As program head, Junnarkar will continue to oversee the many interactive courses the J-School offers, develop new courses and teaching modules as needed, supervise the interactive faculty, and recruit adjunct faculty members.
Upon announcing the appointment, Dean Stephen B. Shepard said of Junnarkar, “He has great strengths as a journalist and is skilled in the use of digital tools.” Junnarkar, who joined the faculty in 2006, the CUNY J-School’s first year, received tenure earlier this year.
Junnarkar is the former New York bureau chief of CNET News.com, and has specialized in writing about technologies used in different industries. In April 2003, his three-part report on the security risks of online banking was named “Best in Business Projects among Real-Time Publications” by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.
Junnarkar helped to create online editions of The New York Times, working as breaking news editor, writer, and Web producer when the paper went live on the Internet as The New York Times on the Web. Junnarkar is founder and editorial director of Lives in Focus, a multimedia web site that features stories on underreported issues. The site received a New Voices grant for 2008-2010 from J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, which is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
In recent years, he has served as a judge for the National Magazine Awards and Online Journalism Awards. He has given talks or led discussions about Social Media and Online Journalism at The Council on Foreign Relations, Columbia University’s Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media, and the Online News Association.
Junnarkar was president of the South Asian Journalists Association from 2008 to 2010. He received a B.A. in Social Science from the University of California at Berkeley and an M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.