Through the eyes of a reporter

Rajesh Ramachandran is the Editor of The Tribune, Chandigarh, one of the oldest newspapers of the country and a former Editor-in-Chief of the national news magazine, Outlook. For about 25 years he has worked with some of India’s largest publications and a TV channel in Delhi, reporting war, insurgency, politics and government affairs.

Ramachandran’s political analysis and commentary appear in his regular column nous indica in The Tribune. Earlier, his column polibelly used to appear in The Economic Times. As a reporter, Ramachandran had covered the Kargil war for Hindustan Times; broken the coffin scam for The Times of India; and had extensively reported on the Maoist insurgency and the last Eelam war for NDTV.

Martyrdom to Freedom: 100 Years of Jallianwala Bagh is Ramachandran’s first book. He has edited this volume of essays on the centenary of the massacre by top Indian historians and it also has precious archival material from The Tribune - the only nationalist newspaper to have reported and investigated the massacre through the decades.

Abhijit Sudhakar: Keep it Short

Abhijit Sudhakar is an engineer by degree. He started his journey as a filmmaker by interning under Prakash Belwadi, a national award-winning director, on a TV series. He then joined Nirvana films as an intern and soon moved to the role of a post-production supervisor, before becoming the director’s assistant to Prakash Varma. Some notable campaigns he worked on include the Vodafone pug commercials, Incredible India and the Zoozoos.

His short films have won several accolades at various short film festivals in India. He has directed more than 100 ads for brands such as Cadburys, Bluestar, Perfetti, Ambipur, Axe, Brittannia, Grofers, Idea, Flipkart etc.

He currently co-owns the production house ZigZag Films, with Anupama Ahluwalia.

Dr. Shekhar Seshadri: Adapting to mental health challenges during uncertain times

Shekhar P. Seshadri is a psychiatrist and a professor of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in NIMHANS, Bangalore, India. He has been associated with numerous mental health initiatives for decades. He has co-authored two books and has also written chapters as a guest author. He is known for his research work in life skills training, child sexual abuse, masculinity, women's mental health issues, and sexual minorities.

Prof. Seshadri will talk about the mental health challenges that arise during times of uncertainty such as this, and how one can adapt to these changes.

Bageshree S: Newsrooms and the New Normal

Ms Bageshree S is the Associate Editor at The Hindu.

She began her career with Deccan Herald, bringing out supplements like Sunday Herald, Articulations and the Deccan Herald Spectrum. She moved to The Times of India and later to The Hindu, and covered various path breaking stories. She has played a key role in making The Hindu paper's coverage of Karnataka more relevant, making it a leader in the state's news market. Currently, she heads the paper's Bangalore editorial operations as the Associate Editor.

Ms Bageshree will talk about how newsrooms function in the new normal, focusing on how, around the world, they have had to adapt and reinvent themselves to adjust to the new reality, keeping the safety of their employees and the time constraint to do so in mind. Bringing out news reports from accurate sources with timely updates in the current infodemic has also been a challenge - how have newsrooms reacted to and adapted to these changes?

Nidhi Razdan: Government Accountability and the Pandemic (Closed Door)

*This is a closed-door talk for NSoJ students, faculty, alumni and guests by invitation. If you have not received a personal invitation to attend this talk, you may still register here, and we will send you the highlights of the talk in due course.

Nidhi Razdan is an Indian journalist and a television personality. She is the executive editor of NDTV and is the primary anchor of NDTV 24x7 news show Left, Right & Centre. She has reported on a wide range of key political, economic, and social stories from the Indian subcontinent, covering Indian politics and foreign affairs closely, including the India-US nuclear deal, general elections, several state elections, all major news developments and elections in Jammu and Kashmir, the earthquakes in Gujarat in 2001 and Kashmir in 2005.

She has made documentaries from Pakistan-administered Kashmir, Tibet and the United Kingdom after the train bombings. She has also written a book titled Left, Right and Centre: The Idea of India. Razdan was awarded the Ramnath Goenka for excellence in Journalism for reporting from Jammu and Kashmir and North-East India. She has also received the Jammu and Kashmir State government award for her excellence in journalism.

NDTV won the IPI award for Excellence in Journalism, 2019, for its coverage of the rape and murder of a young girl in Kathua and the aftermath. The reporting was anchored by Nidhi Razdan.

