CAMP 2015: Los Angeles Times’ Mitra Kalita to present keynote at CAMP

By Linda Kramer Jenning, JAWS President

Los Angeles Times managing editor S. Mitra Kalita will be joining JAWS in Whitefish, Mont., to give the Saturday dinner keynote talk at our 30th anniversary Conference and Mentoring Project (CAMP).

You might already know Kalita from when she worked at The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Associated Press or Newsday, or more recently when she was the founding ideas editor at Quartz and then its executive editor at large. She oversaw the launches of Quartz India and Quartz Africa. This fascinating career path also included a sojourn in India, where she became the founding editor of Mint, a business paper in New Delhi.

Despite some reluctance at leaving her close-knit community in Jackson Heights, Queens, she moved to Los Angeles earlier this year to accept the position of managing editor for editorial strategy — becoming one of the few women in a top newsroom leadership position.

Kalita, former president of the South Asian Journalists Association, has written three books related to migration and globalization and according to her website is at work on a book about schools and segregation that she started as a Spencer Fellow at Columbia University. She has taught journalism at St. John’s, UMass-Amherst and Columbia J-school. She tweets @mitrakalita.

When I was reading up on Kalita, I came across an interview she did with a Jaipur women’s blog. I particularly liked her answer when she was asked for her advice to young journalists: “Live a life and engage with the world. You should never have a quiet cab ride.”

If you haven’t registered for CAMP yet, sign up now. You’ll enjoy two amazing keynote talks: S. Mitra Kalita on Saturday and Emily Bell on Sunday.