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Continued from previous page
John Daniszewski,
W'79, Reporting
from Baghdad
In many ways, John Daniszewski's
career couldn't be different from
Uygur's. While Uygur had little idea
what his future held while he was at
Penn, Daniszewski quickly wedded
himself to The Daily Pennsylvanian
and to journalism. He was already
freelancing for The Associated Press
by the time he graduated.
"Wharton was a serendipitous
choice," Daniszewski writes in an e-mail
from his current post as
Baghdad correspondent for the Los
Angeles Times. "It gave me an advantage
as a journalist in that I have
always felt fairly at ease with economic
topics, polls and corporate statements.
Courses I took in economics
and finance, international business,
statistics and labor law have all helped
me out through the years, whether it
was covering a labor dispute in the
Pennsylvania steel industry or the solidarity
strikes in Poland."
Indeed, it's difficult to overestimate
the leg up basic business classes give
journalists. Even one statistics class
makes covering political polls and scientific
studies a cinch. Accounting
and finance make dissecting most
corporate earnings statements a
breeze. Management classes make
communicating with corporate officers
easier and handling one's own
career negotiations less mysterious.
As an Associated Press newsman,
Daniszewski excelled at all of the
above. After joining AP full-time after
graduation, he transferred to
Harrisburg in 1980, New York in
1981, Warsaw, Poland in 1987, and
finally to Johannesburg, South Africa
as bureau chief in 1993.
The Los Angeles Times came calling
in 1996, and it was with that newspaper—known as a haven for some of
the industry's best writers—that
Daniszewski went to the Middle East.
He moved to Moscow in 2000, but
returned to the Middle East last year
to cover the war in Iraq.
"It was a difficult choice to leave
my family in Moscow and wait out
the war in Baghdad," Daniszewski
writes. "I definitely had the feeling I
might not get out of it alive...
But I thought that even with the danger
and the obstacles, it was worth-while
to report the course of the war
as best I could, and give readers that
side of the story.'"
For Daniszewski, the professional
reward came when U.S. troops
entered Baghdad on April 9. He says
it was one of the most exciting days
of his journalism career because he
saw people who were previously
afraid to speak their minds cheer
when the statue of Saddam Hussein
came down.
Since then, the story has become
more complex, with more nuances.
All the problems of the occupation—skyrocketing crime; the lack of electricity,
clean water, telecommunications
and jobs—have in some ways
overshadowed those first joyous
moments.
And now Baghdad has become a
dangerous place again, with soldiers,
aid workers and contractors all being
increasingly targeted by insurgents.
But since so much is at stake for
Americans, for Iraqis and for the rest
of the world in putting the country
back together and creating a stable
and prosperous Iraq, Daniszewski
feels fortunate to have the opportunity
to write about these great and
decisive issues.
They are, of course, also highly
controversial issues. Daniszewski
recalls one recent story he wrote
about American forces evacuating
the family home of a member of the
Iraqi resistance, then bombing the
house. The story thoroughly documented
that at least one of the
people who lived there was responsible
for a guerilla attack that killed
an American soldier. The piece also
documented the lengths to which
U.S. troops had gone to in order to
protect the women and children who
lived in the home: giving them notice
to leave, allowing them to pack up
some belongings, and destroying the
house only when it was empty.
Still, a reader complained that
the Los Angeles Times was biased
against the war because a photo that
ran with the story showed a woman
who had lived in the house in tears
near the wreckage. The reader
believed the story showed too much
sympathy for Iraqis, but Daniszewski
maintains the story was unbiased.
"The country is rebuilding and
schools are being reopened...but
you can't close your eyes to the reality,"
he says. "We have no purpose in
being here unless we try to give our
best take about what is going on. It's
not like we are going out and looking
for the bad things."
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