Newslaundry

History and Founding

Newslaundry was founded on 6 February 2012 by Abhinandan Sekhri, Madhu Trehan, Prashant Sareen, and Roopak Kapoor — all former journalists or media producers with roots in India's print and television industries. The publication emerged from Small Screen Film & Television, a production house co-founded by Sekhri, Sareen, and Kapoor in 2000. Its founding idea was deceptively simple: to create a dedicated platform for critiquing the Indian news media — an institution that, in the founders' view, had become compromised by corporate ownership structures, advertiser dependency, and political entanglement, but that had never been held systematically accountable by an independent watchdog.

Abhinandan Sekhri, the publication's CEO, began his journalism career at TV Today Network's Newstrack in 1995 and subsequently worked at Aaj Tak and NDTV, before co-founding Small Screen Film & Television and co-producing and directing the television travelogue Highway on my Plate and the news-satire show Gustaakhi Maaf. Madhu Trehan is one of the most consequential figures in modern Indian journalism. In 1975, she co-founded India Today magazine — which became the country's leading English-language newsweekly — before departing for New York and returning in 1986 to produce Newstrack, India's first video news magazine distributed on VHS cassettes. Sekhri joined the Newstrack project in its later years. The common experience of working together in television news in the late 1990s laid the groundwork for Newslaundry's founding over a decade later.

The original concept, Sekhri has recalled, was to pitch a media critique show to an established television channel — but no broadcaster was willing to air a programme in which one news channel openly critiqued another. The founders resolved to build the platform themselves. From its inception, Newslaundry committed to an advertising-free, subscription-supported model — a radical proposition in the Indian media market of 2012, where both digital subscriptions and media criticism as a journalistic genre were essentially nonexistent at scale.

In 2014–15, the publication raised Rs 4.2 crore in early funding from a group of investors including the Omidyar Network (the philanthropic investment firm founded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, which has also invested in Scroll.in and The Ken), Abhijit Bhandari, Mahesh Murthy, Vikram Lal, and Shashank Bhagat. The Omidyar Network's vehicle ON Mauritius holds approximately 16.77% of the company. The three primary promoters — Sekhri, Sareen, and Kapoor — each hold approximately 23.53% stakes. Trehan, who has stepped back from active involvement, has divested her stake to the three existing promoters.

Newslaundry is incorporated as Newslaundry Media Private Limited — a for-profit private limited company, not a nonprofit. Subscriptions are commercial revenue, not donations.

Coverage and Content

Newslaundry occupies a distinctive position in Indian media: it is simultaneously a news organisation and a watchdog of the news industry. Its editorial output spans four primary modes — media critique, investigative reporting and ground journalism, political and current affairs commentary, and audio and video programming — each distinguished by a stated commitment to independence from both government and corporate influence.

The media critique function is the publication's founding identity. Shows including TV Newsance (hosted by Managing Editor Manisha Pande) and NL Tippani (hosted by Managing Editor Atul Chaurasia) dissect the editorial choices, coverage gaps, and perceived biases of India's major television news channels through satirical analysis and direct criticism. Clothesline, hosted by Madhu Trehan (now on hiatus), brought a similar scrutiny to print and digital media. The Biascope is Newslaundry's dedicated media bias tracking tool. The publication also co-produces The Media Rumble, an annual conference on journalism and media.

Investigative and ground journalism has grown substantially as a pillar of the publication. The NL Sena ("NL Army") is a crowdfunding initiative through which readers pool resources to fund specific long-form ground reports and investigations that Newslaundry believes would be ignored or buried by mainstream outlets — covering topics from electoral bonds to tribal rights, caste violence, environmental destruction, and labour conditions. Notable investigations include a five-part series on how politicians misuse public-sector undertakings (which won the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award for Investigative Reporting in 2016), a five-part series on electoral bonds by Nitin Sethi (which won the Asian College of Journalism Award for Investigative Journalism in 2020), and a four-part investigation into the plunder of the Aravalli hills (which won the Ramnath Goenka Award for Environment, Science and Technology Reporting in 2022).

The podcast roster is central to Newslaundry's subscriber proposition. NL Hafta is the flagship weekly current affairs podcast, featuring a rotating panel of journalists and commentators discussing the week's political and media developments. Let's Talk About covers a wide range of social and cultural topics. The Awful and Awesome Entertainment Wrap (now Awful and Awesome) covers pop culture and was named Asia's Best Podcast at the 2019 Asia Podcast Awards. Let's Talk About won the Best Education Podcast at the same awards. Newslaundry also produces NL Interviews, documentary films through NL Documentaries, comics and animation, and explainers through the NL Cheatsheet series.

Newslaundry publishes in both English (on newslaundry.com) and Hindi (on hindi.newslaundry.com, also known as न्यूज़लॉन्ड्री), with a separate Hindi editorial team. The Hindi edition has won Ramnath Goenka awards in its own right, including for a documentary on arsenic contamination in water in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar (2022).

