This interview has been edited for clarity.
I had an untraditional route, to not only higher education but journalism itself. I graduated from high school and didn't immediately go to college even though I applied and got into a bunch of places. At the last minute, I decided not to go. I wanted to figure out things for myself and travel. I ended up working in the nonprofit field in disaster relief. I was working to rehabilitate communities following the earthquake in Kashmir in 2005.
While I was working there I met a lot of journalists who became my friends. After that, I came back to the U.S. and decided to go back to college. I went to Columbia University here in New York and got my bachelors. During that time I realized I could also do positive work like nonprofit work, through journalism. I couldn't imagine dedicating my life to making a company money. I got an internship during one of the summers and the following year I did another internship. But then I graduated right after the economic collapse, in 2010. So, newspapers were closing everywhere, things weren't really great and they still aren't. But, I did a little more nonprofit work after graduating and decided to go to grad school. I didn't know if I wanted to go into public policy or journalism at first.
I'm on the breaking news desk and I think there's about 15 or 20 of us around the country and globe. Any day can be different. I could be writing about Trump policies in the morning and something else in the afternoon. Everyone on the team has sort of a specialization. We use the term "beat" unofficially.
I've been on this mini beat on Muslim American life since 2016 when the presidential campaign started up and Trump started talking about Muslims. They realized they wanted someone on that beat.
I was a little hesitant at first because I didn't want to be the brown person reporting on brown things.
I've been writing about Muslim American life, which in practical terms ended up being reporting on things like hate crimes, discrimination and difficulties Muslim Americans face. My mini beat touches on a lot of things; it hits politics, immigration, travel, policing and foreign policy. It's pretty broad even though it sounds very specific, and Muslims only represent one percent of the U.S. population but it's kind of a large beat despite that fact.
I think it's exciting to be part of the usual cliche things, like writing the first draft of history and reporting in a time where it's really important to do so and to continue to do so. You hear about layoffs and digital places opening up, and then you hear about layoffs again. I mean, the industry is just constantly evolving but it's good to be here at a time when there's a lot of news. I mean there's always lot of news but it seems like it’s so fast paced right now. It's good to know that it's all getting out there.
I was working in a nonprofit in Kashmir which is is disputed territory in India. One of my friends, who also worked for that nonprofit, his friend was a reporter and he wrote a small article about Americans coming to Kashmir to help and reported on what we were doing. An older French couple who travels the world they read the article and they were actually in Kashmir vacationing. So they decided to donate a lot of money and It was basically because of the article that they saw. It made me realize that not only can you do the normal things like report on the misdeeds of multinational corporations or report on whistleblowers or scandals and controversies, even one little profile story can result in a small nonprofit receiving money so that they can continue their work.
I think that practically showed me how I could also work in journalism. It motivated me to consider being a journalist as an option. Not many South Asians go into the arts, humanities or education. It's unconventional for our community. It's something most people don't choose, and for good reason. It's difficult. I'm not saying becoming a computer scientist is not hard, but there's a very logical path, where if you check all the marks in a box you're very likely to find a job somewhere.
I just have many people who I consider very intelligent, who have pursued journalism, and it's just very difficult for them to even get a job ,let alone keep a job, or survive on the pay. There's a big push for people to have diversity in television and movies and it should apply obviously to all things, including journalism. I think it's a trend that needs to keep happening despite the hardships.
I'm more cynical so I don't know how good it is. I mean the numbers are better, but there's always a long way to go. The industry is not by any means diverse.
It starts from the home of the South Asian parent to the managing editor and editor-in-chief on an institution.
It goes hand in hand. People have to encourage, or allow rather, their children to go into journalism. And employees or their employment base needs to be diverse. In the case of the parent, they have to allow children to choose what they want to do in life to reasonable degree. And the editor-in-chief needs to understand that having a diverse staff is important because this country is diverse. I think I said this one before, a newsroom should reflect its readership. A lot of people just give lip service to it.
It's one thing to say that you're all about diversity. It's another thing to put it into practice. The second major thing is that the problem kind of feeds itself. It's not just about the numbers. An organization can say our staff is 51% white and 49% non-white. But another great metric to see how a place a place is doing in terms of diversity is to look at who is in positions of management. Those figures are as important if not more important than the general workforce. Because sometimes, when you do look at a place and you see there is great diversity based on the number of employees but then you see in management if it's still 80 to 90% white people who are running the show. That's a problem in and of itself. They have to believe in the general idea that diversity is not just something that looks good in a press release.
At a certain point I imagined that I would be a certain type of reporter. I wanted to be a foreign correspondent, living abroad and doing work abroad. I even imagined being a war correspondent or something to that effect. But as time went on, I saw the negatives of that life. I saw how my desires in the industry can change. It's not always a static thing. Like one day you may want to be a senior politics reporter. But low and behold, two years into it, you realize you like writing profiles of people and you want to be a features writer. Or you always wanted to be a reporter but you realized that you want to be an editor. I feel like in most careers the path is very delineated. But here you could take on many roles. And you can do many things and write about many things. I know people who have gone from print to radio or TV. I guess it has surprised me how many small moves you can make that drastically change what you do on a day to day basis.