Explore Anirban's World

Of News, Comms & Moving Pictures

That’s the arc of my professional journey. I’ve spent over two decades shaping narratives across newsrooms, crafting stories through film and multimedia, and advising on communication strategy.

From breaking news to reputation strategy, from editorial leadership to social media influence, my work sits at the intersection of storytelling, perception, and impact.

Representative image of mass media tools

About Anirban

I have worn many hats in a career that’s taken me through the full tapestry of the media ecosystem, from news and opinion to perception, influence, and social media discourse.

This journey has shaped my understanding of how narratives are constructed, challenged, and defended in real-time.

I now bring that experience to my role as Chief Operating Officer at Lexport, a boutique Indian law firm where I lead operations, communications, client engagement, and strategic initiatives.
My role includes strengthening the firm’s knowledge platforms, thought leadership, and stakeholder interface.

I also head Lexport’s Reputation & Crisis Practice, helping clients navigate high-stakes challenges where legal exposure and public perception collide.

Before stepping into the corporate and advisory space, I spent over two decades as a journalist and editor with global and Indian media leaders, including The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Network18, and Business Today.

I have built and led integrated newsrooms, audience engagement strategies, and social-first multimedia publishing teams. I’m a recipient of the SOPA Award for Multimedia Excellence, alongside my incredible WSJ colleagues.

Beyond the newsroom, I have worked as an independent filmmaker, media & communications consultant, guest professor, and mentor, sharing my expertise with government organisations, non-profits, media startups, journalism schools, universities, and fellowship programs.

My work spans newsroom & editorial leadership, digital & social media strategy, crisis communication, and helping startups build robust communication foundations. I also write on sustainable development and electric vehicles.

I am passionate about teaching, mentoring, and helping individuals and institutions build resilient reputations and communicate with clarity, especially when the stakes are high.

Crisis Comms

In today’s hyper-connected world, reputational risk is now one of the most critical threats to businesses, institutions, and individuals.

The rise of digital platforms, real-time news cycles, and social media amplification means that a single misstep, whether legal, ethical, or operational, can escalate into a full-blown crisis within hours if not minutes.

From regulatory investigations and data breaches to employee misconduct and public backlash, the triggers for reputational damage are multiplying, and the consequences are more severe than ever.

What makes reputational risk particularly challenging is its unpredictability and the speed at which it unfolds. Unlike traditional legal issues that follow a structured process, reputation crises often play out in the court of public opinion, where perception can outweigh facts.

Media trials, viral misinformation, and stakeholder outrage can derail business continuity, erode trust, and impact valuation long before any formal legal resolution is reached.

Crisis mitigation in this landscape demands more than reactive damage control; it requires a proactive, strategic, and multidisciplinary approach.

This is where the synergy of effective communication and sound legal advice becomes indispensable and a force multiplier when done under one roof.

Legal counsel ensures that responses are compliant, defensible, and aligned with regulatory frameworks, while strategic communication shapes the narrative, manages stakeholder sentiment, and repairs public confidence.

Effective communication during a crisis involves clarity, speed, and empathy. It means engaging with stakeholders, be it employees, customers, regulators, investors, and the media, with transparency and consistency.

Silence or ambiguity can be misinterpreted, fueling speculation and deepening the crisis. On the other hand, well-crafted messaging backed by legal insight can contain fallout, correct misinformation, and reinforce credibility.

Sound legal advice plays a parallel role in guiding internal decisions, preparing for potential litigation, and ensuring that public statements do not compromise legal standing.

It helps organisations navigate complex regulatory landscapes, assess liability, and implement corrective measures that demonstrate accountability.

Together, legal and communication teams can proactively conduct pre-crisis audits, establish response protocols, train leadership, and build Quick Response Teams (QRTs) that are equipped to act swiftly and cohesively when a crisis unfolds.

Post-crisis, they play a vital role in recovery, supporting litigation, repairing reputation, and rebuilding trust.

In an era where reputation is as valuable as intellectual property, the ability to anticipate, manage, and recover from crises is a strategic advantage.

Organizations that invest in integrated reputation risk frameworks are not only protecting their brand, they’re future-proofing their business.

