Veteran Journalist Gives Career Advice to Georgetown Students

Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) recently hosted prominent international journalist and editor Magda Abu-Fadil for a campus lecture titled “The Evolution of a Journalist” where she shared her professional experiences, discussed the history of journalism through the digital age, and gave career development advice to an audience of Georgetown students, faculty and staff.

The media expert presented a photo slide of key figures she has met over the years, and described her professional trajectory from working as a journalist in the White House to her stint in academia teaching journalism at her alma mater, American University in Washington, D.C. The former Washington bureau chief of Events magazine then took questions from the audience, who asked about everything from the rewards of the profession to what it takes to be a successful journalist. “To me there’s a story everywhere. To be a journalist, you have to have endless curiosity,” she said.

In response to a student’s question about her key advice for future journalists, she repeatedly expressed the importance of a broad educational background in international affairs and other social sciences, in order to understand the “context” of any newsworthy event. “You need a reservoir of information and you need to know how to process it,” she explained.

Mohamed Zayani, who currently directs the Media and Politics Program at GU-Q said: “It is important for our students to engage with both journalists and media professionals and to develop the ability to reconcile theory and practice.” The Media and Politics program is a joined academic initiative between GU-Q and Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q) that brings together the strength of both institutions..

“A lot has changed since I started working in journalism, and that’s coming on 45 years. When I started, we had notepads and typewriters.  Now there are a whole new set of digital tools,” she explained. Showing a photographic slide of the extensive equipment journalists required only a few years ago, she quipped: “This bag weighs a ton because we used to carry around rolls of film, batteries and more, and I still have the back problems to prove it.”

She also described her time serving as director of the Institute for Professional Journalists at the Lebanese American University and as the head of the Journalism Training Program at the American University of Beirut, which she founded. She now works as a freelancer. “I enjoy setting up media programs and I love to talk a lot about media ethics. Because I see there’s a real lack of it, and it is totally unacceptable,” she said. 

Magda Abu-Fadil conducts seminars and workshops in English, Arabic and French for professional journalists across the Arab world, collaborates with international organizations on media projects, consults on media education programs, speaks regularly at international conferences, publishes extensively on media issues.