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From SAJA, the South Asian Journalists Association

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A journalist’s 12-year crusade finally leads to arrest in woman’s honor killing

By: Jasmeet Sidhu (@JasmeetSidhu), a student at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism

Nearly twelve years ago, an Indo-Canadian beautician Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu was found beaten and dead in a rural ditch outside of Ludhiana in Punjab, India, after secretly marrying a poor rickshaw driver.

When journalist Fabian Dawson, a previous recipient of SAJA’s Daniel Pearl Award, broke the story, he immediately suspected something amiss in Jaswinder’s death. Teaming up with Harbinder Singh Sewak, publisher of the South Asian Post, Asian Pacific Post and Filipino Post newspapers in Vancouver, Dawson’s suspicions led the duo to a decade long crusade around the world to find the truth about Jaswinder’s death.

After 10 trips to India, three documentaries, a made-for-TV movie, a website called justiceforjassi.com, and a book of the same name, the Supreme Court of British Columbia issued arrest warrants on January 6 against Jaswinder’s mother and maternal uncle, who are currently being held in custody pending an extradition hearing to India where they face charges of conspiracy to commit murder.

Jaswinder’s death brought to light the dark and harrowing world and culture of violence against women amongst some South Asians in North America. Dawson spoke to SAJA about the recent arrests, his own personal dedication to seeking out the truth, and what happens next in Jaswinder’s story.

In addition, click here to read the Vancouver Province column that Dawson wrote on the case.

How did you feel when you heard about the arrests of Jaswinder’s mother and uncle, and their pending extradition hearing to India?

I was relieved, but also surprised at the timing of the incident. It has been over 11 years. We had just released our book, “Justice for Jassi” three weeks earlier, and we were working with the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) when the police decided to execute the warrant. The big question is, why aren’t they charged in Canada? They have just been arrested at the request of Indian authorities to be extradited to face charges. So while there is some sense the wheels are justice are moving, it is moving very slowly.

After news broke of Jaswinder’s death in 2000, what was your first indication that there was more to her death than met the eye?

I went to her house to cover the murder story, another tragic story of a Canadian killed overseas. I had no idea what was behind this thing. But as I was talking to the Uncle at her house, he kept saying, “we are not involved, we didn’t do anything, we never killed her.” It was an unsolicited response. When I got back to my office, I started phoning India, and it wasn’t very long for the story to unravel, with the Indian police saying they suspected it was an honor killing orchestrated by the mother and uncle in Canada.

In reading about the investigative work you took on to find the truth about Jaswinder’s death, it sounded at times you became less of a journalist, and more of a personal crusader.

You don’t normally do this. In every journalist’s life, one or two stories tend to stick with you. Sometimes in journalism you can’t be a mirror for social change and reflect what is going on. You also have to be a vehicle for social change.

What was it about this story that led you to stick with it for more than a decade?

First was the innocence of the girl, but mostly it was because the story kept developing at every turn of the way. The story had a life of its own. After my original story, it kept being followed up around the world because others were fascinated by the sensational killing. It gave an insight into the culture clash in the South Asian community in North America. It’s a curious phenomenon, as in the people in India are far more modern and Westernized than some families that live here. Families live in cocoons and bubbles, and manifest the stuff against the children who have grown up in the Western world.

What did you learn about honor killings in the process of reporting this story?

I am a firm believer there is no honor in honor killings. Honor-based violence like the Jassi case are very extreme. I’m confident that more than 95% of honor-based violence goes undetected. It’s not honor, but it’s greed and money, wrapped around honor, especially in the South Asian community. It’s also an issue that happens in a variety of communities.

What’s next in the case?

We expect (the mother and Uncle) to apply for bail hearing and be released. If they face charges, that might take between 5-10 years. The story is not going to go away anytime soon.

 

GLOBALIZATION: OWS in South Asia

When the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement began on Sept. 17, 2011, in New York City's Zuccotti Park, it was hard to imagine that the protest would spread across many cities in the U.S., let alone go global.

Here's a look at OWS in various South Asian countries.

OWS IN INDIA: 2011 was a year of anti-corruption and "people power" protests long before anyone had heard of Zuccoti Park. Therefore, the traction that OWS has received in India has been mixed. 

Occupy Dalal Street was launched in October. Dalal Street of Mumbai is like the Wall Street of New York, but the "ODS" has failed to gain momentum. In October, Hindustan Times reported that ODS Facebook page had only 36 likes. As of today, the Facebook page has only 192 likes and it was last updated on Nov. 4.  However, other, more individualized protests have arisen in other parts of the country.

PAKISTAN: Umar Cheema discusses press freedom in Pakistan [AUDIO]

On Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2011, Pakistani journalist Umar Cheema (@umarcheema1) won an International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists (you can read his acceptance speech here). He was honored for his bravery after being kidnapped and beaten in September 2010 by unknown assailants. Instead of staying silent as he had been ordered to do, he spoke out about the culture of fear that journalists face in Pakistan. [The photo on the right was taken after his attack.]

The day after the awards ceremony, SAJA and CPJ hosted a conversation about the state of press freedom in Pakistan with Cheema and Bob Dietz, CPJ's Asia director. You can listen to the conversation below.

Listen to internet radio with SAJA HQ on Blog Talk Radio

Speaking of press freedom, below is a press release from Reporters Without Borders about an ongoing story in Pakistan.

- - -

Reporters Without Borders / Reporters sans frontières
Press release / Communiqué de presse

11-24-2011

ENG: http://en.rsf.org/pakistan-journalist-receives-death-threat-24-11-2011,41463.html

FRA: http://fr.rsf.org/pakistan-un-journaliste-menace-apres-avoir-24-11-2011,41461.html

PAKISTAN

Journalist receives death threat after "memogate" stories

Reporters Without Borders is concerned by a telephone death threat received three days ago by Mohammad Malick, editor of the Pakistani daily The News International, from a blocked number.

FELLOWSHIPS: New! Charles Pick South Asian Fellowship for unpublished writers

We just got an email from the administrator of a new fellowship in the UK that's open to South Asians from everywhere:

I am writing from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, about a new writing fellowship we are currently accepting submissions for. The Charles Pick South Asian Fellowship is an
award specifically for new and unpublished writers of South Asian descent, to allow them the time to work on their writing. I thought it may be something of real interest to your mailing lists and contacts, and any help you can give me in helping to publicise this would be greatly appreciated as, as we want to make sure as many writers as possible have a chance to apply for this. I have included below some copy about the fellowship and details on application, and wondered if it would be possible to post this in the ‘Fellowships’ section of the SAJA Forum on my behalf?

We love it when people read SAJAforum closely enough to know specific sections, so the answer is, clearly, yes (though we would have posted this anyway!).

The Charles Pick Fellowship is a six-month residential creative writing fellowship with an award of £10,000. The fellowship will begin October 1st 2012.

