Rakesh Goswami is a professor at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi, and is in charge of admissions, examinations and short courses. Prior to this appointment, he has been the regional director of IIMC’s Northern Regional Centre at Jammu. He has been a journalist for 20 years, working across the electronic and print media before taking the plunge into academics. He began his career from Hindustan Times Lucknow as a sub editor and graduated to reporting, handling the medical and health beat.

He has worked with Channel 7 (later rechristened as IBN7 and now called Network18India), as the Rajasthan bureau chief in Jaipur. He returned to the print, his first love, after being in the television news industry for nine years, and headed the editorial operations of Hindustan Times in Rajasthan.

Goswami has always been fascinated by crime reporting and would often tag along the crime reporter to the office of Rajesh Pandey, then SP City in Lucknow. He has known Pandey since then. During the Covid-19 lockdown, when Pandey decided to write the true story of the rise and fall of one of UP’s most dreaded gangsters, he collaborated with Goswami.

Goswami did his Bachelor’s in Science (Statistics and Computer Science) from Lucknow University and started working soon after graduating. Son of a clerk, Goswami freelanced for The Pioneer, The Times of India and Hindustan Times in Lucknow during college to earn his pocket money.

A University Gold Medalist in Master’s in Journalism, Goswami chose Rajasthan films for his doctoral thesis.