NY

Betsy McKay informed in the last week of April that I had selected to attend Dow Jones News Fund’s one week training workshop on the business reporting in New York. It was surprising for me as I was never interested in covering business or finance and she knew it. I was pretty much sure that no training could develop my interest in business reporting but at the same time I did not want to waste opportunity to visit New York.

So, on May 23 I reached New York to attend the one week long workshop. I was, in fact, terrified of the idea of ‘wasting’ one whole week on the issues like earnings, layoffs, mergers and bankruptcies. I had never done a business story in my professional life. The first two/three hours of first day of training were terrible for me. Reading the financial statements of the companies and the press releases on their earnings were pain… Then there was a mock press conference by CEO of one big company which had lost some cents on a share during the last quarter of 2009. I did not ask a single question.

We were supposed to write a story on the basis of the original press release of the company and the mock press conference. We were given 40 minutes for the exercise.

After playing with the papers and pen for 10 minutes, I went to Michelle LaRoche, program director and training editor at Dow Jones Newswires and told her that I couldn’t do it and wanted to leave the training workshop. She convinced me to give a try to write the news story and to spend one more day before making a decision. Her friendly behavior helped releasing the pressure on me to some extent and I wrote the story.

After the lunch Chaz Repak, the principal instructor made the critique on the exercise and surprisingly he liked my attempt. It gave me confidence and I started showing interest in the afternoon session.

The next day, Dick Levine, DJNF president visited us and shared the philosophy of the fund and his experiences. He was attached with the fund more than 25 years. His disclosure of being a war reporter who covered the Vietnam before becoming a business reporter was shock for me. “How could a war reporter become a business reporter” I couldn’t stop myself to ask the question. “Only training and reading can help” he replied. He also helped me a lot to come out of my shell of anti-business reporter.

The next few days we constantly worked on writing leads and nutgraphs for range of business stories. The main focus of the training was writing shorter and faster like the wire service reporters. We also discussed range of story ideas and made plan how to do it.

At the end of the day, I realized that workshop gave me a lot of confidence as a reporter helped me a lot to become a diversified reporter and in writing shorter. Later, during my trip I visited Bloomberg head office in New York and found that I was asking some typical ‘business reporter’ questions to Peter Young who gave us a guided tour of the office. The two hour tour helped us a lot to understand the working of Bloomberg and its business model.

During my stay at New York, I also visited head offices of the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Propublica. I attended the meetings of both foreign desks and executive editors at WSJ and NYT. It was a great opportunity for me to understand what made a story to become a WSJ or NYT story.

It was great honour for me to sit among the editors of WSJ and NYT and it was mainly because of AFPF and Daniel Pearl Fellowship. Thanks a lot for providing me such a gigantic opportunity. I am pretty much sure that together we can bring the change. You have done your part, now its my turn to deliver. I promise you guys that i will try my level best to share this experience and exposure with my colleagues back home.

New York World

Monday, May 17, 2010 was a usual day. I reached office around 10 in the morning and started working on my terminal. In the afternoon, Judy announced that party was ready and in a few minutes all of us had gathered in front of Mike’s desk- a usual place for having parties at the office. Surprise, surprise! It was organized to honor me. What? I saw Judy coming with two big metal plates and handing over them to Betsy. She asked me to come forward and got the special gift.

I literally screamed after seeing the plates; they were the printing plates of my first two stories published in the WSJ. It was really a great gift and meant a lot to me. Katie also visited me at Atlanta in the same week.

I left for New York on May 23 to attend Dow Jones News Fund’s one week long training workshop on business reporting. It was a great learning experience as I had never covered the business stories. The main focus was on covering business stories for wire service and to learn writing short. The best editors and reporters at WSJ and Dow Jones newswires shared their expertise and experiences. We also visited the main news room of WSJ.

The next week, I stayed with some Pakistani friends at Coney Island, Brooklyn. The very first night, they took me to the Atlantic City. We gambled and had ‘fun’ there the whole night. I lost $150 but they (4) lost more than $9000.

Next day, a party was organized ‘in my honor’ by the Pakistani friends. The food was really good but all of them wanted me to eat more as I am ‘too slim to survive the American tough life.’ Their ‘love and generosity’ ruined my stomach. I was supposed to visit WSJ head office on Tuesday, June 1 but could not do it till Thursday.

I attended all the important meetings of WSJ editors on Thursday and also met Deborah Brewster, managing editor, Matt Murray, deputy managing editor and Dagmar Aalund, deputy editor international. Deborah offered me that I could work at the metro section at the head office for two weeks. She also introduced me to the editor of ‘The Greater New York section.’

The same day I visited Bloomberg head office along with Nasry Esmat. Katie had arranged it for us.

Next day, I went to Proppublica and The New York Times. Kirk Kraeutler, enterprise editor foreign desk at NYT made it possible that I saw maximum during two and half hours visit. I attended two very important meetings of the decisions makers at NYT. It was great week and Katie played very important role and worked a lot to make it special one for me. Thanks.