TV News: Is This the End of the Road?

Maya Sharma is a journalist, writer, and teacher. She was part of India’s first batch of trained television journalists and worked for over thirty years in TV news as a bureau reporter, anchor, and documentary filmmaker — much of it with pioneering media company NDTV, covering politics, civic issues, the environment, arts and entertainment, sports, crime, business, and human-interest stories. A Fulbright Scholar, she has won many awards, including the Karnataka Rajyotsava Award.

Dhanya Rajendran is co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of The News Minute, a digital publication covering South India. Across a 20-year journalism career, her work has focused on politics, human rights, gender-based violence, and disaster coverage. She is the recipient of the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Best Woman Journalist of India (2022) and the Red Ink Journalist of the Year award (2023) from the Mumbai Press Club. She chairs Digipub, India’s largest association of digital news outlets, with around 100 members including The Wire, Scroll, The Quint, and Newslaundry.

Sharda Ugra has been a sports journalist for over three decades, beginning in 1989 with Mumbai tabloid Mid-Day before working at The Hindu, India Today magazine, and ESPNcricinfo.com/ESPN India. Early in her career, she covered South Asian sports for Radio Australia, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s overseas service. She has seen India play cricket in nine countries, reported on two Olympic Games, and written about cricket and other sports for popular and academic publications in England and Australia. She has presented conference papers on Indian sport and won Sports Journalists Federation of India (SJFI) awards for sports writing.