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Hearst choice

Sonia Chopra

Last year, Shashank Bengali was a summer intern at the San Jose Mercury News. He worked on a feature story about an ex-sailor who wanted to clear his name. The man was eventually pardoned.

Bengali found the story compelling and he sent it in to the Hearst Foundation Journalism and won first place with a cash prize of $ 2,000. Then the winners of the contest were invited to write new stories on deadline and he won the first place again, with a $ 5,000 prize this time.

Finally, this month he sent in his best stories, including the one about the sailor and he won the Top Ten competition with a cash prize of $ 10,000.

"I am saving the money to either go on a world tour or to graduate school," said Bengali, 20, is an intern at the features desk at the Philadelphia Inquirer this summer.

In the past, he has done business and sports reporting internships at The Long Island Beach Press Telegramin 1997, and The Kansas City Star in 1998. He is also an executive producer for the Annenberg TV News, USC's television station. This is his second year in the position.

Bengali is a student at the University of Southern California and is carrying a mixed course load of broadcast journalism, French and political science.

"It's all different things. Journalism is practical, political science is applied theory and French is culture," Bengali said. "But they all compliment each other and it' s fun to keep the balance."

Bengali, who will graduate in May 2001, has no idea about what he will do "long-term" but, for the short-term, he would like to be a reporter in a newspaper either in the technology or the business department, because that's "what happening".

"I would also like to go to Silicon Valley and do stories on the people who have been left behind by the dot.com revolution. I know there must be plenty of stories untold," he said. But he says he will last "only a short while" at any place.

"I am restless. I may go to graduate school or to another job," he confessed.

Bengali enjoys internships because "big papers have a whole lot of people on vacation and we fill up the big holes and you can get great stories if you are at the right place at the right time."

He is excited about being in Philadelphia because of the Republican convention. But he does not side with the Republicans or Democratics because they are "almost the same".

"I am sort of in between," he explained. "I like the game of politics more than the practice of it." His personal philosophy has always been, "everything happens for a reason".

Born in Hackensack, New Jersey, Bengali moved to Cerritos, a small town 20 miles south east of Los Angeles at four. His parents, Indian immigrants Ajay Bengali, 51, a computer engineer, and his mother Bina, 49, a realtor, still live there with his younger brother Preetesh, 18. Bengali graduated from Whitney High School in 1997.

He played baseball and tennis in the summers. His mother tried to send him for Hindu scripture classes but he resisted.

"I wish I had gone to some of the seminars. I like reading about Hinduism now," Bengali said.

He predicts a prosperous future for Indian writers in the wake of Jhumpa Lahiri winning the Pulitzer and says that he himself will come out with a book. Clearly, Bengali's not quite the kind of youngster you write off.

Next: Gone fishing

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