Staffed today by only 30 people, Ajit’s operation has set records for transaction size in several areas of insurance. Ajit writes billion-dollar limits – and then keeps every dime of the risk instead of laying it off with other insurers.

DESI SPOTTING: Shahid Khan to Purchase the St. Louis Rams

[Desi Spotting = items with a South Asian connection - see our archive]

We will keep this post updated as we learn more. Please share your comments/updates in the comments section below. We are also looking for folks who know him.

UPDATE: See below for comments from SAJAer Aisha Sultan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

We did some Desi Spotting earlier this week that allegedly had a sports connection (the first South Asian model in the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue), but here's a real sport story.

Interesting news from the world of NFL football: the owners of the St. Louis Rams have agreed to sell the team to Pakistani-American businessman Shahid Khan (who came to the US in 1967, at age 16). 

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:

Khan, 55, is the president of Flex-N-Gate Corp., an auto-parts manufacturer based in Urbana, Ill. Khan has lived in the Champaign-Urbana area for more than 40 years and is married with two adult children. Khan is a graduate of the School of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Illinois.

According to league sources, Khan will purchase the 60 percent of the team owned by siblings [Chip] Rosenbloom and [Lucia] Rodriguez, who inherited the franchise from their late mother, Georgia Frontiere, in early 2008. NFL owners must approve the sale.

DESI SPOTTING: Nikhil Arora and BTTR Ventures getting attention

Coffee might power red-eyed Americans at 7 a.m., but it’s the leftover waste of java grounds that is driving a young business venture in California.

Nikhil Arora (pictured at right, above) and his partner Alejandro Velez, both 22, are the founders of BTTR Ventures, an initiative in San Francisco that converts tons of America’s coffee ground waste into gourmet mushrooms. The company was nominated for Business Week’s America’s Best Young Entrepreneurs and BBC’s World Challenge competition (vote for them before the Nov. 13 deadline here).

The two Berkeley alumni were sitting in a business ethics course last December when a lecturer told the class about women in Colombia and Africa who were fighting malnutrition with used coffee. Thinking of America’s strong coffee habit, Velez and Arora decided to partner up and try out the idea themselves – starting off in a fraternity kitchen.

“We spent the last semester knee deep in coffee and experimenting to see if our idea would work,” Arora said.

They worked with Berkeley’s ecology department and received a $5000 grant from the social innovation department. Arora and Velez took their mushrooms door to door for feedback from friends, restaurants and food producers.

Arora was originally going to continue a consulting career before founding BTTR Ventures.

He said his family was surprised, but supportive. Arora’s older brother is also an entrepreneur who started an advertising web site, www.retargeter.com. But he said explaining a green startup to some of the Indian community, and his grandparents, was a little harder.

“I’ve always had this itch to do something of my own,” he said.

BTTR Venture is now supported by franchises such as Whole Foods and Peet’s Coffee & Tea.

The company is expanding their products to include shitake mushrooms and gourmet home gardens that will harvest mushrooms multiple times. Arora said he hopes to also increase the availability of their products to more people.

“That’s one of our biggest things – local fresh food movement has been tailored to wealthy and upper class people, but it should be something that’s open [to everyone].”

Commitment to society is a core principle of the venture. The team donates the used coffee grounds for compost, and helps support a gardening program for high school students.

Arora said he hopes the company will grow to include more social-minded projects and business ventures.

Post your comments below.

BUSINESS: Foreign companies employing Americans and Providing a Lifeline

“The Selling of the American Economy: How Foreign Companies Are Remaking the American Dream” is a new book by NYT reporter Micheline Maynard. An excerpt ran in today's NYT and here are three key paras:

As scores of companies are hemorrhaging jobs, closing plants and slashing compensation, foreign employers have become a lifeline for Ms. Ryan and millions of other Americans. While they haven’t been immune from the recession, foreign-owned companies in the United States have a work force of more than 5.3 million, or some 3.5 percent of all workers, and are spread across the 50 states in sectors from manufacturing to retail and publishing. If these jobs did not exist, the nation’s unemployment rate would be above 13 percent.

Investments in the United States by big car companies like Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Mercedes-Benz have received the greatest share of attention over the past two decades. But there are also tens of thousands of Americans working for companies like the Tata Group of India, which recently reopened the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan and makes Eight O’Clock Coffee; Haier, the Chinese appliance maker, with a refrigerator plant in South Carolina and an impressive headquarters in a landmark building in Manhattan; and Nestlé, the Swiss food company, which employs hundreds to make Nesquik and Coffee-Mate in Indiana. Even Anheuser-Busch, America’s best-selling beer maker, is now owned by a Belgian company, InBev.

Foreign companies may touch a nerve in American society and may still be an object of fear and distrust among many, who view foreign investment as a threat to the American worker and way of life. But foreign investment isn’t simply about helping workers earn a weekly paycheck. Foreign companies that invest in the United States are having a significant — and largely positive — impact on not only the lives of workers, but also the health of the American economy and society as a whole.

That got me thinking there must be other companies based in India that are employing Americans. We are not talking about companies that import Indian citizens to work for U.S. subsidiaries via the H1-B program; we are talking about companies that are the Indian equivalents of the Japanese automotive plants in various U.S. regions.

If you know of any beyond the Tata Group/Pierre Hotel/Eight O'Clock Coffee sited above, please list them in the comments section below.