Shaji Vikraman, in a session on Monday discussed about the historical aspect of financial journalism in India. ‘’Financial newspapers are more recently proving that they did not expose big corporation in their stories’’, said Vikraman while addressing students of ACJ. 

He attributed this to private treaties between media houses and companies. It is a formal agreement between a non-media company and a media house wherein the former gives away some shares of the company in exchange of advertisements. 

It was only in 1961 that India saw its first financial newspaper titled the Economic Times. In the early years of the papers inception, it barely entailed any news on private companies and mainly focused on the public sector. Things, however, changed when India opened its economy in 1991. Coverage of private companies increased in the late 1990s. According to Shaji, budget became reliable and the importance of stocks increased owing largely to the improved economic status. In 1994, Hindu group started the Hindu Business Line. Mint, in 2007, also brought a new dynamic to journalism which was very similar to Wall Street Journalism.