The Charles Pick South Asian Fellowship seeks to encouragement by giving support to the work of a new and, as yet, unpublished writer of fictional or non-fictional prose based in South
Asia. The writer should be from South Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Maldives, Burma/Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan,Uzbekistan), but does not need to be domiciled there.

Application forms must be submitted with an original typescript of 2,500 words. All applicants must provide a reference from an editor, agent or accredited teacher of creative writing.

All application forms and full details are available at www.uea.ac.uk/lit/fellowships/charles-pick-fellowship

Contact: charlespickfellowship at uea.ac.uk

Former banker leads meditation sessions at Occupy Wall Street

If you have visited Zuccotti Park recently, you may have seen a man in his thirties leading a meditation session of about 30 protesters.

A midst the chaos that is inherently part of Occupy Wall Street movement, that's Rasanath Das or Chelakara Ramanth (his given name), a former investment banker and an Ivy League graduate who now wakes up at 4:30 a.m. for daily prayer and occasionally goes to Zuccotti Park to lead meditation sessions.

According to a profile in the Wall Street Journal by Jo Piazza, Das, who spends most of his time looking for enlightenment, once used to earn a $170,000 salary negotiating deals at Bank of America.

Startup website makes voting easy

ElectNext founders liken their website to a dating service. But instead of setting you up with a singleton with a penchant for wine and salsa dancing, you may end up with Barack Obama, Herman Cain or Mitt Romney.

Founded by Philadelphia-based Keya Dannenbaum, an MBA student at Wharton, and Paul Jungwirth, a software engineer and PhD candidate at UPenn, the website was created for the politically active citizen, and those interested in voting smart, to explore which candidate’s agenda matches their own ideals.

Earlier this month, the duo took the winning prize for startups at the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo, an annual showcase of web-based businesses held in New York. 

Dannenbaum’s idea started as a graduate student at Princeton, where she she realized that what she was learning about politics in the classroom didn’t match up to what was going on in Washington.

“After learning all of this democratic theory, I felt there was a huge disconnect in what actually happens in the election process,” Dannenbaum said. 

She left Princeton to get involved with the Hilary Clinton campaign in 2008, but it wasn’t until she started her MBA that she teamed up with Jungwirth to launch ElectNext, supported by the Wharton Venture Initiation program.

The process is relatively simple. Log in to the free site (you can use a Facebook account, too), choose what issues matter most to you, and answer a few questions about where you stand on those issues. The ElectNext algorithm delivers the candidates that align with you, and those who don’t.

Dannenbaum said users sometimes are shocked by the political candidate with whom they are matched. My own results – John Huntsman – were certainly surprising.

After receiving feedback from over 500 users, the team is planning to incorporate a forum where users can share their views and have a debate and share their thoughts.

“It really adds depth and nuance to the site,” Dannenbaum said.

The site is currently in its Beta stage, with a plan to launch in mid-November. 

NEW PROJECT: The New York Times Launches "India Ink"

 

Do you know why many people know about yoga in the US and the West? India Ink, the new New York Times India blog has the answer. Vivekananda was the one who single-handedly helped westerners understand the value of yoga and practice it.  

NYT launched India Ink in early September to “provide more in-depth, on-the-ground coverage of the world’s biggest democracy — and of a people who know that no matter how far they roam, their hearts will always be Indian.” At the time of this writing @nytindia had 6,250 Twitter followers.

India Ink has 21 writers in its stable, covering everything from politics, business to street food, to the news on $35 tablet computer released by Indian government, and more.

I quietly hope that NYT will launch a Hindi version of the India Ink someday. What do you think?

If you have ideas on what India Ink should be writing about, email them at IndiaInk@nytimes.com
or tweet at @nytindia.

You can read the full memo about the Ink below or at this link:

IMRAN KHAN @SAJA: Politics and the Cult of Khan

NOTE: On Friday, Oct. 14, SAJA & Columbia Journalism School  hosted Imran Khan, Pakistani politician, cricket legend, Chancellor of the University of Bradford (UK) and author of a new book, "Pakistan: A Personal History," in conversation with Bobby Ghosh, World editor of Time. This is one of several SAJAforum reports on the event.

By Jasmeet Sidhu (@JasmeetSidhu), a student at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Photograph by Ted Regencia (@tedregencia), also a student at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.  

When Imran Khan, legendary cricketer and now politician in Pakistan, first entered the room for his talk sponsored by the South Asian Journalists Association at Columbia Journalism School Friday night, a crowd of eager and giddy men and women swarmed him, pulling out iPhones, Blackberries, and whatever else picture-taking devices they had on hand. 

The adoration is a strange sight for those uninitiated to the cult of Khan, especially given the fact that he is a politician in a politically troubled land. 

But Khan of course, is not just a politician. While observing normally serious journalists, lawyers, and activists turn into exhilarated fans, it is clear that Khan is a larger than life force, a strange mix of a sports star, political visionary, intellect and celebrity, the likes of which are unprecedented even in the Western world. 

In New York City promoting his new book, "Pakistan: A Personal History," Khan spoke to the packed crowd on such heavy topics as the war on terror, corruption and tribalism in Pakistan, and the prospects of his political party in the next election in his country. He was interviewed on stage by Bobby Ghosh, World Editor of Time.

And while many present were eager to probe him on issues like the blasphemy law and Pakistan's relations with India, others were simply satisfied to see their childhood hero in the flesh. 

"We're all very giddy," explained Ammara Afzaal, 21, a student at New York University. "We signed up immediately when we heard about the event."

"We both felt very unreal here," said an ecstatic Fatima Khan, 20, who grew up admiring Khan in her household. 

This dichotomy continued throughout the evening: a sincere, and sometimes tense discussion about the future of Pakistan and its politics, intermixed with adulation from a crowd that pulsed with excitement, and snapped photos every few minutes. 

The fandom reached an apex at the very end, when Khan, who barely finished his last sentence, was swarmed by a crush of admirers seeking an elusive photograph with him. The intensity of the crowd even caused Columbia professor Sree Sreenivasan, the host of the evening, to appeal to the crowd, "Please let him go down the center aisle (to exit). Please!"

Khan, surrounded by handlers that helped move him through the crowd, appeared unfazed at the reaction that he was getting, clearly used to his celebrity. 

Though the night's event touched on several issues facing Pakistan, one has to wonder whether Khan's status as a legendary cricketer distracted from a more serious conversation about Pakistan's future that night. 

As Omar Akhtar, a Masters student at the Columbia Journalism School, tweeted: "We lost a great opportunity to ask Imran Khan some tough questions."

 

ADVERTISING: Heinecken TV spot, "The Date" features Bollywood song

This is the video of Heinecken's new ad, "The Date," which features a lip-synced version of a Bollywood song:

And here's the original song, "Jaan Pehechaan Ho," from the 1965 Hindi film, "Gumnaam":

IMRAN KHAN @SAJA: Khan on Pakistan's future, and his own

NOTE: On Friday, Oct. 14, SAJA & the Columbia Journalism School  hosted Imran Khan, Pakistani politician, cricket legend, Chancellor of the University of Bradford (UK) and author of a new book, "Pakistan: A Personal History," in conversation with TIME's Bobby Ghosh. This is one of several SAJAforum reports on the event.