Legal Challenges

Newslaundry's media critique work has made it a repeated target of legal action from the news organisations it covers — a pattern the publication has publicly framed as evidence that incumbent media houses are "not used to being critiqued." In January 2021, the Times Group (Bennett, Coleman & Company Limited) filed a ₹100 crore civil defamation suit in the Bombay High Court over episodes of TV Newsance that critiqued Times Now's coverage of actress Rhea Chakraborty's arrest and the channel's alleged TRP manipulation. In October 2021, the India Today Group (TV Today Network) filed a ₹2,00,00,100 civil defamation suit in the Delhi High Court, alleging that Newslaundry's media critique shows defamed India Today and Aaj Tak's anchors and management, and that use of channel clips in critique constituted copyright infringement. The Delhi High Court refused TV Today interim relief in July 2022, finding that no balance of convenience or irreparable loss had been demonstrated. The Sakal Media Group separately filed a ₹65 crore defamation notice in September 2020 over Newslaundry's coverage of layoffs at Sakal Times. In 2022, the Income Tax Department sought a criminal investigation against Newslaundry and its CEO; a Delhi court denied the pursuit in a detailed November 2022 judgment.

In response to these pressures, Newslaundry established a public NL Legal Fund through which subscribers and the public can contribute to the publication's legal defence costs. The publication has argued that many of these suits constitute SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) — instruments designed to silence criticism rather than obtain genuine legal remedy.

Awards and Recognition

Beyond the Ramnath Goenka and Asian College of Journalism awards for investigative journalism noted above, Newslaundry has accumulated a significant awards record in both journalism and product innovation. The Newslaundry app — which houses the publication's full suite of podcasts, articles, and video content — won Best Innovative Digital Product at the WAN-IFRA Digital Media Awards Worldwide (2024) and Best Innovative Digital Product at WAN-IFRA Digital Media Awards South Asia (2024, Gold). It received an honourable mention at the INMA Global Media Awards (2023) in the Best New Digital Product category and won the AFAQs Digipub Awards (2023) for Best Use of Technology. The app's podcast player won Best Innovation in Technology at the India Audio Summit and Awards (2024).'

In journalism, the publication has won multiple Laadli Media and Advertising Awards for Gender Sensitivity (2015, 2018, 2020, 2022), a RedInk Award for Excellence in Indian Journalism in the Human Rights category (2019, for ground reporting on fake encounters in Chhattisgarh), a Breakthrough Media Award for Gender-Sensitive Journalism (2019), and a Press Institute of India / ICRC award for reporting on the absence of safety gear for ASHA health workers during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020) — reporting that led to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare issuing an order for additional incentives for ASHA workers.

Access and Funding

Newslaundry operates entirely without advertising revenue. All journalism is funded exclusively by reader subscriptions. The publication's paywall offers two subscription tiers: Disruptor (starting at Rs 300 per month), which gives access to all subscriber-only content including NL Hafta, Let's Talk About, NL Interviews, comics, NL Chatbox (monthly subscriber interactions), NL Recess, and community spaces including a Discord server; and Gamechanger (starting at Rs 1,000 per month), which adds early access to events, NL Baithak quarterly video interactions, and private RSS feeds for paywalled podcasts. Annual Gamechanger subscribers receive merchandise (a tote bag and flask). A student subscription tier is available at reduced rates, and readers can also sponsor student subscriptions for others.

Newslaundry Media Pvt. Ltd. commenced a merger with The News Minute (Bangalore) in 2025.

NL Sena contributions are separate from subscriptions and fund individual investigative reporting projects rather than general operations. The NL Legal Fund accepts contributions specifically to cover litigation costs. The publication also operates a merchandise store.

Newslaundry / Newslaundry Media Private Limited
New Delhi, India

Website: newslaundry.com
Hindi edition: hindi.newslaundry.com
Subscribe: newslaundry.com/subscription
NL Sena (crowdfunded investigations): newslaundry.com/sena
NL Legal Fund: newslaundry.com/nl-legal-fund
The Media Rumble (annual conference): themediarumble.com
Contact: newslaundry.com/contact-us

Metadata

Categories: Independent News Organizations · Subscription-Supported Media · India and South Asia News · Media Criticism and Accountability · Investigative Journalism · Podcast and Audio Journalism · Digital Publications · Multilingual Publications

Mission: To build a free and accountable press through reader-supported, ad-free journalism — holding the media, government, and corporations accountable through media critique, investigative ground reporting, podcasts, documentaries, and satirical commentary.

Year Founded: 2012

Description: Newslaundry is India's first subscription-based, advertising-free news media platform, founded in 2012 by Abhinandan Sekhri, Madhu Trehan, Prashant Sareen, and Roopak Kapoor. Operating as both a news organization and a watchdog of the Indian media industry, it produces media critique shows, long-form investigative journalism, podcasts, documentaries, and comics funded entirely by its community of paying subscribers. It has won multiple Ramnath Goenka Awards, Laadli Media Awards, and WAN-IFRA digital media awards, and has faced numerous defamation suits from major media groups it has critiqued.

URL:  https://www.newslaundry.com