Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [56]
I like the sound of that. I’ve never been anyone’s boss. That is, I like the sound of it until we get back later that night to the work I abandoned earlier on my desk.
Even without the recent catastrophes, we’d have no shortage of news. Hardly have I had time to learn the intricacies of Yemeni politics when I am plunged into orchestrating coverage of the September 20th presidential election. The elections are an excellent opportunity to drive home to my reporters the importance of fair and impartial journalism. Almost as important is that I am anxious to prove to our readers that the Yemen Observer is not a tool of the regime. Because of Faris’s work with the president, many Yemenis assume the paper is simply a government mouthpiece.
Thus, in the days leading up to the election, I am careful to include coverage of all of the candidates. We split the front page equally between Saleh and bin Shamlan, the major contenders, but also include at least one story on each of the other candidates.
But while we are not short on news, we are short on people to write it. I don’t have enough staff to cover the elections while still producing the regular Culture, Business, and Health and Science pages. Only Ibrahim and Farouq seem capable of writing political stories, but they can’t fill the front page alone. How can I create a revolution without an army? If only I had arrived to find a full newsroom, what a world of difference that would have made! But Faris seems intent on running the paper with as few people as possible. This baffles me, because reporters’ salaries cannot possibly be one of Faris’s main expenses. My journalists earn between $100 and $200 per month and have no health insurance or any other benefits. How can a man who drives a Porsche and lives in a mansion with alabaster windows refuse to adequately staff his own paper for financial reasons?
I brainstorm with Luke and Zuhra for solutions to our dearth of staff. We decide to run an ad in the paper and to put up fliers in the university at the school of journalism. Al-Asaadi concurs with this decision but cautions me against hope. “The problem with hiring staff is that none of the graduates of the journalism school can write in English,” he says. “And we can’t hire translators for everyone. But if we hire people who can write in English, they have no journalism experience.” I have no choice, really; I am going to have to train English majors. It irks me that Yemenis seem to believe that if they can write in English, they are qualified to be a reporter. It doesn’t occur to them that other skills might be necessary for the job.
We also have copy-flow issues. I want to get reporters to file some stories on the first day of our three-day cycle, so not everything is coming in just before deadline. Ideally, the features pages would be filed to me Saturday; the Business, Panorama, and back pages would be filed Sunday; and only the front, Local, and Election pages—which need to contain the latest news—would be left to edit on Monday, a closing day. But this seems impossible. I’m lucky if I get any copy by midday on the second day of the cycle. This means I spend days worried sick that we won’t have enough to fill the issue.
It bewilders me that al-Asaadi is unconcerned about the lack of a schedule. He seems perfectly happy to have everything come in at the last minute and to stay up all night closing each issue. In fact, he rarely bothers to come in before eight P.M., thus ensuring the lateness of our close. Our closing days continue to run from eight A.M. until three or four A.M. the next day. I am exhausted, and the irregularity of my hours means that when I am home, I often cannot fall asleep. My body has no idea what time zone it is in. The irregular hours don’t seem to bother any of my male staff—but then again, they’re all on drugs. They chew qat every