Shekhar Gupta to deliver first AAAI-Subhas Ghosal Memorial lecture

The lecture series will have media and advertising personalities sharing their views on topics pertaining to the industry.

The Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) has announced that renowned journalist Shekhar Gupta will speak on 'Changing Role of Media in Today's India' at the AAAI-Subhas Ghosal Memorial Lecture 2015 on October 9, at ITC Grand Central, Parel, in Mumbai.

This is the first of the newly created AAAI-Subhas Ghosal Memorial lecture series wherein notable personalities from the field of media and advertising will be invited to share their views on various topics of interest within the industry.

In the past, the Subhas Ghosal Foundation has occasionally organised lectures on its own, and past speakers have included Dr. Prannoy Roy, Javed Akhtar, Dr. Gurcharan Das and Shyam Benegal, amongst others.

The Foundation has recently partnered with AAAI to create the AAAI-Subhas Ghosal Memorial Lecture. On the tie-up, the President of AAAI, Dr. Ambi M G Parameswaran, says, "We, at AAAI, are constantly examining how the association can play a more meaningful role in changing and shaping public opinion about advertising, media and marketing. The partnership with Subhas Ghosal Foundation gives us a great platform to invite thought leaders from various domains to share their perspectives on the changing discourse on media, advertising and society."

Shekhar Gupta is chairperson of Mediascape, a startup in the Indian news media space that is currently under development. He is a prolific columnist and his columns have also been translated into Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Gujarati and Marathi. He hosts a prime-time show on NDTV called 'Walk the Talk' and also another weekly show called 'Chalte Chalte', in Hindi, on NDTV India. His collection of interviews will be published soon.

Over the past two decades, his weekly column, 'National Interest', has been regarded as one of the most perceptive analysis of current events as they unfold. Currently, 'National Interest' appears in Business Standard every Saturday. He also writes a fortnightly column for Dainik Bhaskar.

In his career spanning 38 years, Gupta has reported on key Indian and international events, including the Nellie massacre in Assam, Operation Blue Star, the student uprising in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first Gulf War from Baghdad, the first 'jihad' in Afghanistan, and the many twists and turns in the troubled 1983-1993 decade in Sri Lanka's Tamil North. In June 2014, he concluded a 19-year stint at the Indian Express and the Express Group of publications, where, as editor-in-chief, he led the country's largest network of award-winning journalists.