About
Toufique Imrose Khalidi is the Founder, Editor-in-Chief, and CEO of bdnews24.com, Bangladesh's first internet-only news operation. A former BBC broadcaster, he ...
About Toufique Imrose Khalidi
Toufique Imrose Khalidi is a Bangladeshi journalist and media entrepreneur, and the Founder, Editor-in-Chief, and CEO of bdnews24.com, the country's first online-only news portal. He built the outlet from a small news agency website into one of Bangladesh's most-read digital newsrooms.
From The Daily Star to the BBC
Khalidi began his journalism career at The Daily Star, Bangladesh's largest English-language newspaper, working in an editorial capacity at major broadsheets in both editorial and managerial roles. He later spent time in the United Kingdom working as a presenter, producer, and editor at the BBC.
That mix of local newsroom experience and international broadcast training shaped the editorial standards he later built into bdnews24.com.
Taking Over bdnews24.com
In June 2006, Khalidi took over as Managing Director and Chief Executive of what had started as a smaller news agency website, and relaunched it as bdnews24.com. Ownership of the outlet was split between Khalidi and Asif Mehmood.
The relaunch effectively made bdnews24.com Bangladesh's first dotcom company built around a news product, rather than an existing print outlet moving online.
Bangladesh's First Dotcom Newsroom
bdnews24.com became the first internet-only newsgathering operation in Bangladesh, and one of the first anywhere in the world, at a time when most news organizations still treated their websites as an afterthought to print.
Under Khalidi's leadership, the outlet expanded into real-time coverage of politics, business, economics, and development, in both English and Bengali.
Building a National Newsroom
Today, bdnews24.com draws on the reporting of more than 500 journalists and photographers across Bangladesh and beyond, a scale that few digital-only news operations in South Asia have matched.
Khalidi has also personally covered major national events over the years, work that has occasionally been picked up by international outlets such as Al Jazeera.
Recognition and Influence
In 2017, Khalidi received the National ICT Award for transforming bdnews24.com into an influential internet news service. Coming more than a decade after the site's relaunch, the award reflected the outlet's staying power in a media market that has seen many digital news ventures come and go.
Khalidi remains bdnews24.com's editor-in-chief today, and the outlet he built is generally credited as having proven that a Bangladeshi digital-first news organization could compete on editorial standards with the country's established print press.