Speakers
What is the Indian reader willing to pay for, and what do they expect for free?
This panel moves past the familiar lament and into the mechanics of the business. They explore what it actually takes to run a news organisation outside the influence of advertisers, owners, and the state. Subscription models, donor funding, collaborative structures, and open access: each approach comes with its own compromises, its own pressures, and its own relationship with the reader.
The conversation will examine how different kinds of journalism, from daily news to long-form investigation and data-driven research, demand different economic answers. Can advertising coexist with independence? And how are newsrooms absorbing the growing financial and legal burden of independent reporting?
Independent journalism in India is alive. What it costs to keep it that way is another matter entirely.
Speakers
Dhanya Rajendran
Dhanya Rajendran is an Indian journalist and media entrepreneur, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The News Minute. A former Times Now bureau chief, she champions women’s rights, leads DigiPub, and has received Fortune 40 Under 40, Chameli Devi Jain, and National RedInk awards for investigative journalism and digital media leadership nationally.
Sunil Rajshekhar
Sunil Rajshekhar is CEO at Independent and Public Spirited Media Foundation (IPSMF), where he is responsible for driving the Foundation’s goal of creating and supporting an independent media ecosystem through its philanthropic funding of digital media initiatives. Sunil has been on the business side of media and was with The Times of India Group for a major part of his career. Sunil is passionate about a free and independent press and believes that the media’s role as a watchdog is paramount for a healthy democracy.
Over the past 10 years, IPSMF has supported over 60 online independent media entities in India. Apart from supporting entities involved in covering issues of governance, political analysis, and opinion, IPSMF has specifically sought to support media entities focused on niche and diverse interventions ranging from community, law and justice, gender, the environment, etc. Each of these media focus on issues that most mainstream media shy away from.
Samar Halarnkar
Samar Halarnkar is the founding editor of Article 14 (www.article-14.com), a website focused on issues related to the rule of law in India, and a columnist for Scroll.in. He is also co-founder of the India Love Project (@indialoveproject), an Instagram handle that curates stories of love beyond the boundaries of caste, faith, gender and ethnicity. His work has appeared in a variety of international and national publications, including the New York Times, The Globe and Mail (Canada), and Arab News. A journalist for 31 years and former Managing Editor of the Hindustan Times, Halarnkar was also an editor at The Indian Express and India Today. He has been a visiting lecturer at the University of California-Berkeley and a fellow at the Nieman Foundation, Harvard. He has won national awards on investigative and technology reporting and is the author of two books.
Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed
Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed is an award-winning journalist with Frontline newsmagazine and is based in Bengaluru.
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