Does anyone have Amrita Banskota's email address? If so, could you please send it to me? Thanks. She knows me quite well -- and I used to read her very well-written columns in various Nepali newspapers some years ago. ****** BTW, to be a lawyer in Nepal, you have to pass a bar exam. To be a medical doctor, you have to pass a similar professional exam. But to be a journalist, you do NOT need to pass any sort of a professional exam. There is no 'gate-keeping' exam of any sort in journalism, even in America, the bastion of free press. This means that the profession of journalism has a low barrier to entry: anyone from Paramendra Bhagat to random Sajha posters can claim to be jounalists, and they will be correct. And I think that's actually a very good thing, for more people there are writing publicly, the merrier it will be for all in terms of ideas and entertainment. My view is that: Journalism MUST remain an open-to-all profession, regardless of whether people write for the New York Times or post occasionally on Sajha. Anyone who works hard, thinks well, writes well can be a journalist. Journalism must remain an idea- and fact-driven profession -- to be pursued wither full-time or part-time by anyone who is interested -- and NOT be an academic credential-obsessed or even an institution-affiliated professional society. Viewed this way, in this age of mass media driven by the Internet, anyone CAN be a journalist anywhere. That said, just because anyone can be a journalist, that does NOT mean that personal and professional success as a journalist is guaranteed to all. It isn't. oohi ashu