Neeraj Khemlani is executive vice president and deputy group head of Hearst Newspapers. With more than 3,000 employees across the nation, Hearst Newspapers publishes print and digital products for 24 dailies and 52 weeklies in cities including Houston, San Francisco, San Antonio, Albany, New York, and New Haven, Connecticut. Before joining Hearst Newspapers, Khemlani served as president and group head of Hearst Entertainment & Syndication, the operating group responsible for Hearst’s cable network partnerships at ESPN and A+E Networks, digital video entertainment and music streaming businesses such as Complex Networks and Kobalt Music, video production through NorthSouth and comics syndication and character licensing operations at King Features Syndicate. He continues to serve on the boards of A+E Networks, A+E EMEA, Complex Networks, Kobalt Music and NorthSouth Productions. He joined Hearst in 2009 after serving as a senior executive at Yahoo! News since 2006. Prior to that, Khemlani was a producer at the CBS News60 Minutestelevision news magazine, where he is responsible for researching, reporting and writing stories with various CBS News correspondents. Before joining CBS News in 1998, Mr. Khemlani was an associate producer for ABC News anchorman Peter Jennings and also produced pieces with Robert Krulwich for Nightline as well as Good Morning America. He is a term member of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He graduated with a Master's degree in Journalism from Columbia University and a 1992 undergraduate degree from Cornell University. He is married to Heather Cabot, an anchor and correspondent for ABC News. Mr. Khemlani is of Indian heritage, born in Singapore and raised in New York.
He has been responsible for landing many exclusive interviews and stories around the world. He convinced Libya’s leader, Col. Qaddafi, to do a comprehensive interview with 60 Minutes. Mr. Khemlani also convinced the Russian government to show CBS News some of its most private nuclear facilities, including a secret city built inside a mountain in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. It is there where the Russians explained to CBS News that they could no longer pay the salaries of the starving scientists and soldiers who live there and guard the site’s growing stockpile of plutonium.
He has also done stories on numerous conflicts, including the Afghan war, the Sudanese civil war, America’s secret war against the Cali and Medellin drug cartels, the Bosnian tragedy and the invasion of Haiti.
Mr. Khemlani has also profiled numerous scientific inventors like Dean Kamen and his Segway human transporter, musicians like Jay-Z and the Grateful Dead, actresses like Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai and businessmen like Russell Simmons and Rick Wagoner, the chairman of General Motors, who unveiled his hydrogen car on the program. He has been nominated for several Emmy awards, including his 2006 nomination for his 60 Minutes story on the Dinner Set Gang, a prolific team of jewel thieves in Florida.
Awards
2006 Emmy nomination for Outstanding Feature Story in a News Magazine
