Some big news in the blogging world, revealed today in the Wall Street Journal (free link):
Zeyad, the amazing blogger behind Healing Iraq, a founding father of the Iraqi blogosphere, has been accepted to the City University of New York’s new Graduate School of Journalism (where I’ll be teaching). But we all have to pitch in to help him get there, for one has to have tens of thousands of dollars in the bank before getting a visa to come to the U.S.
Zeyad will have a tip jar up where you can help him directly. But frankly, even with the best work of the entire blogosphere, I doubt we’ll be able to raise all the money he’ll need. So I appreciate any connections to likely funders: foundations, companies, or individuals who want to help build journalism in Iraq and the Mideast.
Zeyad is a born journalist. As soon as he started blogging, I told him he should give up his chosen field, dentistry, and take up reporting. He laughed at the time but now he has been reporting not just for his blog but also for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian (all of whom, I hope, will pitch in assignments to help bring him here!). And he is coming to the j-school in New York.
As the Journal story by Yochi Dreazen reports today, Zeyad has chronicled not only the events in Iraq from outside the Green Zone and from an Iraqi’s perspective, he has also chronicled his own view of the war with an honesty and lack of ideology not present from other sources. Zeyad began his blog elated at the prospects of freedom and today, surrounded by constant violence, his view of those prospects is quite different.
I’m very excited to have watched Zeyad’s birth and growth as an outstanding journalist. I look forward to working with him at CUNY. I’ll be writing about this more but I wanted to let you know about the news immediately.
