Behind The Byline Podcast

Journalist’s instinct and can-do attitude lead Poovenraj Kanagaraj (Raj) to piece together his own business news website. When Raj was an editor with a monthly business magazine in 2020, he noticed the lack of attention to entrepreneurs’ stories from the mainstream media. As a result, he started a newsletter called Head’s up to make their voices heard. Among the 12,000 subscribers Raj has garnered in two years’ time, an investor got in touch and backed him to expand the coverage. That is how his platform Disruptr comes into play. Disruptr…

With great power comes great responsibility – Amanda Valani refines her leadership skills and parenting methods as she climbs the corporate ladder in the media industry. Amanda started her career as a broadcast journalist at news channel Metro TV. “When I was a journalist, I became the creator and the storyteller,” she said. “I made my own work from start to finish. That is exactly what I miss.” As she assumed a leadership role as head of content creation for Narasi TV, Amanda interpreted creative freedom in a different way.…

“Hey Matt, do you like Vietnam?” Chief Editor of The Bureau Asia Matt Cowan has been living in Ho Chi Minh City since 2010. Whenever the Australian meets new people there, he knows they will ask him this question. So Matt, do you like Vietnam? “I do, I honestly do love living here but it’s not a holiday for me,” said Matt, who established the Vietnam-based lifestyle and travel media platform in 2018. Back then, SEO, social media advertising, and Google Analytics were all new to him. He knows these…

Accepting and overcoming anxiety about the future is a lesson Eiko Endo learned as a journalist at The Oriental Times. After graduating from Keio University, Eiko pursued further studies in Beijing. Upon her return to Japan, she looked for a job that required her to use Chinese. That was how she joined The Oriental Times, a Chinese language newspaper that covers Sino-Japan relations. Before becoming a correspondent, Eiko said she felt “anxious about not being able to see the future” but working in journalism has developed a mindset in her…

Switching from journalism to public relations is quite a common path, but for Jeff Liebsch, CEO of Haps Magazine Korea, it is the other way round. And he did so by overcoming language and cultural barriers thousands of miles away from home. It was 2009 when Jeff, who travelled to South Korea to start a new chapter in life, got a copy of the bi-monthly magazine from its founder in the southern coastal city of Busan. After flipping through the English publication, the Canadian found the content surrounding local community…