Mallika: Sri Lanka’s Pioneering Journalist

Sri Lanka is today known more for the performance of its fine cricket team and the conflict between the government and the LTTE. The passing away of its highly talented and sensitive journalist Mallika Wanigasundra went almost unnoticed.

I came to know of her passing away while going through the website of another dedicated and respected Sri Lankan journalist Nalaka Gunawardene. I met Gunawardene in the late 1980s at Vestras, Sweden, where we had gone to attend an international semniar on “Media In Times Of Crisis”. For his website pl click here…

He writes: “Mallika Wanigasundara, who passed away on 4 April 2008 aged 81, went in search of causes and process that shape the everyday news headlines. She blazed new trails in issue-based journalism, covering topics ranging from health and environment to children, women and social justice.

“It was only last year that the Editors Guild of Sri Lanka and the Sri Lanka Press Institute presented her the Lifetime Achievement Gold Medal for Excellence in Journalism. In 1990, she was selected by the United Nations Environment Programme for the Global 500 award.

“Mallika was associated with the Sri Lankan media in one capacity or another for over half a century. Starting her professional career in 1956 with the Sinhala evening daily Janatha, she later moved on to English language journalism at Lake House where she worked first in The Observer and then at Daily News.

“Mallika also helped put Sri Lanka on the world map of development journalism. Beginning in the early 1980s, she contributed Sri Lankan stories to Depthnews, published by the Press Foundation of Asia based in Manila, and to Panos Features, syndicated globally by the Panos Institute in London.

“In those pre-web days, these services – when printed in newspapers and magazines – were among the most dependable sources for ground level reporting from far corners of the world. (Alas, both services have since gone the way of the Dodo – not to mention Asiaweek, South and Gemini.)

“It was characteristic of many accomplished journalists of her generation that they remained mostly in the background, shaping news coverage and analysis. Some even didn’t nurture a personal by-line, writing under pseudonyms or simply not signing their names on their work.” More here…