Priya Desai is modest about admitting what sets her apart from her peers in sports journalism, even though she’s a certifiable trailblazer in her industry as the first South Asian female sports broadcaster. From a small town outside of St. Louis called Edwardsville, Priya traces her love of sports, particularly football, to the “very Friday Night Lights” community. She attended Indiana University, one of the Big 10 schools where she became an aspiring sports professional. As a journalism major, Priya worked on the IU newspaper, covering the drama when legendary coach Bobby Knight was fired, and then the excitement the following year when the basketball team went to the championship game. She began her career at the bottom and tenaciously worked her way up, scoring an internship in NYC at College Sports Television (CSTV), where her boss suggested she pursue a position at big-time local news station, NY1, “And the rest,” she jokes, “is sports history.”
Now a sports broadcaster at NY1, Priya contributes to breaking all sorts of glass ceilings in a male-dominated industry, and keeps climbing the ladder by playing to her strengths and by being just plain... awesome.
Photo credit: Chad Heird
While
it’s strange to think that before 2005 the Huffington Post did not
exist as a staple news source, it’s even more unbelievable to consider
how extensively news media has changed over the past decade with
opportunities provided by the Internet. At 24, Rob Fishman, who
graduated from Cornell in 2008 and Columbia’s Graduate Journalism
School in 2009, has known no other employer than the Huffington Post in
his adult life. Although many writers have the privilege of blogging
for “Huffpo,” the website only hires a very small and trusted paid
managing staff, of which Rob is one. Rob started on the staff as the associate blog editor in 2009,
and in May 2010 was promoted to the position of social media editor.
Rob's truly a journalist of this generation, adeptly navigating a network
of social media tools to receive and transmit news, yet with a
hunger for reading that makes him one of the gifted news
writers of his age. And, of course, there's charm in his wit that
extends beyond the professional arena (we swear we did not pay him to plug our blog).