By Hiten Samtani (@HitSamty), a student at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Additional reporting by Suhrith Parthasarathy (@suhrith) and photographs by Purvi Thacker (@purvi21), both of Columbia J-School.

Cricket legend and Pakistani prime minister hopeful Imran Khan spoke about his party's vision for Pakistan, the country's need for rule of law, and the implications of the War on Terror to a standing room only crowd at the Columbia Journalism School on Friday evening. In conversation with Bobby Ghosh, World Editor of TIME, Khan showcased his trademark swagger and charisma, but sidestepped tough questions in what was a crowd-pleasing but ultimately unfulfilling talk.

Ghosh gave the audience a lesson on how to do a refreshing introduction of a public figure; he mentioned Khan’s book, “Pakistan: A Personal History,” and said he felt “a twinge of sadness” that he could no longer see Khan as simply the heroic sporting icon of his youth. Ghosh asked Khan about a statement in the book in which Khan says that he could always see an opponent in his grasp on the field, and that he had now begun to feel the same way about politics. “The opponents are on the mat and they won’t be able to get up,” said Khan, with a touch of arrogance and his familiar thrusting palm gesture. “The public wants change and they want PTI,” he said, referring to the upcoming elections and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party.

Khan said he wrote “Pakistan: A Personal History” for the youth of the country. “Never have I seen them so confused, about secularism, Islam, etc., ” he said. “There needs to be a direction.” Khan drew zealous applause from the crowd when he said that the one positive thing Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari had done is that “he had exposed all the political forces in the country, by buying them.” Khan hailed the vibrant independent media in Pakistan as vital to promoting Pakistani interests, rather than those of the politicians. When Ghosh asked him about the Arab Spring and why there was no parallel in Pakistan, Khan said that the 2007 “Lawyers’ Movement was the Pakistani version of the Arab Spring, but it was hijacked.”

The discussion moved on to the U.S.-led "War on Terror," a phenomenon that Khan said was the other reason he wrote the book. Khan--in a statement that will likely thrill Republicans--said “people don’t use guns just because they carry guns,” referring to the “million armed men from the tribal areas. You win the war when you win the people’s hearts and minds,” he said. “The Pakistani government should have asked the men from the tribal areas to isolate al-Qaida right in the beginning.” Instead, Khan said, “Musharraf made a blunder; under pressure from America, he sent the army into the tribal areas in 2004.” This was, Khan said, “an insane and immoral way to war, with artillery, F-16s, and helicopter gunships bombing villages. As a result, thousands have died, more than 3.5 million have been internally displaced, and the economy has lost $70 billion, compared to the $15 billion in foreign aid we received.” He also said that these were the reasons why “80 percent of Pakistanis perceive the U.S. as a bigger enemy than India.”

Khan took a stand against U.S. aid to Pakistan, saying, “if you do not respect yourself, no one will respect you.” He insisted that the Pakistani economy was “not poor, just mismanaged,” and drew a comparison to the election patterns in the country, stating that “35 million people were unregistered to vote, and 37 million votes out of the total 80 million cast were bogus.” He promised that his party would root out this type of corruption and establish a robust and independent justice system.

The talk was organized by the South Asian Journalists Association, and Khan’s cricketing and philanthropic appeal had drawn a large number of Indians. The conversation moved towards India-Pakistan relations. “Does India represent an existential threat?” Ghosh asked, and Khan said, “No. But it’s in the military genes, and hence the army has played a disproportionate role.” Khan said that relations between the two countries would remain fragile “unless we are confident that our intelligence agencies will not play a part in cross-border violence. One act like Mumbai will bring us back to square one.” When asked how India and Pakistan--countries that began in such similar circumstances--had taken such different trajectories, Khan said “Jawaharlal Nehru embedded democracy in India, while we (Pakistan) lost our only great leader (Mohammad Ali Jinnah).” Khan also referred to the East Pakistan crisis (which led to the eventual creation of Bangladesh in 1971) and cited these incidents as reasons why “our democracy never took off.” When asked by an audience member about Track II diplomacy and the difficulty of cross-border travel, Khan diverted the conversation to a more entertaining but less difficult answer about a cricket series in 2005.

Khan was then asked about whether he would repeal the blasphemy law, which erupted into controversy following the January 2011 assassination of Salman Taseer, Governor of Punjab, who spoke out against abuse of the law. “I was the only politician to side with Taseer,” Khan said. He then went on to give a history of the blasphemy law, and condemned the death of rational dialogue in Pakistan. But he did not definitively answer the question of whether he would repeal the law.

When asked about politics, religion, and the rural people of Pakistan, Khan said that people in rural areas tend to be more politicized, because their “lives depend on it. But they were petrified that they’d be on the wrong side, and so they would go with the powerful criminals.”

In the most insightful exchange of the night, Khan said that rural people do not think about the secularism issue, and that it was a topic more often heard “at dinner parties in Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi." In response to an audience member’s question about extremism in the tribal areas, Khan said that collateral damage from this war is what created the Pakistani Taliban. “If someone killed my family, I could become a suicide bomber,” he declared. He assured the audience that a robust rule of law would be a core mandate of his party’s time in office, but did not offer any specific policies towards this goal, other than insisting that the War on Terror had to end.

There were the inevitable questions about cricket, notably about the spot-fixing scandal. Khan fielded these with aplomb, and obliged a few of the swarm of supporters eager for a handshake and a photo op. But while he showed an acute understanding of his people and his desired place in their history, tonight, even with Ghosh and others pressing him, there was little straight talk about Imran Khan’s strategies to fix Pakistan.

TECH: How Hyderabad Keeps Track of its Trash Online

Thanks to the Intelligent Garbage Monitoring System implemented by the Indian city of Hyderabad, residents can now check online to see if their neighborhood trash bin has been emptied on time.

The audience applauded when Dr. Sameer Sharma, Municipal Commissioner of Hyderabad, spoke about the garbage monitoring system during a presentation at Columbia University on September 14. Sharma spoke at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) as part of the Global Mayors Forum program.

According to the SIPA’s website:

“SIPA’s Global Mayors Forum showcases the leaders of the world’s most dynamic cities and the School’s conviction that cities are the world’s most important laboratories for creative policymaking.”

Sharma outlined many of his projects that are intended to make Hyderabad India’s best-governed city. He shed light on Hyderabad’s history, the challenges faced by the city, and on development policies.

Hyderabad is the sixth largest city in India and is the state capital of Andhra Pradesh. The city is also known as “Cyberabad” for its ever-growing information technology center. “Hyderabad has become a world city,” Sharma said.

