The Wire is an Indian nonprofit news and opinion website which publishes in English, Hindi, Marathi, and Urdu. It was founded in 2015 by Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia, and M. K. Venu. The publication's reporters have won several national and international awards, including three Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards and the CPJ International Press Freedom Award. It has also been subject to several defamation suits by businessmen and politicians. History Siddharth Varadarajan resigned from his position as editor at The Hindu citing the return of the editorship of the paper to being family run in 2013. On 11 May 2015, The Wire was started by Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia and M. K. Venu who had initially funded the website. Later, it was made part of the Foundation for Independent Journalism, a non-profit Indian company. The Independent and Public Spirited Media Foundation has provided The Wire with funding as well. Varadarajan claims that the publication was created as a "platform for independent journalism", and that its non-corporate structure and funding sources aim to free it from the "commercial and political pressures" that supposedly afflict mainstream Indian news outlets. The Wires founding is construed to be a result of, and reaction to, a political environment that has "discouraged dissent" against the present Indian ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Content According to a 2017 article of the Mint, the websites coverage primarily focused on the topics of development, foreign policy, political economy, politics and science. Karan Thapar's regular show The Interview with Karan Thapar covers current affairs and events on The Wire. Reception Three journalists, working for The Wire, have won the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards. Neha Dixit, reporting on extrajudicial killings and illegal detentions, won the CPJ International Press Freedom Award in 2017, Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Women Mediapersons in 2016 and the Lorenzo Natali Journalism Prize. A story published in the Columbia Journalism Review in late 2016 identified The Wire as one of several independent and recently founded internet-based media platforms - a group that also included Newslaundry, Scroll.in, The News Minute, The Quint and ScoopWhoop - that were attempting to challenge the dominance of India's traditional print and television news companies and their online offshoots. Siddharth Vardarajan was awarded with the Shorenstein Prize in 2017; jury member of the award Nayan Chanda mentioned Vardarajan's independent web-based journalism-venture and distinguished body of well-researched reports to be an