Saleh would win reelection.
“But the press has an obligation to report impartially about both candidates,” I told my class. “And to give voters as much information as they can, so that they can make informed choices.” No easy task when it’s against the law to directly criticize the president in the paper. And when the owner of the paper actually works for that president. Theo had explained to me that the Yemen Observer was just one of Faris’s many enterprises. His main job was working as the president’s media adviser. He also owned a security franchise, campaigned against corruption, helped organize investment conferences, and had his industrious fingers in many other ventures. While I found it clearly unethical for the owner of a newspaper to work for the president, it seemed best to keep my thoughts to myself. I was there for only three weeks. I would just have to try to get my reporters to report as fairly as possible and hope Faris wouldn’t meddle too much.
The concept of even-handed reporting seemed to be going over remarkably well with my students, who said they wanted their stories to read like those in the New York Times . It remained to be seen how well they could execute this. They gave me several different ideas for kinds of election stories they could write: candidate profiles, issue-specific stories (on the eradication of weapons, say, or fighting corruption), and news stories about the direction of the candidates’ campaigns. Farouq, the paper’s main political reporter, was already working on a story about the opposition party’s threatened boycott of the election.
I ended class by giving them each an assignment related to their beat, due at six P.M. This would help me learn more about Yemen as well as more about what my reporters considered news.
Arwa, for example, wanted to do a story about an all-women sports club, but I had trouble getting her to tell me what was new about it.
“We need a reason that we are writing about it today,” I told her. “Tell me what is new . Did it just open? Is it the first club for women?”
“No …”
“Did it just introduce some new kind of sport? Or is it part of a growing trend? Are more women than ever before doing sports?”
“Yes!” she said to the last one. “More women are doing it.”
“Good,” I said. “So that is the information we lead with.”
I kept referring to it as a health club, and she kept correcting me. “Not health! Sports!”
Adel went off to report on the recent Guantánamo suicide, Radia to write about street children, and little Zuhra to write about the new respect hairstylists were getting in Yemen.
After class, a tall, chubby man with greenish eyes and a shiny round face lingered in the classroom with visible anxiety. He had arrived halfway through class, just before my staged fight with Theo. “I am so sorry for being late,” he said. “I had to take my wife to the hospital. She had surgery on her eye, and now there is something wrong with her—” He glanced at Theo, who was standing with us.
“Cornea,” Theo supplied.
“Yes. Cornea. And she will need another surgery.”
This was Zaid. I expressed my sympathy and sat down with him to go over everything he had missed. I liked him immediately. He was obviously bright, joked with me, and told me he had just won a scholarship to study next year in Britain. He was frothing with excitement.
I was beginning to sag with the relief that the first class had finished without catastrophe when Theo reminded me that I still had a hurdle ahead (other than the 1,001 new challenges I had just uncovered): I had to impress the Boss. He gave me a minute to take a breath and collect my papers, and led me upstairs to meet Faris.
FARIS AL-SANABANI was tall, dark, and handsome, with just about the worst case of attention deficit disorder I’ve ever seen. He did nothing in real time. He moved in fast-forward, spoke in fast-forward, and demanded an equally speedy
“But the press has an obligation to report impartially about both candidates,” I told my class. “And to give voters as much information as they can, so that they can make informed choices.” No easy task when it’s against the law to directly criticize the president in the paper. And when the owner of the paper actually works for that president. Theo had explained to me that the Yemen Observer was just one of Faris’s many enterprises. His main job was working as the president’s media adviser. He also owned a security franchise, campaigned against corruption, helped organize investment conferences, and had his industrious fingers in many other ventures. While I found it clearly unethical for the owner of a newspaper to work for the president, it seemed best to keep my thoughts to myself. I was there for only three weeks. I would just have to try to get my reporters to report as fairly as possible and hope Faris wouldn’t meddle too much.
The concept of even-handed reporting seemed to be going over remarkably well with my students, who said they wanted their stories to read like those in the New York Times . It remained to be seen how well they could execute this. They gave me several different ideas for kinds of election stories they could write: candidate profiles, issue-specific stories (on the eradication of weapons, say, or fighting corruption), and news stories about the direction of the candidates’ campaigns. Farouq, the paper’s main political reporter, was already working on a story about the opposition party’s threatened boycott of the election.
I ended class by giving them each an assignment related to their beat, due at six P.M. This would help me learn more about Yemen as well as more about what my reporters considered news.
Arwa, for example, wanted to do a story about an all-women sports club, but I had trouble getting her to tell me what was new about it.
“We need a reason that we are writing about it today,” I told her. “Tell me what is new . Did it just open? Is it the first club for women?”
“No …”
“Did it just introduce some new kind of sport? Or is it part of a growing trend? Are more women than ever before doing sports?”
“Yes!” she said to the last one. “More women are doing it.”
“Good,” I said. “So that is the information we lead with.”
I kept referring to it as a health club, and she kept correcting me. “Not health! Sports!”
Adel went off to report on the recent Guantánamo suicide, Radia to write about street children, and little Zuhra to write about the new respect hairstylists were getting in Yemen.
After class, a tall, chubby man with greenish eyes and a shiny round face lingered in the classroom with visible anxiety. He had arrived halfway through class, just before my staged fight with Theo. “I am so sorry for being late,” he said. “I had to take my wife to the hospital. She had surgery on her eye, and now there is something wrong with her—” He glanced at Theo, who was standing with us.
“Cornea,” Theo supplied.
“Yes. Cornea. And she will need another surgery.”
This was Zaid. I expressed my sympathy and sat down with him to go over everything he had missed. I liked him immediately. He was obviously bright, joked with me, and told me he had just won a scholarship to study next year in Britain. He was frothing with excitement.
I was beginning to sag with the relief that the first class had finished without catastrophe when Theo reminded me that I still had a hurdle ahead (other than the 1,001 new challenges I had just uncovered): I had to impress the Boss. He gave me a minute to take a breath and collect my papers, and led me upstairs to meet Faris.
FARIS AL-SANABANI was tall, dark, and handsome, with just about the worst case of attention deficit disorder I’ve ever seen. He did nothing in real time. He moved in fast-forward, spoke in fast-forward, and demanded an equally speedy
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