TV: Arun Venugopal discusses #OccupyWallStreet on PBS Newshour

Arun Venugopal (@ArunNYC), reporter for WNYC Radio and former editor of SAJAForum, was interviewed yesterday about the Occupy Wall Street protests. In this video, you can see his updates of what's been going on, along with what the coverage has been like.

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

PAKISTAN: Did Senior ISI Officials Order Saleem Shahzad's Murder?

According to the New York Times, US officials have concluded, based on classified intelligence, that "senior officials of [Pakistan's] spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence," directed the killing of Asia Times Online investigative journalist Saleem Shahzad, who disappeared in Islamabad on May 29th, "in an effort to silence criticism" of the agency:

The intelligence, which several administration officials said they believed was reliable and conclusive, showed that the actions of the ISI, as it is known, were “barbaric and unacceptable,” one of the officials said. They would not disclose further details about the intelligence.

* * *

The disclosure of the intelligence was made in answer to questions about the possibility of its existence, and was reluctantly confirmed by the two officials. “There is a lot of high-level concern about the murder; no one is too busy not to look at this,” said one.

A third senior American official said there was enough other intelligence and indicators immediately after Mr. Shahzad’s death for the Americans to conclude that the ISI had ordered him killed.

“Every indication is that this was a deliberate, targeted killing that was most likely meant to send shock waves through Pakistan’s journalist community and civil society,” said the official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the information. [link]

[HT: Azmat Khan and Declan Walsh.] More from the Times's Eric Schmitt, appearing this morning on The Takeaway (audio player embedded to the right). As the Times reports, the ISI has threatened other journalists in the wake of Shahzad's killing:

The anger over Mr. Shahzad’s death followed unprecedented questioning in the media about the professionalism of the army and the ISI, a military-controlled spy agency, in the aftermath of the Bin Laden raid.

Since that initial volley of questioning, the ISI has mounted a steady counter-campaign. Senior ISI officials have called and visited journalists, warning them to douse their criticisms and rally around the theme of a united country, according to three journalists who declined to be named for fear of reprisals.

* * *

The efforts by the ISI to constrain the Pakistani news media have, to a degree, worked in recent days. The virulent criticism after Mr. Shahzad’s death has tempered a bit.

A Pakistani reporter, Waqar Kiani, who works for the British newspaper The Guardian, was beaten in the capital after Mr. Shahzad’s death with wooden batons and a rubber whip, by men who said: “You want to be a hero. We’ll make you a hero,” the newspaper reported. Mr. Kiani had just published an account of his abduction two years earlier at the hands of intelligence agents. [link]

This "counter-campaign" now may also have a legal component, in the form of a petition recently filed in the Supreme Court by a former government official seeking to ban certain journalists and media organizations from criticizing military and intelligence agencies:

The petitioner, Sardar Muhammad Ghazi, a former deputy attorney general for Pakistan, filed the petition under Article 184 (3) making the federation through Ministry of Information secretary, Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA), Geo TV anchors Najam Sethi and Hamid Mir, and Ijaz Haider, who wrote an open letter to ISI chief Lt General Shuja Pasha in the Express Tribune, as respondents.

* * *

"The pen pushers and anchor persons are spitting venom against the ISI and the armed forces," he said.

Ghazi contended that after the May 2 Abbottabad operation, which resulted in the killing of Osama bin Laden by US forces, and the attack on PNS Mehran in Karachi, a well-organised campaign was launched in the world media targeting army and ISI

"The anchorpersons and the writer jointly and severally are trying to run down the army generals and as such their command stands eroded in the eyes of the force being commanded by them," he stated. [link]

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 39 journalists have been killed in Pakistan since 1992, with eight journalists killed in 2010 -- making Pakistan the year's deadliest country in the world for journalists -- and at least five journalists killed so far in 2011. Overall, Pakistan ranks 10th on the CPJ's Impunity Index, which is based on unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of the country’s population.

At this year's annual convention in June, SAJA hosted a roundtable discussion on "The Perils of Reporting in Pakistan," featuring Beena Sarwar, Malik Siraj Akbar, Kamran Shafi, and David Rohde.

See also:

• Pakistani Journalists Honored in US Ceremony (The News International, July 4, 2011)
• A Journalist in Pakistan: Living on the Edge (Sabin Agha, Express Tribune, July 3, 2011)
• Silent No More: Pakistani Journalist Speaks Out (Jonathan Ernst, St. Louis Beacon, July 2, 2011)
• A Legal Attack Accompanies Assault on Pakistani Journalists (Bob Dietz, Committee to Protect Journalists, June 24, 2011)
• Journalist's Killing Unites Pakistan's Media (Julie McCarthy, NPR, June 21, 2011)
• Dying to Tell the Story (Umar Cheema, New York Times, June 11, 2011)
• RIP Saleem Shahzad (Kalsoom Lakhani, Changing Up Pakistan, June 1, 2011)
• The Perils of Covering Pakistan's Military (Huma Imtiaz, Foreign Policy AfPak Channel, May 31, 2011)

Follow 2011 SAJA Convention

 

Photo Credit: Suvro Banerji

Breaking Into Broadcast Panel                                                     

Follow SAJA Convention on Twitter @sajahq and tag your tweets #SAJAConv

CONV: Shazia Khan On Covering Sept. 11 and Breaking Into Broadcast

by Suvro Banerji

The morning of September 11, 2001, Shazia Khan was working for NY1 news channel and searching for her big story. Before she knew it, she was in the midst of the biggest story of the decade.

“As I stood with my camera and tripod on Chambers Street, I will never forget hearing the loud boom and seeing the cloud of debris and smoke that soon followed,” Khan recalled.

Shazia was shooting video of the burning twin towers and gathering interviews from witnesses in downtown Manhattan. “In just minutes, the city's beloved skyline and the lives of New Yorkers changed forever.”

Shazia Khan joined NY1 as a news assistant and worked her way up to become a general assignment reporter. A second generation Indian-American, Khan is a native of Westchester County. She graduated from New York University with a degree in Broadcast Journalism.

“As a student, I pursued Broadcast Journalism because it had the added layer of video to better tell a story,” said Khan. “I was initially attracted to journalism because it afforded one the opportunity to meet people from all walks of life. That initial interest grew into a passion to share information with others.”

Shazia has always loved covering stories that reflect the cultural and religious diversity of New York City.

“It's great for viewers to see reporters mirror the diversity of the city,” Khan said. In 2005, she helped in launching “Immigrant History Week” in New York City with Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Khan served as the mistress of ceremonies at Gracie Mansion.

As a local news reporter, Shazia understands the importance of establishing and maintaining relationships with viewers and readers, especially at a time when so many of them choose the Internet as their destination for news.  

“We're not the only ones toting cameras everyday and we're not the only ones with the ability to share information with the masses anymore,” Khan said. “So let's hope they connect with your news organization first.”

 Shazia Khan is a panelist on "Breaking Into Broadcast" at the 2011 SAJA Convention. 

