Shaheen Pasha and Yasir Khan Join AUC’s Department of Journalism

Professor Shaheen Pasha, a former CNN and Dow Jones reporter, and Professor Yasir Khan, a multimedia journalist and documentary filmmaker, joined the Department of Journalism this fall semester 2007 by adding North American journalistic professionalism with a spicy South Asian flavour to the AUC’s melting pot.

The Director of the Center for Electronic Journalism, Professor Lawrence Pintak, praised Pasha and Khan for their “depth of professional experience and first hand understanding of the changing nature of journalism, of the blurring of the lines between broadcast, print and internet. They are two walking reminders of the need for a variety of skills in different mediums that we can’t just expect from journalists”.

Sitting in a brown vintage leather fauteuil in her new office, Pasha said of her appointment that she wanted to join the AUC because the university offers an American curriculum and liberal education. “In this part of the world it’s hard to practice journalism because many people haven’t been trained properly and because of certain restrictions that many face. I want to give students a tool to report their environment and give training to make them competitive in the market place”, she said.

Khan hopes to “share and transmit all the knowledge I have learnt in the last 12 years, from the people who have taught me and from all my mistakes”.

Since the beginning of classes in September, he has observed that many students at the AUC learn by memorizing. One of his first priorities was to apply practice-oriented teaching methods that would “help to change that, even in only one or two heads. I want to encourage to experiment and think outside the box among students”.

Prior to joining the AUC, Shaheen Pasha was a staff writer at CNNMoney.com, covering banking, insurance and legal issues. She was the lead reporter covering the Enron trial in Houston and the first journalist to report on the death of Enron founder Ken Lay. Pasha was also a reporter at the Dow Jones Newswire and served as a daily on-air correspondent for CNBC Asia.

Khan was a senior video journalist at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) before coming to the AUC, where he was assigned to the primetime show CBC News: The Hour. In this context, he became the first Canadian journalist to report on the Hajj from Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and the tsunami from the scene of disaster in Southeast Asia. With family footprints tracing back to Hyderabad, India, Khan’s passion for travelling and his work at the CBC took him to Venezuela, the UK, the Canadian Arctic, Dubai, Syria and Lebanon in 2005-2006.

In the upcoming semesters, Pasha would like to teach a course in Online Journalism, make a push for Computer Assisted Reporting and also organize intensive summer courses in Business Journalism.

Her long-term goal is to bring more convergence to the Department of Journalism, emphasizing that “as a journalist in today’s world, you need to know everything about journalism: print, broadcast and online”.

As for Khan, he plans to start off “by gathering a bunch of people who are critical thinkers and to produce good critical documentaries which question, experiment and raise important issues”.

The Center for Electronic Journalism Director Pintak described the professors’ move to the AUC as a sign for the university’s evolving curriculum. “I am looking forward to having people who have just arrived from the world of professional journalism, and who can help our students make the transition to the future of journalism”, he said.

A native of New York City with Pakistani family roots, Pasha graduated with cum laude honors from Pace University with an undergraduate degree in speech communications. She then completed her studies with a master’s degree from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

Yasir Khan’s journalistic career began with an internship at CNN in 1996. He then went on to work as an associate producer at CNN before moving to the CBC in 1998. Khan has written, produced and presented major news stories around the world and made documentaries on subjects ranging from child soldiers to aboriginal Canadians.

Under a tree full of screeching blackbirds on the AUC campus, Khan said that he was eager to move to the region and to learn more about this part of the world. “Physically of course, I would be more confortable in my downtown Toronto appartment. As a journalist you continously make yourself feel unconfortable and challenge yourself”.