For Aakriti Dhawan, journalism was never meant to stay inside neat professional boundaries. Her career has crossed continents, formats and beats -- from Indian newsrooms like NDTV to international platforms including BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle and TRT World. Today, based in the UK, she works as an international journalist while hosting her own show, the Beyond Borders Podcast, a space dedicated to conversations that often fall outside conventional media narratives. Yet the path into journalism wasn’t a meticulously planned one. “I was doing history,” Aakriti recalled during our conversation. “My mom is a historian as well, so I think it runs in our blood. But while doing that, I realised I was never inclined towards academia.” Like many journalists, her entry into media began almost accidentally. A writing opportunity at ScoopWhoop during her college years sparked the first realisation that storytelling might be more than just an interest. &l

Last week, the Supreme Court of India had agreed to examine what constitutes 'personal data' under the recently notified Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, which has been accused of using data privacy to block the citizen's legitimate right to information besides various other infringements on media freedom. A three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant said the need to define ‘public data’ and ‘personal data’ has arisen following the implementation of the DPDP Actand its corresponding Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025. The court issued formal notice to the Union government on a petition filed by The Reporters' Collective, Software Freedom Law Center among others. "We believe, the government has surreptitiously and wrongfully shrunk our rights as citizen to access information for public purpose and to hold it and other powerful people accountable to citizens through the Digital Personal Data Prote

Happy faces as Vijayawada schools let students go home early, switch to half-day sessions to beat the heat – picture by K.V.S Giri – The Hindu Freedom of Religion Bill 2026 passed in Maharashtra The Maharashtra Assembly has passed the Maharashtra Freedom of Religion Bill 2026, with the Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray Sena supporting the bill, breaking ranks with the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance. The bill regulates religious conversion in the state. The Congress and the Samajwadi Party have opposed the bill, while the Nationalist Congress Party (SP) MLAs have taken a mixed stand on it. The Maharashtra Freedom of Religion Bill 2026 says that any religious conversion made through ‘allurement, coercion, deceit, force, misrepresentation, threat, undue influence or fraudulent means’ would be null and void. It makes any such offence cognizable and non-bailable and prescribes up to 7 years’ imprisonment and a fine of Rs 1 lakh for such unlawful conversion, writes Krishna Ku

The Karnataka Union of Working Journalists has invited applications for membership through its district units. In a statement, the union said working journalists can apply for membership by submitting their applications along with the required supporting documents through the respective taluk units. The applications will then be forwarded by the district units for further consideration. The union clarified that the decisions taken by the district units and the state body regarding membership will be final.

Press Information Bureau Hyderabad will organise “Vartalap – media workshop for journalists” in Sangareddy on March 17 at 10 am at the Zilla Parishad Meeting Hall. P Pravinya, Collector of Sangareddy district, will attend as the chief guest. The workshop will include sessions on gender based violence, key Central government schemes for women and the use of artificial intelligence in journalism. Sessions will be led by journalist Sajaya Kakarla and fact check trainer Satya Priya BN. Journalists from the district have been invited to participate in the programme.  

There is more to come from Jackson Ryan’s investigation into Australian gaming title GamesHub and its new owners, Maltese-owned Clickout Media.  Ryan published an eight-month investigation earlier this month on Aftermath titled, “The Secretive Company Filling Video Game Sites With Gambling And AI.” The item detailed the editorial practices employed by Clickout Media since it took over the gaming title. That included the transition from freelance journalists to AI-generated journalists for filing reports and reviews on gaming topics.  “When we saw GamesHub sold off in May last year, it was quite unusual that there was no description about who had bought the site,” Ryan told Influencing.   “I know a couple of the GamesHub authors, and I reached out to them. They said they couldn’t speak about this and that it was something to ask the higher-ups, and I did so, and they didn't tell me anything, and that is very strange.” “Why would someone buy a media outlet an

“Exclusives are the currency of modern media,” says News Corp Metro’s NSW Business Reporter Paul Wallbank when appearing on Influencing Insider recently. “[Pitch] as far ahead as possible…two to three weeks in advance if it's a good yarn, that would probably be the best if you're looking at getting something up,” he said. Wallbank joined News Corp Metro in October last year. The NSW Business Reporter role sees him write for various metro titles, including The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, Courier Mail, The Advertiser and Gold Coast Bulletin.  “It's a very interesting beat being able to cover every aspect of business across not just New South Wales but nationally as well.” Wallbank has worked on both sides of the media fence and, more recently, served as Communications Manager at the Australian Computer Society.  He said he’d found the transition back into journalism interesting due to the profession’s faster, day-to-day rhythm. “You're very much tied in