Megha Rajagopalan is an American journalist of Indian descent who works at

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

. She won the 2021

Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting This Pulitzer Prize has been awarded since 1942 for a distinguished example of reporting on international affairs, including United Nations correspondence. In its first six years (1942–1947), it was called the Pulitzer Prize for Telegraphic R ...

BuzzFeed News ''BuzzFeed News'' is an American news website published by BuzzFeed. It has published a number of high-profile scoops, including the Steele dossier, for which it was heavily criticized, and the FinCEN Files. Since its establishment in 2011, it ...

"for a series of clear and compelling stories that used satellite imagery and architectural expertise, as well as interviews with two dozen former prisoners, to identify a vast new infrastructure built by the Chinese government for the mass detention of Muslims

Uighurs The Uyghurs; ; ; ; zh, s=, t=, p=Wéiwú'ěr, IPA: ( ), alternatively spelled Uighurs, Uygurs or Uigurs, are a Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central and East Asia. The Uyghu ...

." Rajagopalan, who was a 2010

Fulbright Fellow The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

to China, speaks Mandarin. She has reported from 23 countries in Asia and the Middle East on stories ranging from the

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu River, Y ...

n nuclear crisis to the peace process in

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...

. In 2018, she was forced from China, where she was living at the time, likely because of her work on sensitive issues such as surveillance and the incarceration of ethnic minorities. Rajagopalan graduated in 2008 from the

Philip Merrill College of Journalism The Philip Merrill College of Journalism is a journalism school located at the University of Maryland, College Park. The college was founded in 1947 and was named after newspaper editor Philip Merrill in 2001. The school has about 550 undergr ...

at the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...

, and has been the recipient of several prizes including the 2020 Kim Wall Award from the Overseas Press Club of America and the Mirror Award for reporting on the misuse of social media. She was also a finalist for the 2021 Orwell Prize.

External links

Megha Rajagopalan
on

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

References

Living people Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting winners American women journalists of Asian descent 21st-century American journalists 21st-century American women writers American women writers of Indian descent University of Maryland, College Park alumni Year of birth missing (living people) BuzzFeed people {{US-journalist-20thC-stub