NAGPUR: The Nagpur Press Club and Tilak Patrakar Bhavan Trust will jointly felicitate the senior journalist and Vidarbha chief of IANS, Joseph Rao at Press Club Hall on Sunday, May 21 at 5.30 pm to mark 45 years of his uninterrupted journalism career.
Rao will be felicitated at the hands of senior journalist and political editor of Times of India, Prafulla Marpakwar while noted social worker Girish Gandhi will preside over the felicitation programme. Senior editor and veteran journalist, SN Vinod and commissioner of RTI, Nagpur and Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad) benches, Rahul Pande will be the chief guests on the occasion.
Rao, who began his career as a cub reporter with a Hindi eveninger, Best Samachar (now defunct) in 1977, later joined the popular Hindi daily of the region, Nav Bharat. He later switched over to English journalism and joined The Hitavada in the late 70s. Subsequently, he joined Nagpur Times (now defunct) and worked there as News Editor. Later, Rao joined the premier news agency Press Trust of India (PTI) and served there as its bureau chief of Vidarbha region. He retired from PTI in 2016. He then contributed for Asian Age and is now working for IANS as its Vidarbha chief.
Incidentally, Rao’s son, Justin Joseph Rao is also a journalist and now working with The Indian Express (digital) while his daughter in law, Priyanka Sharma-Rao is also working as a journalist in Mid-Day, in Mumbai.
Pradip Kumar Maitra, President of Press Club, Bramhashankar Tripathi, secretary of the Club, and Shirish Borkar, general secretary of Tilak Patrakar Bhavan Trust, have appealed to all to attend the programme and make it a grand success.
