Before coming to the United States for pursuing higher education in journalism, Ershad Komal Khan was a professional journalist in Bangladesh and worked for 18 years with two leading Dhaka-based English-language dailies. He started journalism in 2003 as a reporter with The Daily Star after earning a Master of Arts in English degree from Jahangirnagar University. He was a special correspondent of the New Age when he came to the USA to pursue a Master of Science in Journalism at West Virginia University in August 2021.
As a journalist, Ershad won two national-level awards in the environmental journalism category in Bangladesh and was awarded a fellowship by the South Korean government to conduct research on intangible cultural heritage safeguarding with ICHCAP, a Korea-based category 2 center of UNESCO. Ershad also did a summer internship with The Dominion Post, a Morgantown, WV-based regional daily, and participated in a Mentor Fellowship program under two Pulitzer prize-winning AP journalists, which was considered an independent study in his M.Sc. program.
As a journalism student, Ershad presented papers at SACA Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Conference in 2022 and at the AEJMC Midwinter Conference in 2022 and 2023. His research interest includes the sociology of news, journalistic ethics, media financing, political communication, organizational communication in media, and media and social identity. From his vast professional and brief research experiences, Ershad believes that both the political and financial factors function as powerful external modifiers in the newsroom ecosystem, which even influence news developments and ethical practices at both individual and organizational levels. In the future, Ershad wants to explore these issues based on contemporary ground realities.
Ershad is also a member of several organizations including, the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE). As a member of SPJ, he recently organized a webinar on journalism education. He served as a member of the FIPRESCI jury in four international film festivals being nominated by the International Film Critics Association of Bangladesh. He also participated at the 33rd ITI World Congress as a Bangladeshi delegate and led to the publishing of the daily bulletin during the congress held in 2011.