AI in Newsrooms

What is often not realised is that artificial intelligence, in its various iterations and early avatars, was deeply embedded into popular tools used by journalists for many years.

These tools were so ingrained in our daily processes that their use became almost second nature and eventually got hard coded into our news reporting DNA.

From Google's 'autocomplete' feature on its search to its popular tools like Translate and Analytics, Adobe's web data analytics tool, and Content Management Systems such as Eidosmedia's Méthode, which had Tansa, a text-proofing system that had 'learnt' the style guide of the publisher, early AI models were available in digital-age newsrooms to find and verify information, do research, know more about audience and subscribers demographics, and streamline the workflow of journalists and newsroom leaders.

Today, it's an embarrassment of riches to choose from the many new AI products and technologies available for journalists, newsrooms, and publishers.

While these tools may promise to rewire the fine art of journalism, they also raise important questions about trust, ethics and reliability.

AI-led and fed tools are now powering our journalism in more ways than imagined. Daily bread AI tools like chatbots or digital assistants such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Microsoft's Copilot, as well as writing assistants like Grammarly and QuillBot, have become the staple for nearly every journalist in any newsroom.

More advanced use cases like AI-enabled CMS for cross-platform publishing, generating images from words or described emotions via Generative AI, digital media forensics for deepfake detection, and real-time data interpretation and trend analysis during live election results coverage, are proof of how AI is defining new boundaries in newsrooms virtually every day.

By now, most news publishers have made rules and defined SOPs for deploying AI tools in newsrooms. The overarching learning so far is that AI, at best, is a means to maximise the impact of storytelling and journalism through more in-depth research, process automation, intelligent data interpretation, and bulletproof fact-checking, freeing time for journalists to focus more on the story embellishments by moving away from the more repetitive or time-consuming tasks of their daily beat.

AI in journalism is an ever-evolving conversation in newsrooms, rapidly moving away from coffee machine conversations around 'Should I?' to asking 'What more can I do with AI' to make my story travel more and have more impact.

Journalists, product managers, and numbers-obsessed bosses find it increasingly difficult to overlook the possibilities of AI given the challenges the industry is staring at, and there are signs already that AI is on the cusp of redefining the news cycle -- be it for spotting, gathering, production, distribution and monetisation.

I often get asked questions about propriety when deploying AI tools in newsrooms, and we all agree that the human touch can never be replaced at every step as insurance, even while realising that AI is becoming a key ally and a force multiplier in newsrooms globally.

News vs Content

The news and media industry is staring at an unprecedented challenge from the rapid rise of the content creator ecosystem.

Media companies are fighting to stay relevant as speedy, dependable, and trustworthy providers of news and verified information, and they are trying to overcome these obstacles with innovation, technology, and a healthy dose of optimism.

Journalists, social media influencers, and content creators are now in a race to dominate the information dissemination ecosystem and gather more reach, engagement, perception, and revenues.

Every day is a high-stakes game of continuous innovation, faster production, and swift cross-platform distribution to feed the appetite for content and not necessarily branded news.

The rapid rise of the influencer ecosystem and the content creator economy, combined with the muscular reach of social platforms, has become a gale-force headwind for journalism as we know it.

According to Deloitte Research, the creator economy in 2023 was estimated at $250 billion and is expected to double in the next 5 years. Another report compiled by Coherent Market Insight says that as of 2024, the global creator economy is worth $156.37 billion and likely to hit $528.39 billion by 2030.

The rapid shift in how people find and consume news is a significant challenge for newsrooms. Audience mind share, distribution reach, engagement metrics, and the revenue pie will shrink significantly for the pure-play players unless new storytelling formats, tools, and audience engagement methods are employed quickly.

Meanwhile, more and more influencers and content creators are now realising that the ethics of a newsroom and the rigours of journalism often make the difference, as information can now be quickly fact-checked and labelled as misinformation or disinformation, leading to a loss of reputation or a brand casualty.

Journalists and newsrooms are not immune to the vagaries of change or the shifting sands of time. After all, be it a journalist or an influencer, we are all currently slaves of the algorithm and living proof of Marshall McLuhan’s theory—the medium is the message!