Swaminathan Sadanand (1900–1953) was an Indian journalist. In 1927 Sadanand started the Free Press of India Agency, which was the first news agency owned and managed by Indians. In 1930 Sadanand became founder editor of the English-language ''

The Free Press Journal ''The Free Press Journal'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper that was established in 1928 by Swaminathan Sadanand, who also acted as its first editor. First produced to complement a news agency, the Free Press of India, it was a s ...

'' which, according to A. R. Desai, was a strong supporter of the Indian National Congress's (INC) "demand and struggle for independence" from Great Britain. In 1933, he bought ''The Indian Express'', (

Madras Chennai, also known as Madras ( its official name until 1996), is the capital and largest city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost state of India. It is located on the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal. According to the 2011 Indian ce ...

), from Varadarajulu Naidu, an INC supporter who had founded it in 1932. The closure of ''The Free Press Journal'' caused ''

The Indian Express ''The Indian Express'' is an English-language Indian daily newspaper founded in 1932 by P. Varadarajulu Naidu. It is headquartered in Noida, owned by the ''Indian Express Group''. It was later taken over by Ramnath Goenka. In 1999, eight y ...

'' to pass into the control of

Ramnath Goenka Ramnath Goenka (22 April 1904 – 5 October 1991) was an Indian newspaper publisher. He bought the majority stake of ''The Indian Express'' in 1930s. He created the Indian Express Group with various English and regional language publications.'' ...

. He was one of the seven initial shareholders of the

Press Trust of India The Press Trust of India Ltd., commonly known as PTI, is the largest news agency in India. It is headquartered in New Delhi and is a nonprofit cooperative among more than 450 Indian newspapers. It has over 500 full-time employees , including abo ...

when it was founded in 1947. Sadanand never went to college and was a self-taught journalist. J. K. Singh calls him a great journalist but a poor business manager and a "sad failure". Rangaswami Parthasarathy calls him an able editor, an innovator and a fearless patriot.

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