Say what you will, Anushka Sharma is a woman of her word. In March 2019, the actor backed a web series based on disgraced Tehelka editor Tarun J. Tejpal’s book The Story of my Assassins despite the cloud of sexual harassment charges hovering over him. The Bombay tabloid Mid-Day reports today that the project is…
Tag Archives: Tarun J. Tejpal
Who tried to kill a senior journalist? Anushka Sharma will tell Tarun Tejpal’s novel of his would-be assassins, and Amazon will stream it.
With impeccable timing, on International Women’s Day 2019, Mumbai Mirror reports that former Tehelka editor Tarun J. Tejpal‘s 2010 novel The Story of my Assassins, is to be made into a web series by the actor and director Anushka Sharma. A true story, the novel tracks a senior journalist as he sets out to investigate…
18 factoids in ‘Caravan’ profile of Shekhar Gupta
The December “media issue” of Caravan magazine has a 20-page profile of former Indian Express editor-in-chief and shortlived India Today editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta. Authored by Krishn Kaushik, the profile is titled “Capital Reporter”, with the strapline “How profit and principle shaped the journalism of Shekhar Gupta”. *** # The son of a minor bureaucrat from…
In new law mag, Sunanda Pushkar post-death pix
There’s a new magazine on your news stand: India Legal. The 84-page magazine, priced at Rs 100, and edited by former India Today executive editor Inderjit Badhwar is published out of Delhi. Writes Badhwar in the editorial of the launch issue: “The thrust of our magazine—as should be the endeavour of all competent news journalism—is…
How new rape law caught up with Tarun J. Tejpal
Tehelka founder-editor Tarun J. Tejpal has been in jail for over 80 days now on the charge of “raping” a junior colleague during an event organised by the magazine at a Goa resort. The Goa police have charged him on seven counts under the new rape law that came into effect after the Delhi gangrape…
‘The Hindu’ sets up anti-harassment panels
Following the Tarun J. Tejpal meltdown at Tehelka, media organisations are scrambling to put in place in-house mechanisms as mandated by law to deal with potentially similar incidents. As of today, 1 December 2013, The Hindu, which has a woman Editor at its helm in Malini Parthasarathy, has constituted internal complaints commissions in its offices…
Aroon Purie and Vinod Mehta on Tarun Tejpal
As former Tehelka editor Tarun J. Tejpal faces imminent arrest for the alleged sexual assault of a junior employee at a conclave organised by the magazine, two veteran editors—Aroon Purie of India Today and Vinod Mehta of Outlook*—write about the callow Chandigarh boy who branched out to become a brand. At India Today, Tejpal was…
Tarun Tejpal: Hubris and self-loathing in Goa
Tunku Varadarajan in the Daily Beast on l’affaire Tarun J. Tejpal: “What made Tarun Tejpal do this?” everyone asks. Some answers suggest themselves, the most unsettling of which is that, for all his rhetoric in the cause of women, Tejpal is, perhaps, just another unreconstructed, predatory Indian male who was playing the part of PC…
‘Tarun Tejpal was trapped in a skin not his own’
Former Outlook* publisher, Maheshwar Peri, who now runs Pathfinder Media, the magazine company which publishes Careers 360, on his friend and former colleague Tarun J. Tejpal**. *** By MAHESH PERI The stupidity of our nation gets greatly exposed with the extreme reactions to Tarun J. Tejpal—the cult following of his journalism at one end, and…
Online appeal to protect Tehelka journo’s privacy
The following is the full text of an online appeal to protect the privacy of the Tehelka journalist whose complaint against the magazine’s editor Tarun J. Tejpal resulted in his “offer” to recuse himself from office for six months. To all editors, journalists, bloggers, users of social media, and the public: Some websites and blogs…
POLL: Is sexual harassment rampant in media?
Shocking and disgraceful as it is, l’affaire Tarun J. Tejpal is sadly not the only incident of a sexual predator lurking around Indian newsrooms. Except that, in this case, a brave journalist—and her equally brave colleagues—broke the code of omerta and let the world know what was happening. But Delhi is not India, one magazine…
Lift yourselves up, dearie, or get into my elevator
Tehelka editor Tarun J. Tejpal‘s 312-word letter to managing editor Shoma Chaudhury, expressing his “offer to step down” and not attend office for six months following a “bad lapse of judgement, an awful misreading of the situation” with a younger female colleague, has received plenty of negative acclaim for its sheer lack of contrition. Inspired…
Tarun Tejpal steps aside as ‘Tehelka’ editor
The following is the full text of the letter sent by Tarun J. Tejpal, founder-editor of Tehelka, to the managing editor of the magazine, Shoma Chaudhury, at 2.58 pm today. The subject line is: Atonement. My dear Shoma, The last few days have been most testing, and I squarely take the blame for this. A…
NYT, WSJ weigh in on Tehelka’s Goa controversy
The controversy surrounding Tehelka magazine’s Goa conference, ThinkFest, had so far been largely confined to sections of blogosphere, which used an editorial page piece in Hindustan Times by the theatreperson Hartman de Souza, and Tehelka editor Tarun J. Tejpal‘s response to it, as a trigger. Only Deccan Herald among the large English dailies gave any…
Tarun Tejpal: Haven’t violated or bent any rules
Although he wasn’t named in the original piece by Hartman de Souza in the Hindustan Times, Tarun J. Tejpal, the editor of Tehelka, offers a spirited defence in today’s paper on the alleged irregularities in his under-construction house in Goa: “When I tell him [Hartman de Souza] the reporter he has cited was asked to…
A magazine, a scam, an owner & his Goan house
Be it the Commonwealth Games scam, the 2G spectrum allocation scam, or the demolition of Team Anna, it is increasingly clear that sections of the media are eagerly running with the wolves and hunting with the hounds. In State after State, in story after story, media houses, owners and professionals are turning out to be…
‘No one can destroy Ramnath Goenka’s Express’
In which, Prabhu Chawla, the new editorial director of the South-based The New Indian Express, tackles readers’ queries on the media and the launch of The Sunday Standard from Delhi, with trademark frankness. Vol I. No.IV. *** Q: How much did Jayalalitha and her associates pay to get paid news published in your daily? Not…
Moneybag MP says he didn’t turn off FW tap
For more than two months now, media tongues have wagged merrily as to why Financial World, the new business daily from the Tehelka stable, didn’t see the light of day. With established players like Economic Times and Business Standard ramping up their offerings, did the publishers see the writing on the wall? Did the promoters…
Shoma Chaudhury in ‘150 most powerful’ list
Shoma Chaudhury, managing editor and one of the promoters of the weekly magazine Tehelka, has been named among the “150 Women Who Shake the World” in the re-launch issue of the American newsweekly, Newsweek. “Champions women in India’s celebrated newsmagazine Tehelka,” is the seven-word caption for Chaudhury. Newsweek has been relaunched this week under Tina…
Tarun J. Tejpal on the five facets of his life
Tarun J. Tejpal, editor of Tehelka, in Hi! Blitz, the in-flight journal of Kingfisher airlines: On his father, an army officer: “He gave us an idea of the big world. It was a routine to discuss world history and affairs at the dinner table. When I was seven, I knew the names of secretary-generals of…
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