Vinay Kamat, a veteran journalist, has been appointed as the editor of business daily Mint. Kamat is currently serving as editor of Khaleej Times, an English newspaper in the UAE, but will be joining the paper in February. Hindustan Times editor-in-chief Sukumar Ranganathan tweeted out Kamat’s appointment.
Vinay Kamat, now the editor of Khaleej Times will take over as the next Mint editor in February. He isn’t on Twitter but am hoping he will take up @mint_ed which I’ve freeze-dried.
— sukumar ranganathan (@HT_Ed) December 21, 2017
Prior to Khaleej Times, Kamat served as resident editor of Times Of India’s Bangalore edition, and before that, he was the resident editor of DNA Newspaper in Bangalore as well. He also served as Indiatimes.com and Sunday Times of India.
Ranganathan was appointed as editor-in-chief following Bobby Ghosh’s departure. It is unclear the exact reason for Ghosh’s departure but Outlook Magazine, citing a source in the company, said that pressure from the government” could be a reason for his resignation.
Earlier this year, Sachin Kalbag, resident editor of The Hindu newspaper in Mumbai, was also appointed as executive editor of the Hindustan Times’s national edition.
This year has been tumultuous for HT Media as it pulled shutters on four editions and three bureaus, including its business bureau in Mumbai and Delhi, laying off an unknown number of journalists. Many estimate that 150 journalists were forced to resign from the company.
HT Media said that it is done with its “cost-optimization” in its print editions last quarter. “The various areas that we have looked at very sharply is paper deployment, overheads, and people deployment,” chief financial officer Piyush Gupta said. Meanwhile, HT Media said that it is hiving off its digital businesses as a separate listed entity. More details here.
(Disclosure: I served under Vinay Kamat when I began my career as a journalist in Times of India, Bangalore. I worked on the desk editing copies for the paper but he was kind enough to give me a break for writing on startups despite there being a number of senior reporters in the room.)
