Rishabh Raj Jain
GRANTEE
Rishabh Raj Jain is a cross-format journalist who has spent more than a month reporting from the Rohingya refugee camps in Southern Bangladesh.
Actively pursuing stories that are often ignored by the mainstream media and giving voice to people at the bottom of the pyramid are his main goals and areas of reportage. Jain first joined AP as an intern in 2015 after a competitive selection process, and was trained to work across multiple formats—video, photo, and text. Soon after the internship, he started working as a video journalist for the South Asia desk based out of New Delhi, reporting on everything from violent protests to cannabis-producing Himalayan villages.
In Bangladesh, Jain dived right into the refugee camps, uncovering stories of death, despair, and bravery. His story about a Rohingya woman who helped other refugees flee Myanmar received lots of hits on social media and was published by hundreds of newspapers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post. The video story was used by several broadcasters around the world.
Jain graduated from the University of Iowa with a bachelor's in economics, and journalism and mass communication. His 2012 investigative piece that exposed major flaws in programs run by a top American outdoor learning school was ranked sixth in the country in the 2013 Hearst Award Program.
He followed up on that story with "When study abroad ends in death, US parents find few answers," which was both an in-depth look at the lack of transparency in the U.S. study abroad industry, and a human interest story about an American mother retracing the last footsteps of her son who died while studying abroad in the mountains of North India. Jain produced the story in three formats, often carrying a video camera, DSLR camera, and a notepad, all at the same time.