Fourteen months ago, my friends and fellow bloggers Kishwer Vikaas, Pavani Yalamanchili and I launched The Aerogram, a news and culture site that quickly became a must-read source for South Asian American news. The last year has been a whirlwind of new experiences that included the creation of hundreds of blog posts and interviews, and a crash course on just exactly how hard it is to try to run an online news site with no budget and a lot of dreams.
Alas, all things eventually come to an end and on Monday, Kishwer, Pavani and I decided to end our partnership, which effectively also ended my tenure as an editor at The Aerogram.
I cannot stress enough how much editing The Aerogram meant to me and how much I enjoyed working with our various writers and contributors. Watching the site take off and hearing how much people enjoyed our coverage and approach to the news was intensely gratifying.
I would like to say a special thank you to all of The Aerogram’s regular writers: Aarti Virani, Ashley Kooblall, Farah Naz Khan, Jaya Sundaresh, Monica Luhar and Priya Arora. I loved working with all of you and each of you made me a better editor in the process. (Also, a note mainstream media hiring managers everywhere: if The Aerogram can find a team of brilliant young women of color to write for its site, so can you. Trust me.)
I also want to say thank you to Kishwer and Pavani. This has been an amazing (though sometimes bumpy) ride and I’m glad that I had the change to build and work on something I truly believed in. And I will always appreciate the ideas and enthusiasm of The Aerogram’s Contributing Editor Rohin Guha and his invaluable help in editing the site’s many contributors.
As for what’s next for me, I’m in the process of looking for a full-time, steady job and would appreciate it if you dropped me a line if you knew of any positions that would be a good fit for me. I’ll be reviving this trusty blog in the coming days and am in the process of starting my own solo site. You can check this blog or follow me on Twitter for updates.
As always, thanks for reading.
Lakshmi Gandhi's Blog 