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Dharma Nanda Adhikari earned his Ph.D. in journalism (2004) at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism at Columbia, USA. He also has an MA in journalism from Missouri (2000), an MA in English literature (1992) from Tribhuvan University, and a diploma in journalism (1991) from the Nepal Press Institute. He maintains interest in the public role of media and has written, published and presented scholarly pieces in the area of journalist craft, new media, critical and cultural media analysis, media history, ethics and leadership.

His book, A Compassionate Journalist (Pilgrims, 2010), examines the professionalism and leadership roles of journalist Bharat Dutta Koirala, the winner of 2002 Magsaysay Award. Apart from textual analysis, he also has undertaken integrative studies. As lead author and research director, he helped produce the landmark study Campaign 2008: A Public Report on Media Monitoring for Nepal’s Constituent Assembly Polls (2008) published by Press Council Nepal.

Dr. Adhikari has taught at the University of Missouri and Georgia Southern University in the United States and at Kathmandu University, Pokhara University and Tribhuvan University in Nepal. At GSU, he coordinated the journalism program, taught news reporting and writing courses, and developed and offered the University’s first online journalism class. He maintains a keen interest in narrative writing and his feature writing and copy editing classes are popular among students.

Before he moved to the United States for higher education and lived and worked there for over a decade, Dharma served extensively in Nepal as a journalist. Most notably, as editor of then investigative Sadhana magazine, he helped introduce long-form investigative reporting in Nepal. His journalistic pieces and commentaries have appeared in Nepal’s leading news outlets as well as from the US and England.

He is regarded as a pioneer in Nepal’s online journalism. In 1999, when the country’s news outlets were still doing shovel-ware, he began and ran newslookmag.com, a continuously updated link-journalism weblog with exclusively online content. After the site was banned in Nepal by the royal government in 2005, it began to operate under a different domain name and evolved into nepalmonitor.com, which continues in a semi-scholarly format.

Dr. Adhikari has been a Fulbright Scholar at the Missouri School of Journalism at Columbia. He also has been an International Journalism Exchange Fellow (1996), hosted by the Washington D.C.-based International Center for Journalists, the Freedom Forum, and the American Society of Newspaper Editors. He has received academic and professional awards, including two scholastic medals from the government of Nepal, and a SAJA Award for Outstanding Commentary (2006) given by the New York-based South Asian Journalists Association. His biography is cited in Who’s Who of Emerging Leaders- under forty (Marquis USA), and Who’s Who in America (Marquis).

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