CONV: Rebecca Blumenstein On China, Motherhood and the WSJ

by Saabira Chaudhuri

At 44, Rebecca Blumenstein looks unexpectedly young to be the deputy managing editor and international editor for the Wall Street Journal. Her 16-year-long rise at the paper—from a reporter covering General Motors to her current position—has its origins in a penchant for news and the written word that developed at an early age.

“I always knew what I wanted to do,” says Ms. Blumenstein. “I was very interested in the news and newspapers. My parents always got the Wall Street Journal and I would read it but it was very hard because it didn’t have pictures in it.”

Contrary to the existential meandering expected from 20-something new college graduates, Ms. Blumenstein had no trouble charting her career path after she graduated from the University of Michigan.

She went from being editor in chief of the University’s student daily—which had a circulation of about 40,000—to working as a full-time journalist at the Tampa Tribune in Florida.

She later worked at Gannett Newspapers and Newsday, and joined the Wall Street Journal’ s Detroit bureau in 1995.

“Part of what helped me get hired at the Journal is I was putting my hand up to work in Michigan when nobody else really wanted to,” recalls Ms. Blumenstein, who hails from a small auto town outside Michigan called Essexville.

Since then, she’s held a variety of positions within the Journal, as a reporter covering telecommunications, chief of the paper’s technology section in New York, chief of the China bureau, and managing editor of the Wall Street Journal online.

Before her 2005 move to China with her three young children and her husband, Ms. Blumenstein had only lived outside the United States for one year in Israel after high school. She didn’t know any Mandarin or Cantonese and had never even visited China before she flew over to see if she could work there.

“They took a risk sending me to China,” says Ms. Blumenstein. “I had been increasingly interested in globalization. The job came open and they didn’t have a natural candidate so I put my hand up.”

Putting her hand up seems to have worked pretty well. During her three-and-a-half year stint in China, the paper won a Pulitzer Prize for a 2006 series they did called “China’s Naked Capitalism” and a Polk award for coverage of the environmental problems at the country’s Three Gorges Dam. Ms. Blumenstein also supervised coverage of the Beijing Olympics and the Sichuan earthquake.

While there were the inevitable cultural differences—“the first few weeks in China seemed liked a year,” recalls Ms. Blumenstein—life was, in many ways, easier than in New York.

“Living in China as a working woman is perhaps the best kept secret,” says Ms.Blumenstein. “In Beijing I would come home and the house would be spotless, dinner would be on the table. I didn’t do much laundry.”

Ms. Blumenstein says that she and her husband—who went on to write a book about being an expatriate in China called Big in China—particularly enjoyed socializing in Beijing, where people meet more spontaneously than in the US. “I liked that balance of working hard and playing hard,” she says.

Now back in New York, juggling a demanding career as the mother of three young children sometimes catapults her life into chaos, says Ms. Blumenstein. However, she calls having children a “ saving grace,” forcing perspective and a balance in her life. She also candidly admits that she’ s lucky to have a supportive, stay-at-home husband in Mr. Paul.

“We believe very strongly that our marriage is a partnership. I’m more ‘type A,’ he’s a bit more ‘type C,’” she reflects. He’ s happy to wake up and listen to music and write, while I thrive by going to work and seeing people.”

While day-to-day life in New York isn’t as exciting as in China, Ms. Blumenstein says she’s challenged by her role and is focused on driving great stories under her leadership at the Wall Street Journal – particularly those that speak to international issues.

“I want to supervise coverage that changes the world and makes an impact,” she says. “Globalization is biggest story of our time and we need to be looking at it very critically. The world is tilting east and those who understand that are in a good position.”

Rebecca Blumenstein is the keynote speaker at this year's SAJA's Convention and the recepient of the 2011 SAJA Leadership Award.

CONV: Q&A With Carla Spartos, NY Post Food Writer

Food writing was almost unavoidable for Carla Spartos, the New York Post's food writer and editor. Her father was a restaurateur in New York--serving classic continental dishes to the masses like steaks, chops and everyday Italian fare. Spartos spent her hours after school sipping Shirley Temples and eyeing the kitchen's cook line. And as a precocious middle-schooler, she even wrote an expose on cafeteria meat. Spartos left her mark at the Village Voice, Zagat and New York Magazine. Now, at the New York Post, Spartos covers every aspect of the food and restaurant industry. In 2009 she made some major waves in the food world with an editorial calling out snobbery in the modern food movement. SAJAForum's Shefali Kulkarni checked in with Spartos ahead of this year's SAJA convention, where she will speak about how she turned her love of food into a career.

SK: How did you land at the New York Post writing about what you love?

CS: It was sort of a long path. I grew up in restaurants, my dad was a restaurateur so basically every day after school I would hang out in the restaurant kitchen watching the line. After that, I studied at Cornell and originally I thought I might go into science writing, but my first job out of college was at the Village Voice. When I started at the Voice I was covering music and night life and I used to review bars -- that was a pretty great job for someone in their 20s. And then I segweyed into the food aspect. I worked as a web producer for New York Magazine, and I was doing some food articles there and then later at Zagat I was an editor.

It’s funny I wrote these articles for the seventh grade -- an expose on the cafeteria food. There was a quote that ran with it, something like: ‘Today’s hamburger could be tomorrow’s taco’ and it was  about how the cafeteria would recycle food. I think there was always something [about food writing] in the back of my mind -- it was a passion, and it was just a matter of working my way into that role eventually.

SK: Talk a little about the 2009 editorial in the New York Post and some of the reactions that came from that.

CS: I think if we elicit some strong reactions with what we do, then we’ve done our job. If everyone says "Oh that’s what I’ve been thinking," then what are you adding to the dialogue? I do think someone who is cookin at home using a bag of salad or maybe frozen carrots -- I think that also should be encouraged. What’s the alternative?  Maybe they would be eating at McDonald’s. It was also poking a bit of fun at the snobbery that’s maybe a little inherent sometimes.

SK: Where is food writing’s place in today’s media? With lots of food blogs out there, do you see that helping or hurting quality food writing? Is everyone a food critic now?

CS: I think it’s great. I’m an avid food blog reader, I love combing and reading through people’s opinions whether it’s Yelp or City Search or Menu Pages. I just find it interesting and you have to take everything with a grain of salt of course. But ultimately it's a good thing, the more voices you have out there.

SK: What advice would you recommend to young food writers?

CS: The industry itself has gotten a lot tougher to break into over the last say decade. I’m on the [SAJA Convention] panel called "Dream Jobs" and it’s just highly competitive now. Food is now being treated the way music or rock and roll is in a way.

My advice would be to do an internship. I think the other helpful thing is that since blogs are so ubiquitous, it’s great to start your own, so you can already have a body of work all ready to show someone your passion. And try to eat as much and as often as possible or what your budget allows -- try to have your own point of view.

CONV: Q&A With Kevin Noblet, Dow Jones

Despite rapid changes in the media landscape, the fundamental strengths of being a clear thinker and writer are still necessary for journalists, says Kevin Noblet, managing editor of wealth management coverage at Dow Jones Newswires.

