REPORT

4. Non-­‐‐Profit Start-­‐‐Ups
In India, as elsewhere, most journalism has been based on for-­‐‐profit business
models (newspapers, television news channels), state support (the state
broadcaster Doordashan), and/or various forms of political or proprietorial
patronage (where media are funded to advance instrumental interests beyond
publishing). Non-­‐‐profit media pursue a different model, where journalism is
less closely tied to the pursuit of profit or political influence, and instead
based on a combination of foundation funding, community support, and
individual donations. Two very different examples of non-­‐‐profit start-­‐‐ups
pursuing digital journalism in India are The Wire and Khabar Lahariya.
The Wire
The Wire was founded in March 2015 by Siddharth Vardarajan, former Editor
of The Hindu and Sidharth Bhatia, a journalist and writer based out of
Bombay. M. K. Venu, former managing editor of the Financial Express, and the
writer Raghu Karnad also joined the original team. The site presents itself as
follows:
The founding premise of The Wire is this: if good journalism is to survive
and thrive, it can only do so by being both editorially and financially
independent. This means relying principally on contributions from readers
and concerned citizens who have no interest other than to sustain a space for
quality journalism. 42
It launched with investment from the founders and is publicly looking for
additional support from foundations. Recently it was given the prestigious
‘Startup of the year’ RedInk journalism award by the Press Club in Mumbai.
Varadarajan described the aim of the team behind The Wire in an
interview with LiveMint when the site launched:
We want to build a platform for independent journalism. The decline in
editorial standards in our country is closely linked with the business model of
42 http://thewire.in/2015/05/10/introducing-­‐‐the-­‐‐wire
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