This is unlike any other pieces I have written for Zan Times. I have been thinking about what I should tell you, our valued reader on the occasion of Zan Times’ second anniversary. Then, I thought, nothing is more powerful than an honest reflection. So, here you go!
Zan Times is a labour of love and passion by those of us who felt the weight of responsibility on our shoulders and needed to do something to ease our own pain and suffering. We were journalists. We knew how to report and write stories. We started Zan Times thinking that we would do that. As a group of mostly women journalists, we wanted to report on stories that mattered to us.
Once we started our work, we discovered there is more to building and running a newsroom than reporting and writing stories. As journalists, we knew nothing about human resources, and as far as finance and budgeting were concerned, our experience didn’t go beyond getting a monthly salary or a freelance fee.
More importantly, we didn’t know how to raise money. We had little to no idea how the media industry was funded. We made every kind of mistake, the kinds that you might expect to read in a comic book (it is only now that I can look back and actually laugh!). I should admit that the mistakes were all mine. I had no knowledge or experience as manager or a team leader. I had barely managed my own work and somehow, I stepped into the unknown with only passion for journalism.
What made Zan Times survive into its second year has been my team, the group of people who wholeheartedly trusted me and my faulty judgements. I will remain in debt to each and every one who has contributed to Zan Times, especially during the difficult days of its inception. Some of those people are no longer working with us, but their legacy and commitment made Zan Times to what it is today. And a very special thanks to the current team at Zan Times, people who stood by my side regardless of how many times I have let them down. In the past two years, there were many days that I broke into tears, sometimes even during team meetings and often in the loneliness of my small office at York University in Toronto.
It was hard not only because we didn’t have the fundings we needed to properly do our work, but because people’s lives were at stake. The stress and fear that my colleagues could be arrested and tortured would make me nauseous. There were many nights that I couldn’t sleep, feeling responsible for people who might be put in danger because we told their stories. I still live with these fears, but I have grown to keep the stress at bay.
During these difficult times, I was lucky to have a team that stood by me and cared about our mission that bound us together. Every one of them came up with new ideas on how we can protect our team and our sources. They stepped in and did the work.
Kreshma Fakhri, an investigative journalist whom I came to know as a colleague during my time in Kabul, was one of the first people who said, “I am with you, no matter what!” And ever since, she has proved that, day in and day out. From being a journalist, she managed to become our HR manager, the one person who knows everything about Zan Times and its entire team. She is a mother of two, a new immigrant in the U.S. who helps build a team that cares deeply about each other.
And there is my writer friend, Freshta Ghani, with whom I had worked in Kabul. She is the woman who leads our team of journalists on the ground in Afghanistan on each and every story we tell. She is a mother, a new immigrant in the U.S., and our wonderful managing editor. And there are many journalists on the ground, including our small team. I am in awe of their courage, their enthusiasm with which they tell stories. Atia FarAzar, Sana Atef, Mahsa Elham, Mahtab Safi (not their real names) are the women journalists whose contribution made Zan Times into a newsroom that has made an impact around the world.
There are also several men who have made important contributions. One of those men is our chief operating officer (name withheld for security reasons), who is always crunching numbers and ensuring our team gets paid for the contribution they make. Hamayon Rastgar, my life partner, the man who believed in me even when I doubted myself, is managing our communication. Matin Mehrab (not his real name) is one of our senior journalists who has immensely contributed to our investigative coverage. I feel proud to have shared many bylines with him at Zan Times and elsewhere. A.A is the meticulous mind who ensures our work reaches you on social media with an appropriate picture. And two other men who recently joined our team, our report and Farsi editors.
The last, but not least, is our English-language copy editor, Patricia Treble, without whose dedication, our ESL would have danced across your screens. I am in awe of her work ethic, and in some ways, jealous of her time management skills and her ability to deliver on tight deadlines.
I started this piece talking about the difficulties and challenges we faced. Here is where I tell you about the people who supported us and about our successes. In the past two years, we have worked with several organizations to be able to afford to produce so many investigations and reports:
- Internews was one of the first organizations that trusted us and supported our work. I am not sure if we could have stood our ground if Internews hadn’t stepped in. After two years of work, Internews remains one of our generous donors.
- Reporters Without Border (RSF) has provided grants to some of our colleagues and funded the three issues of our pilot newsletter.
- The International Center for Journalists provided us with a grant that enabled us to purchase essential equipment as well as online subscriptions to aid our reporting.
- The International Women’s Media Foundation helped us produce two short documentaries about women’s resistance in Afghanistan.
- The Afghan Witness, a project of the Center for Information’s Resilience, supported the launch of our online archive that aims to document violence against public women.
- The Institute for War and Peace Reporting is supporting our initiative to mentor the next generation of women journalists in Afghanistan.
- The Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organisation is supporting our human rights documentation and a podcast project.
- HAMRAH Initiative, hosted by Global Dialogue, is helping us with technical support.
We take pride in having worked with these reputable organizations that see our work as important and worthy of their support. Some of these organizations also provided us with training and workshops that helped us learn to improve our skills, such as the Dart Center, a project of the Columbia School of Journalism, which offers training on trauma-informed journalism.
The list of supporters doesn’t end here. We have partnered with news organizations to ensure that the stories we produce with our heart and soul reach as many people as possible. Among these organizations are the Fuller Project, The Guardian, Impact newsletter, Nadja, Women’s eNews, Courrier International, as well as the many other media organizations and journalists who continue to amplify our work.
Most importantly, there are generous individuals who make one-time or monthly donations to Zan Times. They include 330 people who helped us raise more than CAD$40,000 on the chuffed fundraising site. These donations proved to be critical to enabling us to continue our work during times when donor-related projects dried up.
The generous support from donor organizations and individual donors enabled us to:
- Speak with over 1100 people in Afghanistan, including 740 women since our inception
- Work with 21 journalists in the past year alone, including 14 women
- Produce more than 145 original feature and investigative stories
Our work is receiving official recognition around the world. So far in 2024, we have received the Human Rights Press award for the category of Newsroom in exile, as well as the Johann-Philipp-Palm-Award for Freedom of Speech and the Press. Our coverage of women health workers was awarded the Women’s Prize for Journalism by the Institute for War & Peace Reporting. Our coverage of young women’s suicide was a finalist at the Canadian Association of Journalists Award for human rights reporting. The same report was also long-listed for a One World Media Award.
We couldn’t have been here without the support we received. So, this moment of reflection is about the people and organizations who came to our aid and who made us feel that our work and our reporting matter. And we hope this support continues to enable the young and fragile Zan Times to grow and reach its full potential.
Since you read this far in my reflection on the past two years, I know that you are someone who cares about women’s rights, gender equality, journalism, and about Afghanistan. So, I want to invite you to become a member of the Zan Times community. Together, we can make the changes we want to see in the world:
1) Join our community by signing up for our Newsletter: Our free weekly newsletter is a curated selection of the most important stories about Afghanistan reported by Zan Times and other media, as well as offering a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how we work on challenging stories.
2) Become a member: By donating 10 dollars a month, you can become a member of the Zan Times community and become the reason we exist and do the work that matters to all of us.
Thank you for your solidarity and commitment. Together, we can make a difference.