He should know.

In an eventful 28-year career with Associated Press, Noblet worked multiple roles from business to deputy international editor and, also, directed coverage for two stories that won Pulitzer Prizes. SAJAForum's Rakesh Sharma caught up with Noblet, who will be conducting a workshop about business reporting at SAJA's convention this year.

SF: How did you get started with journalism?

KN: I was an English major in college and decided journalism was one way to get paid for my major after graduation. It was as simple as that.

SF: You have covered events at the local level (with community newspapers in Connecticut) as well as at the international level (with AP). What is the difference in approach?

KN: In some ways, it is very much the same because ultimately you are writing about people. However, events in the international story are larger in scale and you also have to deal with another language and culture. Most importantly, you are also distant from your audience. In a community newspaper, you have the luxury of readers calling or dropping in. This helps you gauge feedback. Of course, that might not hold true any longer because your audience is electronically closer, thanks to the Internet.

SF: Is there a difference between business journalism and other kinds of journalism?

KN: One of the great things about business journalism is that there are concrete objective measures you can rely on to test the accuracy of sources. This is different from political reporting where it is much more difficult to test accuracies. That said, I do believe that business journalism is also about people and has its own ethical, moral, and social issues.

SF: Which place was most memorable for you in international reporting?

KN: Haiti. I spent a year there (over the course of three years) during the early 1990s. This was a time of great political turmoil. Social and poverty issues were pretty widespread and dramatic. I also reported about the earthquake from there last year. Given their problems, I must say Haitians are an extremely resilient people.

SF: Can you tell us a little bit about your experience directing coverage for stories that won Pulitzers?

KN: Both experiences were quite different. The first Pulitzer was awarded to a very talented AP reporter covering the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. He was a talented writer, and, as an editor, my job was to simply help shepherd his copy to the wire and make sure no heavy-handed copy editor messed with it! The second prize was for a very long, painstaking and sometimes just painful investigation into a wartime massacre in Korea some 50 years earlier. Our team of reporters and editors worked on it for many months. There was a bigger sense of accomplishment when that project was finally done.

CONV: Q&A with Amitava Kumar

Photo courtesy Preston Merchant

Amitava Kumar’s editor says he is the “tongue of narrative.” Fitting then that he’s leading the workshop on long-form writing at this year’s 2011 SAJA convention. The workshop will take place on Saturday afternoon in Lerner Hall. He spoke with SAJAforum's Sabrina Buckwalter about his workshop, strip clubs, and accidental terrorists.

SF: The last time you gave this workshop was in 2009. What will be covered in this one and what will be different?

AK: I’ll be doing an exercise where I have journalists look at excerpts from “The Forever War” by Dexter Filkins and “The Good Soldiers” by David Finkel. Both journalists are writing about war in places like Iraq, but one is really visceral and personal, while the other just wants to be a fly on the wall. What Filkins is doing is risky but he is truly exemplary. Why write if you don’t court risks?

We’ll also look at New York Times reporter Barry Bearak and his story, “A Kashmiri Mystery,” in the New York Times Magazine. It is a remarkable piece. Bearak told me that in his usual long newspaper pieces, he strives for an Olympian storytelling tone. But in this piece, he makes himself and his reporting characters in the story. He inserted himself as ‘the stumbling ambivalent person most of us are.’ I loved that. I want to ask people to consider writing that doesn’t spring from some position of false objectivity.

I also want to discuss interviewing techniques, like what does Suketu Mehta do when he asks, ‘What does a man look like when he’s on fire?’ and how do you get yourself into a situation where you can ask questions like that (referring to Mehta’s book, “Maximum City”). Or what was Truman Capote doing when he spent those months interviewing people in Kansas during the writing of “In Cold Blood?” These are writers who have worked out the algebra that turns journalism into deep narrative. When discussing practical matters, I’ll mention this article from Poynter— “Six  Ways to Craft Scenes” —but what I really want to do is have folks confront the challenge of putting together reports as if they were writing a page in a novel. How does one go in search of a voice?

SF: In your latest non-fiction book, “A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb,” there is this thread of being at the wrong place at the wrong time that connects the stories. These people are, as you say, “hapless victims of entrapment.” Tell me about going to the strip club, Teasers, in Springfield, Mo., after meeting an imprisoned Hemant Lakhani (a man who was accused of selling a missile to an F.B.I. informant who was later said to have been part of a government “plot” to lure him to that sale.)

AK: I came out of the prison and saw it. It was right across the street and I’m like, ‘Wow, I’ll go there,’ I wasn’t embarrassed to go. I saw it and thought there’s a story there. I’ll wait for the jail guards to drink their beer and spill all the stories from prison. When the New York Times piece came out about the book, and that Teasers bit was in it, I heard from Lakhani. He said he liked it and was very happy to see it, but he says to me, if I came back, ‘Please promise me you won’t go to Teasers again.’ And I thought here is this man that had been accused by governments and law enforcement of not having not morality, telling me this. Here he is, feeling he has the privilege and right to advise me on morality. And on the other hand, here is this character. No one is just one thing. No one is just a journalist, no one is just this or that. This is the contradictory complexity that one calls character. So, at Teasers, I go in and sit in front of this girl. She tells me her name is Ivory, but says that’s just her stage name. She goes on to tell me her real name, but I didn’t want to know her name. She asks me where I’m from and when I tell her India, she tells me how she’s been wanting to go. Here is this plain, Midwestern girl who wants to go to India. And when I ask her why she says, ‘Architecture.’ She says she wants to see the Taj Mahal.

SF: In your article, “How To Write a Novel,” in The Hindu, you write how you went two weeks trying to open your novel, “Home Products,” without any success. How do you work with a problem like writer’s block?

AK: Jennifer Egan, who has just won the Pulitzer for fiction, explained that writer’s block is just another name for people who don’t want to do bad writing, that they want it to come out perfect the first time. Ernest Hemingway said that, ‘The first draft of anything is shit.’ I do a shitty eighth draft, so I think we need to get rid of this need to produce pristine prose; you really have to prepare yourself for the muck, to wade into it.

SF: What are you working on currently?

AK: A novel. Like my last one, this started with my desire to interview a man that I had read about in the papers. But he was dead. So I met his widow and another woman who was his co-accused in a crime.

Amitava Kumar is a writer, journalist, and professor of English at Vassar College. His most recent book, “A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm A Tiny Bomb,” was described in The New York Times as a "perceptive and soulful ... meditation on the global war on terror and its cultural and
human repercussions."

US-SOUTH ASIA AFFS: After Osama

Listen to internet radio with SAJA HQ on Blog Talk Radio

TV: Webcasts with stars of NBC "Outsourced" + reality TV

[ shortcut to this post: http://bit.ly/sajaTV ]

SAJA, the South Asian Journalists Association, and SAMMA, South Asians in Media, Marketing and Entertainment Association, present the latest in their series of high-profile webcasts - via BlogTalkRadio.com - with some of the leading South Asian names in global media, arts, entertainment, politics and much more...  

