Maadhyam Season 5 - Vikrant Gupta at Parul University!
Vikrant Gupta, Senior Managing Editor, Head of Sports at Sports Tak and Aaj Tak, attended the central auditorium of Parul University for the closing day talk on Sports Beyond Sports on 12th September 2026 as part of the Maadhyam Season 5 Celebration. During a dialogue with the student journalists, he spoke about how sport could be used as an entry point into a broader conversation regarding attention, responsibility, and the self in a digital era and provided a uniquely candid description of what a career in media demands of a novice.
Digital media and the reward for noise
Vikrant Gupta was direct about the economics of attention. He argued that because digital and social media pay for presence and reward the loudest voices, the tone of public discourse has hardened, often turning people toward criticism or praise for its own sake. He described the pattern as something that can even be subconscious and said he had watched it grow since social and digital media arrived. The nudge is not about feeling old-fashioned and going back to the “good old days” but about “the responsibility of the media to shape the response and the responsibility of the audience to shape what is rewarded,” he said. In India, sports and the allure of stardom are inextricably intertwined.
Stars, sport, and India are deeply connected.
When asked if India has changed sport or sport has changed India, Vikrant Gupta began with the Indian audience and noted that audiences sometimes follow sports stars more than the sport itself, and that’s why some sports have a harder time finding an audience. His words of encouragement for students were to create their own identity and talent instead of waiting for a sport or format to gain popularity. He also discussed his experiences covering six World Cups and the memorable moments in the stadium that will stay with him.
The focus points are time, attention, and the phone.
The most applicable part of the session was the attention part. Vikrant Gupta spoke about how a phone can easily snap focus and how much of a day it can consume and offered the students straight talk: get rid of it now, and many of your problems will be settled. He encouraged them to reserve a couple of minutes each morning for themselves and outlined a simple approach to thinking about an “area of control” as opposed to an “area of concern. People are scared of the things they can’t do, he said, and the way to deal with it is to work on what they can do.
The ideal site for a beginner.
But on the skills side, Gupta was neither over- nor under-warned. But a beginning journalist does not have to know all the things that a doctor or an engineer is taught to know; it is all about personality, willingness to learn, and non-fear, he said.
“You should not be afraid, and you should be willing to learn. If you are, then no one can stop you.”
He encouraged students to set aside their anxiety about jobs, telling them they were at the best of institutes, and closed with a lesson about time: a student with free hours after class is, in his words, blessed and should use that time rather than lose it to the phone. You too can make your mark in the media world by pursuing a BA & MA in Journalism & Mass Communication from Parul University. Bring the change you wish to see in the world and begin your story from there!
