Sharon Nadeem is a graduate of UBC Journalism’s Class of 2018 and now works as an associate producer for the Global Reporting Centre.
While previously working as a software engineer in India, Nadeem found her passion for creative problem solving. Since transitioning to journalism, she’s pursued that passion through her work on multiple long-term, investigative projects, and says she’s at her best when she’s “in the field trying to problem solve.”
Here’s what she had to say.
How did you enter the world of investigative journalism?
I took RIIC [Reporting in Indigenous Communities]. It was a good introduction to reporting over a longer period of time. In IJ [Integrated Journalism], you do quick news stories. In RIIC, you have three months and you do one story. And in GRP [Global Reporting Program], you have one year and you do one or two stories. So it’s a good way to learn what it’s like to do longer and deeper stories. I ended up doing a story about Indigenous herbalists in Vancouver who were trying to bring back native species. I would highly recommend anyone who wants to take GRP to take RIIC. It was the perfect first step.
Tell us a bit about the story you worked on with the GRP.
The broad topic was refugees in Europe because it was thought there were still some narratives that were missing, even though there was a lot of coverage. We quickly landed on Turkey because it was sort of like the jumping point for a lot of refugees based on where it is geographically—between Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, and Europe. Turkey was the funnel through which refugees would make their way to Europe. When we started looking deeper, we realized since Syrians had received so much of the media coverage and the attention in Turkey, they had a different system set up for them. Syrian refugees, when they enter Turkey, can apply for an asylum and live wherever they want in Turkey and move around, but non-Syrian refugees, if they apply for asylum in Turkey, they get funnelled into satellite cities, which means really tiny cities, and they can’t live in the metropolitan areas like Istanbul. So we thought that was interesting, and the narrative at that time was that Turkey was this saviour country taking in all these refugees and looking after them, but the systems are more complicated than that.
Your year was unique in that the entire team went to the same location. How did you organize the work?
We all went to Turkey and split up our team exactly how Turkey splits up refugees, which meant one group in satellite cities talking to refugees there, and one stayed in Istanbul and figured out what life was like for refugees there. We quickly realized non-Syrian refugees would either go the legal route and end up in these satellite cities or they would not apply for asylum and illegally live in the metropolitan areas. They knew they would not be able to find jobs in the tiny little towns.
I stayed in Istanbul. A lot of refugees we talked to were from Iraq, Afghanistan, north African countries, and many wondered, “Have they forgotten about us?” Andrew [Seal] and I ended up doing a few stories: one about a safehouse and a smuggler and what it’s like for refugees to spend time waiting to cross the border. Another we did was on Turkey’s lack of a centralized DNA database. The info is stored in these disparate labs across the country that are not talking to each other. And what happens is bodies will wash up from all the sinking of boats in the Mediterranean Sea, and if the body is not claimed, they’ll take a DNA sample and store it in the local lab. But if a family member wants to find them, how do they do that without a centralized database? We found a character who was looking for his wife and two children, and he went on a cross-country trip to all of these morgues and labs to try and convince them to take his son’s DNA to cross-reference it to whatever DNA they had. This guy never ended up finding his wife or two children. He was convinced they were still alive.
After you graduated, you did a fellowship with The Walrus, an online magazine known for its long-form, in-depth pieces.
The experience of GRP helped me understand I liked long-form journalism. At The Walrus, I did fact checking, copy editing, proofreading. The Walrus has New Yorker-level fact checking. It’s very stringent and intense. And that process made me a better reporter because I started thinking about how to document better, and I don’t think I was doing a good job at documenting until I started fact checking for them. I also got editing experience; they assign you an editor who mentors you on things like pitching, editing stories. It was my first real experience learning how to edit.
What did you do after The Walrus?
I had kept in touch with Peter [Klein] after I graduated, and when I was finishing up with The Walrus, I saw the Global Reporting Centre was looking for a finance and operations assistant, and my thinking was I wanted to come back to Vancouver and work on projects that were international in scope. And then three or four months ago, I shifted roles to an associate producer at the GRC. So now we’re working on a documentary for PBS Frontline and the Associated Press that’s looking at medical supply chains in the age of COVID.
What tips do you have for journalists pursuing longer pieces?
It was important for me to remain in touch with my sources. I remember I had to remind myself, I’m a journalist, not their friend. It gave me clarity on why I’m still doing this story. I also would recommend having a balance and setting out times when you work on the story, and times when you don’t. I definitely let it be all consuming at times. I would tell myself, this isn’t going to be the last story you ever write. A lot of times, it felt like this was going to be my only project that I had to dedicate my life to, and I wish I had taken a step back.
Any final words for fresh graduates?
I graduated in May [2018], got the Walrus position in September and started in October, and those months in between were very stressful because I was applying for jobs left, right and centre. You’re competing against so many experienced journalists. I had an Excel sheet of every job I was applying to, and at one point, I had like 60 and I was so upset. I remember thinking a couple things at the time. One, graduates should understand that it’s not a reflection of you; it’s just the job market. And second, sometimes you end up taking a job that’s not exactly journalism, and that’s OK— you might find that you enjoy it.
