Journalism of Courage | |
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![]() The publication's 4 August 2009 front page | |
Type | Daily newspaper |
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Format | Broadsheet |
Owner(s) | Indian Express Group |
Publisher | Indian Express Group |
Editor-in-chief | Raj Kamal Jha[1] |
Founded | 1932; 93 years ago (1932) |
Language | English |
Headquarters | B1/B, Express Building, Sector 10,Noida,Uttar Pradesh,India |
Sister newspapers | |
OCLC number | 70274541 |
Website | indianexpress |
The Indian Express is an English-languageIndiandaily newspaper founded in 1932 byP. Varadarajulu Naidu. It is headquartered inNoida, owned by theIndian Express Group. It was later taken over byRamnath Goenka. In 1999, eight years after Goenka's death in 1991,[2] the group was split between the family members. The southern editions took the nameThe New Indian Express, while the northern editions, based inMumbai, retained the originalIndian Express name withThe prefixed to the title.[3]
In1932, theIndian Express was started by anAyurvedic doctor,P. Varadarajulu Naidu, atChennai, being published by his Tamil Nadu press.[citation needed] Soon under financial difficulties, he sold the newspaper toSwaminathan Sadanand, the founder ofThe Free Press Journal, a nationalnews agency.[citation needed] In 1933, theIndian Express opened its second office inMadurai, launching theTamil edition,Dinamani. Sadanand introduced several innovations and reduced the price of the newspaper. Faced with financial difficulties, he sold a part of his stake to Goenka asconvertible debentures. In 1935, whenThe Free Press Journal finally collapsed, and after a protracted court battle with Goenka, Sadanand lost ownership ofIndian Express.[4] In 1939, Goenka boughtAndhra Prabha, another prominentTelugu daily newspaper. The nameThree Musketeers was often used for the three dailies, namelyIndian Express,Dinamani andAndhra Prabha.
In 1940, the whole premises was gutted by fire.The Hindu, a rival newspaper, helped considerably in re-launching the paper, by lenting their old building and allowing getting it printed temporarily at one of its Swadesimithran's press and later offered its recently vacated premises at 2 Mount Road, on rent to Goenka, which later became the landmark Express Estates.[5] This relocation also helped theExpress obtain better high speed printing machines. The district judge who led the inquiry into the fire concluded that ashort circuit orcigarette butt could have ignited the fire and said that the growing city had inadequate fire control support.[5] In 1952, the paper had a circulation of 44,469.[6]
After Goenka's death in 1991, two of his grandsons, Manoj Kumar Sonthalia andViveck Goenka[7] split the group into two.Indian Express Mumbai with all the North Indian editions went to Viveck Goenka, and all the Southern editions, which were grouped as Express Publications Madurai Limited and headquartered in Chennai, went to Sonthalia.[8][9]Indian Express began publishing daily on theinternet on 8 July 1996. Five months later, the websiteexpressindia.com attracted "700,000 hits every day, excepting weekends when it fell to 60% of its normal levels".[10]