NSoJ Conversations: Rebuilding India's Enterprises - Public Policy Responses

Dr Alexander Thomas (President, Association of Healthcare Providers India - AHPI), Augustus Azariah (HR Head, IBM India) and Manu Seshadri (Managing Partner, MSA) will be in conversation at NSoJ to discuss public policy responses to rebuilding India's enterprises, with a special focus on the healthcare, IT and SME sectors in India. The discussion will be moderated by Saswati Chakravarti (ex- ET editor) and Timothy Franklyn (NSoJ founder).

Nick Couldry: Remembering Journalism's Public Rationale: Media and Public Policy Responses to Covid

Nick Couldry is a sociologist of media and culture. He is Professor of Media Communications and Social Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and from 2017 has been a Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.

In fall 2018 he was also a Visiting Professor at MIT. He jointly led, with Clemencia Rodriguez, the chapter on media and communications in the 22 chapters 2018 report of the International Panel on Social Progress. He is the author/editor of fourteen books including The Mediated Construction of Reality (with Andreas Hepp, Polity, 2016), Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice (Polity 2012) and Why Voice Matters (Sage 2010). His latest books are The Costs of Connection and Media: Why It Matters (Polity: October 2019

Raghava KK speaks at NSoJ

Raghava KK is a renowned international artist, creativity expert, tech entrepreneur and five-time TED speaker named by CNN as one of 10 most remarkable people (2010). He was inducted into the National Geographic Society as an Emerging Explorer for bringing together Science, Art, and Technology in the field of exploration in 2013.

Political Union Discussion: Citizenship Amendment Act

Rising tensions across the country have thrown up several questions about the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. We seek answers to questions such as what the CAA means for the country and whether it is just a misunderstood humanitarian law. Panellists include Vikram Phadke (practising advocate), Aarti Mundkur (practising lawyer, founder-member of Alternative Law Forum) and Samar Halarnkar (reporter, columnist, former editor of Factchecker.in and IndiaSpend.org)

Open House 2019: Pursuing Careers in Media

Panel Discussion on pursuing careers in media, featuring leading journalists and media persons, such as - M. Baba Prasad (Former Editor at The Hindu, Bangalore), Maya Sharma (Reporter and Executive Editor - South at NDTV, Bengaluru), Suresh Menon (Sports journalist, author and former editor of Indian Express), Dipti Kumar (Director for Digital Engagement, U.S. Consulate General Chennai), Pinky Chandran (Co-Founder of Radio Active 90.4) and Ashish Chandra Sen (Independent media consultant and journalist).

Panel Discussion on Sports Betting

Panel discussion "Legalizing Sports Betting in India" to discuss the moral, societal and economic issues of sports betting. Panellists include Nandan Kamath (Sports lawyer), Sharan Kumar (horse racing journalist), and Vedam Jaishankar (sports journalist and NSoJ faculty member).

Laxmi Murthy: Ground Report on Kashmir's Information Blockade

A closed-door session with Laxmi Murthy of the Free Speech Collective / Network of Women in Media. Veteran journalist Laxmi Murthy will present her ground report on the information shutdown in place in Kashmir since August 5, 2019, co-produced with Geeta Seshu titled, "News Behind The Barbed Wire: Kashmir's Information Blockade"

Kanhaiya Kumar speaks at NSoJ

Our Keynote speaker for this year's Slant is Dr. Kanhaiya Kumar, former National leader of the All India Students Federation and presently, the National Executive Council member of Communist Party of India.

Francesca Folda: Solutions Journalism

“Journalism’s fight now is against fake news” - Francesca Folda, director of Global Communication, Amani Institute and former Editor-in-Chief, Sky.it (Sky Italia). Ms Folda has been working for about ten years as an investigative journalist. She is a member of the Ashoka Italia Advisory Board and Visiting Faculty at the School of Journalism at Università Statale in Milan.

Malavika Prasad: Abrogation of Article 370

Closed-door interaction with constitutional law scholar and newspaper columnist, Malavika Prasad on the legality of (i) the abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution; (ii) the division of the erstwhile state of J&K into two Union Territories; and (iii) the shut down of communications in J&K.

Brijesh Kalappa and Dr Harish Narasappa: Political Union Debate on Constitutional Safeguards to deal with Political Defections

This NSoJ Political Union Debate will take place in the context of political uncertainty in Karnataka. Shri Brijesh Kalappa and Shri Harish Narasappa will debate the constitutional safeguards available to deal with political defections, "resort politics" and "horse-trading", which are increasingly commonplace in Indian politics.

Dr. Aditya Sondhi speaks at NSoJ

Dr Aditya Sondhi, former Additional Advocate General of Karnataka, delivers his keynote address in Slant 2019.