Listen to recordings of two SAJA & SAMMA TV-related webcasts. Both are below: One with folks from "Outsourced" and the other with stars of reality TV.

===>Meet stars Rizwan Manji, Parvesh Cheena and Sacha Dhawan, executive producer Robert Borden and writer Geetika Lizardi of NBC's "Outsourced":

Listen to internet radio with SAJA HQ on Blog Talk Radio

==> The Reality TV discussion, with three South Asian reality stars:

Listen to internet radio with SAJA HQ on Blog Talk Radio

Wednesday, March 30, 2011: A conversation with several South Asians who made waves in reality shows in recent years.

• Photographer Nigel Barker (@beautyequation)- "America's Next Top Model" judge
  
• Singer Anoop Desai (@anoopdoggdesai)- "American Idol" contestant - finished in 6th place in 2009
• Chef Maneet Chauhan of Vermilion in NY & Chicago - "Next Iron Chef" - season 3 contestant and judge on "Chopped"

Conducting the interview will be Madhu Goel Southworth, Senior Counsel, Legal & Business Affairs, AMC. Producing the show will be Sree Sreenivasan (@sree), digital media professor at Columbia Journalism School and co-founder of SAJA.

LISTEN TO THE RECORDING: http://bit.ly/sajatv2

FILM: Desi-spotting at the Oscars

It's Oscar night in America, and here's the South Asian stuff I spotted during the broadcast...

10:40 pm: A.R. Rahman performs his Oscar-nominated song, "If I Rise"  (just learned he's on Twitter, @ARRahman).

9:55 pm: Gautham Krishnamurthi was shown in a photograph for the Science and Technology Awards that were given out at a previous event. Here's the official citation (and you can watch the video):

Chris Allen, Gautham Krishnamurti, Mark A. Brown and Lance Kimes, for the development of Queue, a robust, scalable approach to render queue management and one of the first systems that allowed for statistical analysis and process introspection.

Funny little side note: The video above was given the file name "http://www.oscars.org/video/popup/sta2010_03_allen_brown_kimes.html" - I guess Krishnamurthy was too long for 'em!

 

MUSIC: A Desi Grammys-and-more post

It's Grammy Sunday in America, and here is a music-related post, including some items connected to the biggest music awards in the land and some not.

• Two long-time friends of SAJA, Chandrika Tandon and Vijay Iyer, were nominated for Grammys today. They didn't win, but they certainly showed yet another dimension of the South Asian community in the U.S. You can listen to the SAJA webcast here.
  
  
  Listen to internet radio with SAJA HQ on Blog Talk Radio
  
  Chandrika Tandon (@soulchantmusic), nominated for Best Contemporary World Music Album for "Soul Call"; and Vijay Iyer (@vijayiyer), nominated for the Best Jazz Instrumental Album for "Historicity".
  
   
• Jay Sean, who hit #1 on the Billboard charts with "Down" two years ago - and whose webcast with SAJA/SAMMA you can listen to at this link - is back. Here's a press release:

Jay Sean and Lil Wayne Recreate Magic

On February 8, 2011, Jay Sean released his latest single “Hit the Lights” featuring Lil Wayne on iTunes. The club banging track rocketed to the top 20 on the first day and within 72 hours, “Hit the Lights” shot up the charts and held the #4 spot. Jay Sean and Lil Wayne have surely recreated the magic of their first single together, in fact, this time around the dynamic duo has outdone the initial success of “Down” by taking their track to the top five immediately following the release.

You can buy the record on iTunes: Hit the Lights

For interviews with Jay Sean please contact Komposit Entertainment: isha at kompositlive.com (tell her SAJA sent you).

From a note by SAMMA co-founder Raj Shah:

HP, in its new global campaign “Everybody On” with Alicia Keys includes a  video from Billboard pop/urban recording artist Jay Sean, on the heels of Jay’s Tuesday release of a new track “Hit the Lights” (#3 on iTunes as of Friday).

It's the first time that HP, the largest computer-maker in the world has  included a South Asian artist in its U.S. content/campaigns.

This is a preview on YouTube before it hits the HP Global site:

• Nita Chawla, a NY-based singer-songwriter, has just written a song, "Revolution," dedicated to the people of Egypt & Tunisia. It's not yet on NitaChawla.com, but she's shared it with SAJAforum. Thanks, Nita!

  Download Revolution featuring Produkt101

• Long-time SAJA member Brian Q. Silver, Ethnomusicologist and World Music Curator of the Voice of America wrote in to let us know that he has launched a new VOAWorldMusic page on Facebook. He's looking forward to your feedback: BSilver at voanews.com.

Liveblogging, sorta, the Grammys:

11:20 pm: This ad runs:

10:50 pm: Nicki Minaj, the Trinidadian hip-hop star (who is of South Asian origin) is presenting a category with will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas.

10:10 pm: Norah Jones, who won nine Grammys between 2000 and 2009, is presenting a category (she presented with Ringo Starr last year).

 

SAJA-SAMMA WEBCASTS:

Music:

• A.R. Rahman, music maestro
• Jay Sean, first South Asian male singer to hit #1 on US Billboard chart
• Vijay Iyer, jazz musician who had the most-acclaimed jazz album of 2009
• Grammys webcast with Chandrika Tandon & Vijay Iyer, 2011 nominees

FILM/South Asia:

• Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol, Bollywood stars
• Shabana Azmi, legendary actress
• Ram Gopal Varma, Bollywood director ("Rangeela," "Company," "Satya")

FILM/USA:

• Danny Boyle, director of "Slumdog Millionaire"
• Post-Oscar webcast about "Slumdog Millionaire"
• Asif Mandvi and the cast of "Today's Special"
• Ashok Amritraj, Hollywood producer
• Richard Pena, program director, Film Society of Lincoln Center
• Manu Narayan, actor, writer discusses his work
• PANEL: South Asians & Hollywood, on the eve of the 2008 Oscars
• PANEL: MIAAC Film Festival and the state of South Asian diaspora film

Sports:

• Sunil Gulati, president of U.S. soccer and the most influential South Asian in U.S. sports
• Brandon Chillar, NFL's only current South Asian player
• PANEL: Super Bowl Sunday 2011 webcast with ESPN anchors Kevin Negandhi, Anish Shroff, Adnan Virk and others 
• Raj Mathai, Bay Area NBC's sports director

DESI SPOTTING: Live blogging the Super Bowl 2011

[Desi Spotting = items with a South Asian connection - see our archive]

Sunday, Feb. 6, 2011: Live-blogging the Super Bowl on this post, looking for South Asian stuff during the telecast - starting 6:30 pm EST.  You can see all the commercials at http://foxsports.com/ads

What did we miss? Email us: saja at columbia.edu or @sajaHQ on Twitter.

