Television journalist and news anchor Nidhi Razdan on Saturday announced that she will be leaving NDTV. In a tweet, Razdan said she would be taking up a teaching role at Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts & Sciences as associate professor later this year. Razdan had been with the television channel for 21 years.
“NDTV has taught me everything,” she said. “It has been my home. I am proud of the work we do, the stories we cover, the values we stand for, especially at a time when the much of the media has surrendered its objectivity.”
Nidhi Razdan had become a leading name in English television journalism over the past two decades. She recently won the International Press Institute India award for excellence in journalism for her reporting of the Kathua rape and murder case in Jammu and Kashmir.
While she initially hosted NDTV’s night news bulletins, she later on went on to become the face of the channel’s programme Left, Right and Centre. Razdan has also authored a book titled Left, Right and Centre: The Idea of India, which was published in July 2017.
Razdan added that she would miss her colleagues deeply and thanked NDTV co-founders Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy “for being the most incredible mentors and bosses”. She added: “You took me in as a 22 year old and believed in me. I never say never, so TV may one day beckon again. Wish me luck.”
Several prominent journalists and some politicians also congratulated her on the career change.
Her reporting on key social, political, and economic events, like the India-US nuclear deal, the 2001 Gujarat earthquake, made her a household name and one of the few female reporters who smashed through the glass ceiling to become an inspiration for aspiring journalists.
For over two decades Nidhi Razdan was synonymous with TV journalism in India, and her voice in Indian journalism will be dearly missed.
