Shoma Chaudhury is an Indian journalist, currently serving as the managing editor of Tehelka, a weekly news magazine published from New Delhi, India. She has been in the field of journalism for the last 15 years.[1]
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Before joining print journalism, Chaudhury was employed at Doordarshan, directing more than 40 weekly television shows on books and writers. Her journalistic career began as Books Editor at The Pioneer later moving to the India Today, and then the Outlook news magazine. In 2000, she left Outlook to join Tehelka, which had just launched the website Tehelka.com. Following a high-profile expose on corruption in India's defence industry, the then NDA government forced the website to close in 2002. Only four of its staff remained to defend the magazine’s legal issues, one of which was Shoma.[2] In 2004, the website was relaunched as a weekly news magazine.[3] Since then, Chaudhury has been Director of Special Projects and Features Editor at Tehelka.[1]
Chaudhury's writings cover many prominent contemporary issues in India: communal strife, the Naxalite-Maoist insurgency, and conflicts between the Indian government and dispossessed people.[4][5]
She has also written for several foreign publications including The Independent and the Financial Times. [1] She appears occasionally in various international media as subject expert on numerous discussions related to contemporary India including an appearance on the Riz Khan show on Al Jazeera English channel in a discussion on Maoist insurgency in India in April 2010. [6] She has featured in panel discussions at various international events including the India Economic Summit of the World Economic Forum 2010 at New Delhi held in November 2010,[7][8] the India Europe Forum (April 12–13, 2010) held by the Instituto Cervantes at New Delhi,[9] the World Editor's Forum 2009 ,[3] the Jaipur Literature Festival '10 ,[10][11] the Hay Festival in Kerala (November 2010)[12] and various other events.[13]
Shoma Chaudhary is a severe critic of the current state of the Indian media. Speaking on a panel on investigative journalism at the 16th World Editors Forum, she remarked on the state of journalism in India as "pathetic" as it had become "a corporate rather than a political act". She was critical of the "focus on advertisement revenue" rather than public interest, adding that "journalism has thus been undervalued, and this needs to change.[3] On another occasion she was quoted as saying:[14]
India's political, corporate and media establishment sounds like a mobile cocktail party, gliding, champagne glasses in hand, in and out of each others' drawing rooms, television studios, boardrooms and award ceremonies like actors in an elaborate charade.
She was critical of the nature of the recent Radia tapes controversy calling it a "mistake", noting that the tapes "end abruptly or seem to be missing bits of the conversations (which means)... Someone has carefully edited the tapes". She was also critical of the nature of the debate of the controversy that followed, observing that it had "distracted from the larger question of journalistic ethics... to.. just become a misogynistic, medieval witch hunt.” [15][16]
She is also a noted literary critic in India [17][18] and was one of the judges of the Vodafone Crossword Book Award in 2006.[19] She also serves as a literary consultant with the British Council.[1][20]
In 2009, Shoma was awarded the Chameli Jain award for Outstanding Woman Mediapersons. The award recognises journalists for "excellence, impact, social concern, innovation, style and originality of work in the print or broadcast medium".[21]
She also won the 2009 Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism award in the category of Film and Television (Print) for her "unconventional edge in her interviews with Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan engaging them in conversations ranging from journalism to politics to Islam.[22]