• See the 2010 Super Bowl desi live blog here.
• See the 2009 Super Bowl desi live blog here.
• See the 2008 Super Bowl desi live blog here.
• See 2007 post about a single Bud Light ad.

We'll be looking for sideline shots of Brandon Chillar, who is a member of the Green Bay Packers. A terrific linebacker for the team, he was injured in November, so is not in uniform tonight. You can listen to the SAJA webcast from 2009 with Chillar; his agent, Jim Ivler, his agent; and Kevin Negandhi, ESPN anchor.

11 am ET: Listen to SAJA's Super Bowl Sunday Webcast:

SAJA, the South Asian Journalists Association, and SAMMA, South Asians in Media, Marketing and Entertainment Association, present a conversation about the biggest day in American sports from a South Asian perspective. Join us as SAJA co-founder Sree Sreenivasan (@sree) and sports marketing prof Vijay Setlur (@vijaysetlur) chats with ESPN's Kevin Negandhi (@knegandhiespn), who's co-hosting SportsCenter that night; Anish Shroff (@anishESPN), ESPN anchor-reporter, who covers college footballl; Adnan Virk (@adnanvirkESPN), ESPN anchor; Aditi Kinkhabwala (@AKinkhabwala), NY Giants reporter for the Wall Street Journal, who is covering the Super Bowl; and Arash Markazi (@arashmarkazi) columnist for ESPNLosAngeles.com. We had hoped to have Chillar call in for a few minutes, but he wasn't able to join us (see above for our 2009 webcast with #54).

Listen to internet radio with SAJA HQ on Blog Talk Radio

- - - -

12:08 pm: SAJAer and ESPNEWS anchor Adnan Virk (@adnanvirkESPN) (or the right) co-hosts "Highlight Express," filled with Super Bowl coverage. Negandhi was a guest on SAJA's Super Bowl webcast - see link above - and discussed his career path, advice for those interested in sportscasting and more. Click on image for bigger version.

10:02 pm: A desi gets a Super Bowl ring - Brandon Chillar (who is on injured reserve) will be among those who get a Super Bowl Ring as the Packers beat the Steelers. That makes him the second South Asian to win a ring (Bobby Singh was the first, with the St. Louis Rams).

From an 2009 post on SAJAforum, here are the only two other South Asian players to play for the NFL:

• Bobby Singh, St. Louis Rams (the only player, perhaps, to be on the teams to win an NFL Super Bowl, a Canadian Football League Grey Cup and an XFL championship)
• Sanjay Rajiv Beach, who played four years from 1989-1993 (for the NY Jets, Green Bay Packers and San Francisco 49ers); he is in the record books for catching soon-to-be superstar Brett Favre's first proper completion, in 1992 (Favre's very first completion was a pass deflected to, and caught by, Favre himself).

9:58 pm: SAJAforum exclusive! This is a photo of SAJAer and ESPN anchor Kevin Negandhi (@knegandhiESPN), taken minutes before he hosts SportsCenter, which goes live on ESPN as soon as the Super Bowl ends on Fox.. The SportsCenter right after the Super Bowl as got to be one of the highest-rated episodes of the most popular sports shows in the world. Negandhi was a guest on SAJA's Super Bowl webcast - see link above - and discussed his career path, advice for those interested in sportscasting and more. Click on image for bigger version.

UPDATE - 10:08 pm: A photo of Negandhi in action:

 

8:20 pm: SAJAer Aman Batheja (@amanbatheja), a reporter at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is tweeting from the action. Here are some of his tweets:

amanbatheja 8:19pm via twidroyd
Jumbotron giving crowd instructions. "Break glow sticks" "Wave glow sticks slowly" #sbst #sbxlv

amanbatheja8:12pm via twidroyd
jerry jones was right. this is the greenest #superbowl ever #sbst #sbxlv http://twitpic.com/3x9j2l

And you can see one of his blog posts here, which is about fans outside the stadium (which is where you see him below).

7:40 pm: From tweets to @sajaHQ by Niraj Warikoo (@nwarikoo), religion reporter for the Detroit Free Press:

The guy who helped former Steelers all-star center Mike Webster when he was sick was an Indian-American, Sunny Jani http://es.pn/hch7fM  

"For the last six years of Mike Webster's life, from 1997 to 2002, Jani was his most consistent, most constant companion."

7:05 pm: There are three Groupon ads coming up during the Super Bowl telecast (featuring Cuba Gooding, Jr., Timothy Hutton, and Liz Hurley). The site with came to worldwide attention when it turned down Google's offer of a $6-billion acquistion, is now preparing for an IPO said to be valued at $15 billion. The desi connection? Groupon's VP of product development is Suneel Gupta (@guptathink), who we featured on SAJAforum two years ago when he launched KahaniMovement with his brother Dr. Sanjay Gupta (@SanjayGuptaCNN) of CNN. Suneel's wife is SAJAer Leena Rao (@leenarao), who is a writer at TechCrunch, the popular tech news site.

6:45 pm: While you're watching the most famous hair in American sports - that would be Troy Polamalu's lustrous tresses - take a moment to see a NY Post article called "The Hair Pair." It's about how SAJA Board member Raakhee Mirchandani (@raakstar) has the same hair as Polamalu.

 

 

Post your comments below.

BOOKS + WEBCAST: "One Story, Thirty Stories," Afghan-American anthology

Listen to internet radio with SAJA HQ on Blog Talk Radio

Join us for a webcast about a most unusual book... Just the play button above.

One Story, Thirty Stories: An Anthology of Contemporary Afghan American Literature
Meet the editors and two of the writers
Friday, Jan. 14, 2011
1-2 pm NY time
10:30-11:30 pm Kabul time
see local time around the world: http://timeanddate.com/s/1y1k

==> VIA COMPUTER: Listen live or later to a recording at http://tobtr.com/s/1486065
(you can set an e-mail reminder for yourself at that link)

==> VIA PHONE: +1-347-324-5991 (you can call this NYC number by phone or Skype to listen or ask questions)
Or send your questions in advance via e-mail: saja at columbia.edu or via Twitter - @  sajaHQ

One Story, Thirty Stories: An Anthology of Contemporary Afghan American Literature
Edited by Zohra Saed & Sahar Muradi | University of Arkansas Press

ABOUT THE BOOK: Since 9/11 there has been a cultural and political blossoming among those of the Afghan diaspora, especially in the United States, revealing a vibrant, active, and intellectual Afghan American community. And the success of Khaled Hosseni’s The Kite Runner, the first work of fiction written by an Afghan American to become a bestseller, has created interest in the works of other Afghan American writers. One Story, Thirty Stories (or “Afsanah, Seesanah,” the Afghan equivalent of “once upon a time”) collects poetry, fiction, essays, and selections from two blogs from thirty-three men and women—poets, fiction writers, journalists, filmmakers and video artists, photographers, community leaders and organizers, and diplomats.