Anubha Bhonsle

ICFJ​ ​Knight​ ​Fellow​ ​​Anubha Bhonsle helped Indian journalists increase coverage of how gender impacts everything from business to technology to sports. She provided key editorial, storytelling innovation and strategic support for major media to re-imagine gender coverage using multimedia and digital tools. Bhonsle partnered with The Indian Express, one of the country’s largest and most influential English-language news outlets.

Bhonsle was part of a team of ICFJ Knight Fellows working in India to promote high quality and impact-driven health, gender and development news coverage by offering storytelling expertise and multimedia assistance to journalists at traditional and digital-first media.

She mentored journalists who produced stories, multimedia reports and data projects for the “GenderAnd” series. In most Indian media houses, reporting on “gender” is still dominated by stories about crime and sexual violence. This project expanded coverage of gender and how it intersects with other axes of life, such as caste, class, identity and religion.

“At the heart of GenderAnd is an important view, that women and gender minorities are more than the sum total of the violence against them or their bodies,” Bhonsle said. “They have a vision, voice, and an agency to comment, reflect on some of the greatest crisis of our times, be it science and technology, the agrarian crisis or protection of forests.”

The series first launched in June 2017 under the guidance of then-ICFJ Knight Fellow Neha Dixit. Bhonsle relaunched GenderAnd in December 2017.

Indian Express produced dozens of stories in a variety of formats -- reportage, commentary, multimedia reports and data projects. Topics included the wide and persistent gender pay gap in India, efforts to open up military service for women, and the difficulties faced by transgender women in Indian universities. The series included writers from and issues important to the Dalit community, traditionally the lowest caste in India.

Prior to becoming a Knight Fellow, Bhonsle reported on politics, conflict, gender and human rights. She has written long-form narrative pieces and produced award-winning documentaries for CNN-News18 (formerly called CNN-IBN), New Delhi Television, The New York Times, The Wilson Centre and Women Under Siege. She also served as the executive editor of CNN-News18. Her book of reportage, “Mother, Where’s My Country?”, traces the struggle for human rights amid horrific violence in Manipur state. Bhonsle has been a Jefferson Fellow and a Fulbright Humphrey Fellow.

She has won numerous awards, including the 2012 Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism, 2013 Chameli Devi Award for Outstanding Woman Media Person in India, Asian TV Award for Best Cross Platform Content (2010/2011/2012), among others. The New York Film Festival commended her 2008 documentary “Irom Sharmila, the Iron Lady­­.”