Indian American Jaya Padmanabhan Succeeds Founder Sandy Close As Executive Director of American Community Media

American Community Media (ACoM), the nation’s first and largest association of ethnic news outlets, has appointed Jaya Padmanabhan as its new Executive Director, effective February 1, 2026. She succeeds ACoM founder Sandy Close, who after three decades of pioneering leadership will transition to the role of Director Emeritus.

The appointment marks a generational transition for the organization that has championed ethnic and community media for decades.

A New Generation of Leadership

“Jaya represents a new generation of leaders at ACoM who bring energy, ideas, tech smarts and business savvy to the sector at a time when AI is transforming not only how we gather and distribute news, but the very idea of what news is,” Close said, according to India Currents.

Padmanabhan brings more than a decade of experience in ethnic media after making a career shift from a successful software engineering role in Silicon Valley to pursue her passion for journalism, according to the same source.

Padmanabhan served as Editor of India Currents from 2012 to 2014. Her career includes writing a biweekly column for the San Francisco Examiner, and most recently working as project manager for the University of Southern California Center for Health Care Journalism’s Ethnic Media Collaborative, where she provided mentorship, management, and editorial support to ethnic media fellows across multilingual newsrooms throughout California.

A Moment of Reckoning

Close characterized the transition as coming at a critical juncture for ethnic media.

“Despite a glut in information technology, people crave authentic voices and real, in-person connections,” Close said, according to India Currents. “The hunger for trusted messengers who help people navigate the changes going on around them has never been greater even as revenue to support local news platforms has never been more scarce. We are at a moment of reckoning for our sector that will require integrating high-tech skills with high-touch engagement and collaboration. Jaya is poised to seize the moment.”

About American Community Media

American Community Media builds on decades of relationships with multi-platform ethnic news outlets rooted in the audiences they serve, according to the organization’s website. The national directory identifies more than 3,000 ethnic media outlets in all 50 states.

ACoM organizes virtual and in-person briefings locally, statewide and nationally, connecting ethnic media with experts, policymakers, advocates, and storytellers to generate original, multilingual reporting, according to its website. The organization also hosts conferences, expos, and awards to elevate the visibility and viability of ethnic media while raising funds to support in-depth reporting, collaborative projects, professional training, and webinars.

Sandy Close: A Pioneering Career

Sandy Close’s retirement marks the end of an era in ethnic media. She founded American Community Media in 2017 to continue her work amplifying and elevating the voices of community and ethnic media, according to the ACoM website.

Close started her journalism career in Hong Kong in the mid-1960s as China editor of The Far Eastern Economic Review, covering China and Vietnam, according to multiple sources including the ACoM website and Wikipedia. After returning to the United States, she founded The Flatlands, an inner-city newspaper in Oakland, California, and spent five years writing about prison and criminal justice issues, according to the Nieman Foundation.

“People don’t want to be in a silo, they don’t want to be fragmented. Among ethnic media, there’s a hunger to be at the table, to be visible to the general public and to be visible with each other. That hunger has inspired me for a very long time.”

In 1974, she became editor of Pacific News Service (PNS), where she pioneered youth media development, according to the ACoM website. In 1991, PNS created its first youth media project, YO! Youth Outlook, a multimedia collective of youth-centric news content.

In 1996, Close founded New America Media (originally New California Media), transforming it into the first and largest collaboration of ethnic news organizations in the United States. The James Irvine Foundation called it “the most diverse media organization in the country,” according to Wikipedia.

New America Media ceased operations in 2017, with Close working to ensure staff found new jobs and that projects she’d helped launch would continue through other organizations, according to the San Francisco Public Press.

Awards and Recognition

Close’s groundbreaking work has earned numerous accolades. In 1995, she received a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Award.” She used the $500,000 grant to fund a documentary on Berkeley journalist and poet Mark O’Brien, who was confined to an iron lung, according to the San Francisco Public Press.

The film, “Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien,” which Close co-produced, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) in 1996, according to the ACoM website and Wikipedia.

In 2011, Close received the George Polk Award for Career Achievement, according to multiple sources including LinkedIn and the Chauncey Bailey Project. The award honored her work as executive director of New America Media and her founding role in organizing the Chauncey Bailey Project, a team of reporters whose investigative work led Oakland police to arrest those responsible for killing journalist Chauncey Bailey, according to the Chauncey Bailey Project.

Close also received the 2012 I.F. Stone Medal from the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, according to Wikipedia and the Nieman Foundation. Announcing the award, Nieman Foundation curator Ann Marie Lipinski said: “Sandy Close is a beacon for every journalist striving to produce work that has an impact. Her vision for what journalism can be when it is at its best and her dedication to the next generation of journalists is an inspiration,” according to the Nieman Foundation.

In 2017, the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists presented Close with its Norwin S. Yoffie Award for Career Achievement, according to the San Francisco Public Press.

A Legacy of Amplifying Diverse Voices

Close has made it her life’s work to find and amplify unique voices from different ethnic communities, especially those of the young, according to the San Francisco Public Press. She practiced what she called “journalism from the inside out” by bringing people from many cultures into the newsroom.

Rob Waters, writing for the San Francisco Public Press, described Close as “a genius at fostering intellectual ferment and creative tension by bringing together people from disparate backgrounds and challenging them to think deeply and write clearly.”

Under Close’s leadership, Pacific News Service and later New America Media helped launch the careers of a generation of talented young reporters who often focused on individuals and issues on the margins of society, according to the Nieman Foundation.

Close was married to Franz Schurmann, a historian and Asian affairs scholar at UC Berkeley who co-founded Pacific News Service, from 1968 until his death in 2010, according to Wikipedia.

As she transitions to Director Emeritus, Close told the San Francisco Public Press: “People don’t want to be in a silo, they don’t want to be fragmented. Among ethnic media, there’s a hunger to be at the table, to be visible to the general public and to be visible with each other. That hunger has inspired me for a very long time.”

This story was aggregated by AI from several news reports and edited by American Kahani’s News Desk.