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Bharat Dutta Koirala started his career in journalism in 1965 as the Chief Reporter of The Rising Nepal, the country’s first English broadsheet newspaper. Having worked as Associate Editor and the Executive Editor, he took over as Editor of Gorkhapatra, the largest and most widely circulated newspaper in 1975. Five years later he became the Executive Chairman of Gorkhapatra Corporation which published the two dailies and a number of periodicals.Mr. Koirala introduced modern technology, especially computerized typesetting for the first time and web-offset presses for printing newspapers and magazines. He carried out a systematic program to train young Nepali technicians in handling the new technology. For two years between 1984 and 1986 he worked as the Regional Director for Asia of Worldview International Foundation, an organization that introduced the audio-visual media, principally the cassette recorder as a development tool. At that time he joined his colleagues in the media to establish the Nepal Press Institute with the objective of training journalists for the first time in Nepal. It introduced a basic course that is still very popular today but during the 14 years that he led the organization he was able to work closely with media organizations in many countries of Asia.

His main contribution to the development of the media in those early days was the introduction of development journalism with stories of ordinary people from villages, of small but significant efforts of simple Nepalis whose achievements would otherwise go unnoticed. These efforts set the tone for the establishment of a number of media organizations that made significant contribution in the area of environmental journalism to rural reporting and the training of journalists from the country’s remote areas.

In the early 1990s Koirala, together with a number of media organizations, was able to convince the government of the need for privately owned and operated radio stations to spread out throughout the country. The first community station, Radio Sagarmatha, started broadcasting in 1997. Now there are over 200 radio stations throughout the country, many of them in remote, rural communities.

His achievements in creating organizations and introducing programs to promote “good, healthy journalism” were widely recognized. The International Center for Journalists awarded him the Knight International Press Fellowship Award in 1999 and the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation conferred on him the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism in 2002. The Ashoka Foundation in the U.S. and the Schwab Foundation in Switzerland have recognized him as an Outstanding Social Entrepreneur. He is still associated with media organizations and media education institutions in Nepal.

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