Alexander (Zander) Baron and Dinesh (Dino) Ganesarajah have been named the Kellogg School of Management's media scholars for 2010-2011, Media Management Center executive director Michael P. Smith announced this week.

The scholars program is funded through a grant from the Chicago-based McCormick Foundation. The scholars will receive full tuition for three academic quarters at Kellogg, where they are majors in the media management program. They were chosen after a rigorous application process by a panel of judges from media and academics. They become the fifth team of Kellogg scholars to receive funding from the Foundation.

"The judging and selection gets more difficult each year," said Center director Smith. "Zander and Dino were chosen from an excellent field of Kellogg students. Each of them brings a real passion for the media and innovative thinking about the media and journalism."

Zander Baron is a 2011 MBA candidate at Kellogg. He came to Northwestern after serving as director of programming and content development at The Atlantic Monthly, where he developed events and content around contemporary intellectual issues featuring top global business, cultural and policy leaders. Before that he worked in marketing and business development for Titan Technology Group in New York. He also served as a legislative correspondent in the office of U.S. Sen. Paul Sarbanes. He holds a bachelor's degree from Skidmore College and a master's from the London School of Economics.

Ganesarajah is also a 2011 MBA candidate at Kellogg. Before coming to Northwestern, he did a new media internship with Advent Venture Partners, Europe's oldest capital venture firm. He also was a new media portfolio manager for the British Broadcasting Corp., where he assessed business opportunities and projects. He also held various positions for London and Bangalore-based Orbis Technology, a technology provider for Europe's top gambling Web sites. He holds a master of engineering in computing from the Imperial College of London. At Northwestern, he serves as editor-in-chief of The Merger, the Kellogg school newspaper.

Consistent with the guidelines of the scholarship, both winners plan careers in media management.

Said Baron: "I came to Kellogg in large part to learn the management skills I would need to run a successful media company. I am passionate about the importance of a strong media in a free society, and I believe a successful organization is one which provides not only breadth, but depth as part of its value to its audience."

Ganesarajah is also focusing on the changes being wrought by new technologies: "I believe the most important challenge facing the news and information industries is the dispersion of the audience away from trusted media channels; i.e., a small set of newspapers, television and radio stations, to disparate new media channels," he said. "A consequence of this dispersion is the increased difficulty media organizations face in generating revenue."

The scholarship is accompanied by a research stipend, which will allow both students to explore solutions to some of the problems facing media. Ganesarajah wants to create a news organization that rather than have articles pushed to an audience, the audience will be able to commission articles of interest from expert writers. Baron's project will assess the many new ideas being implemented across the news industry that are enhancing the profitability of news organizations.

The Scholars Program was created by the McCormick Foundation in 2005 to cultivate a new generation of leaders in media management. Over the course of the 10-year program the Foundation will grant 20 merit scholarships to Kellogg Media Management students and 60 merit scholarships to students in the Medill School.


More information about the McCormick Scholarship Program can be found at
www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/academic/media/scholarship.htm

Or contact:
Michael P. Smith, Executive Director, Media Management Center
847.467.2065, m-smith3@northwestern.edu