Since the start of the fellowship, I was interested in visiting a publication that had global presence and that catered to the needs of readers coming from all over the world. I was lucky; I got the chance to visit four of them in the first week of August, in New York.
The city houses the head offices of Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes and Bloomberg. It was very difficult to go to all these places keeping in view the tight schedules that all these publications have and that I was not at all familiar with the public transport system of New York. Anyhow, barring some temporary hiccups, the trip to New York turned out to be very successful and I was able to manage time to a great extent.I feel myself lucky to be part of the Page 1 meeting that’s held daily at the head office of New York Times. It was great to see the top editors and reporters discussing the leading news of the day and discussing ways to improve its coverage in the paper. All the leading foreign correspondents were participating in the discussions, from their respective overseas stations, thanks to the video conferencing facility.
After this meeting, I went to the different sections and met the departmental heads who explained me how things worked out there. I liked the Times’ policy of making their people work in different fields to give them maximum exposure and make them versatile. So, it’s quite common that a journalist joining the Times as a reporter ultimately ends up as editor or vice versa. They also give priority to the newsroom people to go overseas and work as foreign correspondents there rather than hiring a native in that respective country.
The visit to the Wall Street Journal office was quite similar. Here I met some friends and colleagues of Daniel Pearl who recalled the good old days they had spent with him. I was very much interested in knowing how their foreign desk worked and what perceptions they had about Pakistan as a country. So, I spent most of the time with the head of the foreign desk and discussed the international issues which are very much hot nowadays.
The Journal and the Times are rivals and always in a race against each other. So far, Times leads with 92 Pulitzer prizes to its credit followed by the Journal with 37. Houston Chronicle has reached finals a couple of time but it’s yet to win a Pulitzer. I also visited the section of the Times where they had displayed the Pulitzer prize winning stories on walls.
Bloomberg office was simply amazing. The grandeur and aura of the building and its interior was so overpowering that I was breathless for sometime. The editors had lined up five reporters who covered the news beats that I was interested in. We had a very fruitful discussion over lunch. The main focus of the talk was on how business journalists can watch the interest of consumers, especially at times when businesses and corporations are becoming stronger and stronger and more profit-oriented.
At Forbes I learnt how business reporting can be made interesting for ordinary readers. The editors and I discussed stories that had very few figures but interesting accounts of ordinary people trying to take wise financial decision.
Shafiq Siddiqui, a Pakistani-American journalist who has a big media house in New York, arranged a get together where I was the guest of honor. There were many Pakistani journalists who either owned or worked at community newspapers in the US or were overseas correspondents of different media organizations based in Pakistan. It was a unique opportunity to learn about the problems that these journalists face while performing their professional duties. I told them about my fellowship and how much I had benefited from this opportunity.
I came back to Houston from New York on August 6 and left for Los Angeles on August. There I, along with Sherine-the other Daniel Fearl Fellow, spent a full week working at the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles. It was something that I had never thought of earlier in my life. There are hardly any Jews in Pakistan and the first ones I have met in my life are the Pearls and their friends. I also attended the weekly meeting at the Jewish Journal where I was asked a lot of questions about Pakistan. Everybody was keen to listen to what I had to say as it seemed they only knew the stuff that’s published in American newspapers.
August 13 was the day when Sherine and I were in the line of fire. We had asked hundreds rather thousands of questions from people during our professional life but it was for the first time, at least for me, that I was in this role. Most of the questions were about Pakistan’s relations with the US, rise of militancy in the country, what I had learnt in the US, how I would pass on the message of hope to my countrymen and so on.
Pearls and their friends-Chris Fager and Corie Brown-in whose house I stayed for a week gave me a royal treatment. Ruth and Judea are striving hard to make this world a better place. Chris and Corie are wonderful people and know a lot about Pakistan-may be more than any other person I have met in the US so far. They took me out for dinners; we went to the beach and spent time at the house next to that of Tom Hanks and Jim Carey. We also went to the Hollywood Boulevard to watch the movie Ditrict 9 on the day of its release.
