22-year-old Janaki Purushe graced CNN.com’s front page today, lending the news site a rare hipster patina with her dayglo pink piped shorts, keylime flats and violet hoodie. But the real style icon was in the background: her bike.
Janaki Purushe is an iReporter– a citizen journalist for CNN’s participatory platform iReport. iReporters are like GroundReporters, except they don’t get paid. Citizen journalism site GroundReport actually shares all revenues with its writers.
But iReport benefits from the huge traffic CNN– and Janaki Purushe got a big taste of the influence when her photo was featured on the front page. Instantly her name shot to the top of Google’s biggest search requests.
The iReport story looks at Janaki Purushe’s decision to buy a $100 bike instead of drive a car. She bikes 10 miles a day she says, and enjoys it. Motivated initially by the rising oil prices in the economy, Janaki Purushe is now a bike convert. "When I’m riding my bike, I really pay attention to what’s around me, and the weather’s been great. I feel like I’m getting more out of my days."
Bike blog sweetbike.org posted the story immediately–under the category Bike Porn.
She’s beautiful, and clearly the bike rides are keeping her in shape as the CNN.com photo shows, but janaki Purushe is taken. Her public Facebook profile shows her holding up her left hand, displaying what looks like an engagement ring on her ring finger. Purushe is a 2007 Maryland graduate.
In addition, Janashe Purushe has a LiveJournal blog where she excitedly posted a screenshot of her photo on CNN.com with the headline "IM ON THE FRONT PAGE OF CNN". She should realize this may be just the tip of the iceberg.
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