House of Experts Ep 21: Vibha Kagzi in Conversation with Anant Goenka

House of Experts is a show that ReachIvy kick-started to help those who are unclear about their career choices. We hope through these sessions with some very successful people, we can shed light on a new career path every week. House of Experts plans to make a collection of interactive and informative sessions with experts from various domains.  
Vibha Kagzi, the host, is the Founder and CEO of ReachIvy.com, a premium study abroad and career consultancy organization. Vibha, a Harvard alumna, is a successful entrepreneur and believes in helping others chalk out their future careers.  
 
In Episode 21 of House of Experts, we were fortunate to host Anant Goenka, Executive Director of Indian Express. Anant was awarded a Dean’s scholarship for his Master’s in print journalism from the Annenberg School for Journalism at USC. At a time of increasingly loud, unreliable, and biased news organizations, Anant is credited with successfully growing Indian Express Group’s brand of courageous and independent journalism to a younger, digitally-enabled readership.

Forbes magazine says Anant exudes the energy that he promises to infuse into the venerable Express brand. Economic Times recognizes him as India’s 40 under-40 business leaders and GQ has listed him one of India’s 50 most influential young Indians.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the session between Vibha Kagzi and Anant Goenka in case you missed it:

1. Tell us about your early years, and educational background.
I was introduced to the world of Journalism at a very young age. As we had our own printing press right below our building, it gave me access to understand the workings of publishing a newspaper very early on. I believe this is one of the reasons I was always so interested in journalism!
Running a news agency requires the right business skills infused with the knowledge of journalism; thus, this is what made me pursue an undergraduate degree in Business management. Post that I did my Masters in Journalism from USC.
During my 2 years at USC, I was fortunate enough to have received great exposure and experience, as the entire media industry was going through a transition during those years!

2. How do you check if the news is authentic or fake?
At Indian Express, the news gets scanned through various sets of eyes before getting published. We check & recheck the news from the original source before it goes out.
Thus, at Indian express, we believe it’s better to get it right rather than getting it first!

3. What is the future of print media?
Reading the newspaper in hand has been an experience and a format that has been going on for as long as 250 years. I feel the talk about the death of print media has been going on for very long and people have stressed it more than required. The medium in totality can never really die but there is a seamless shift in the business model from print to digital in the newspaper segment.

4. What advice would you give someone pursuing journalism as their career?
To start with, you need to be very clear about your stand in this world. Having equal compassion and empathy for your truth and the other person’s truth is extremely important. You need to be able to find as many different versions of the truth as possible.
If you are just trying to push your opinion and your truth about a particular event, you will probably have a short-lived career compared to journalists who are excited about providing an unbiased story to the readers.

We’re really grateful to Anant for sharing his candid thoughts on the present, past, and future of journalism and media.

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