Turnaround story

Former business head reporter says he thinks our pages have come to define business journalism in Pakistan

If you ever read a start-up/turnaround story that celebrates the ingenuity of the entrepreneur behind it, you can safely assume that it appeared in The Express Tribune.

That’s probably because business pages of other Pakistani newspapers seldom print anything beyond populist rhetoric defying logic and usual reportage of government officials.

In other words, a rapidly changing economy with a rising middle class and soaring corporate earnings is a story that other newspapers seem to have largely missed.

The reason business pages of The Express Tribune took an entirely different course is the clear-headed team leaders it found from the beginning. Led by Ghazanfar Ali, a veteran of business journalism with over 20 years of experience, the business desk at The Express Tribune started focusing on what had largely been ignored by most Pakistani newspapers: privately held businesses, turnaround stories and entrepreneurship.

“Being the business desk head had its baggage. We weren’t able to do the kind of stories that we do now because we had just started off. Reporting on corporations and start-ups was a new concept back then,” says Ali, who has stayed with The Express Tribune from day one. “But now it has become more acceptable. I’m pleased with the progress we’ve made so far. We have a loyal readership now.” A graduate of Georgetown University, Farooq Tirmizi worked as the head of business reporting and was responsible for hiring, training and guiding reporters until 2013.

“I honestly think our pages have come to define business journalism in Pakistan,” says Tirmizi, who now works as an editorial consultant for The Express Tribune.

Before joining The Express Tribune, Tirmizi worked at an asset management firm, but found its atmosphere boring. “I did not learn a lot and was surrounded by people with an utter lack of intellectual curiosity. At Tribune, I was given the freedom to do what I wanted, which was to find out what makes the Pakistani economy tick,” he says. Building up his writing and communications skills proved to be an invaluable experience that later helped him get jobs at large global investment banks and asset management firms in New York. “If it was a gamble to take the Tribune job, it paid off spectacularly.” So what is the whole point of business journalism? According to Tirmizi, business journalism has one definable goal: to create actionable intelligence for business leaders and aspiring entrepreneurs. “Our stories always try to address the question of: what does this story mean for the average Pakistani business leader?” he says.

As an example, he refers to the story about K-Electric’s social media response to a major blackout. Sui Southern Gas and a whole host of other companies started getting way more active and interactive on Twitter after its publication, he notes.

“Part of our job is pointing out success of good ideas, and I am happy to say that we had some success with that.” With regard to the influence the business pages of The Express Tribune have, Tirmizi says he rarely ever walked into a CEO’s office that did not have a copy of the newspaper on its desk.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 12^th, 2015.