{"id":5201,"date":"2023-05-21T13:32:52","date_gmt":"2023-05-21T17:32:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/?p=5201"},"modified":"2023-05-21T13:32:52","modified_gmt":"2023-05-21T17:32:52","slug":"hunters-seventh-pulitzer-fellow-wants-to-reclaim-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/2023\/05\/hunters-seventh-pulitzer-fellow-wants-to-reclaim-journalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Hunter’s Seventh Pulitzer Fellow Wants To Reclaim Journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
Laila Gad (first from right) is the first Egyptian-American from Hunter College to win Pulitzer Fellowship. [Photo by Professor Sissel McCarthy]<\/figcaption><\/figure>The stage was all set for the evening of April 18 at Roosevelt House before a student, seated in the front row beside designated guest speakers receives a special mention by the event organizer. As attendees clap to the announcement, Laila Gad,\u00a0 astonished, looks around her, throwing a smile at the stage after getting honored as this year\u2019s Pulitzer Fellow.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was actually at work when I found out,\u201d Gad says, giggling as she revisits the exact moment she peeked at the notification she had been waiting for since her freshman year at Hunter. \u201cI feel like the topic I am gonna be reporting on is really important and I feel excited that I was being supported to report on it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Gad is now the seventh Hunter student to be bestowed with an opportunity that allows student journalists to investigate and document underreported issues on a global scale. She plans to take a flight to Singapore in July and, through the lens of her camera, expects to capture hardships of Singapore\u2019s aging population amid the country\u2019s rising temperatures.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But beneath her recent success lies a narrative that makes her different, if not distinctive from her precedents. Once on track of becoming a doctor, Gad eventually made up her mind to pursue journalism, which she, at first, saw as a way to remove the communication barriers of science. She has since come to discover it as an \u201copen-ended\u201d gateway to explore realities on multiple grounds. \u201cI can be whatever I want.\u201d says Gad. \u201cIf I want to pursue science journalism, I could.\u00a0 If I wanted to pursue I guess investigative journalism, I could. Or even entertainment journalism, like it’s very open.<\/span>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Like every student reporter, Gad often finds herself pitching ideas, reaching out to would-be sources, and drafting stories. However, she does not reduce her work merely to interviews and writing. \u201cJournalism is the art of being able to raise awareness,\u201d Gad says, which she has done since her pre-med days; sometimes by writing essays on food insecurity or driving around her neighborhood in Staten Island to make Instagram reels covering rain-affected areas.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The American-Egyptian Journalist<\/b><\/p>\n

Although Gad has been a New Yorker her entire life, she never forgets about her cultural background.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEven if I am not in Egypt, I am still an Egyptian journalist,\u201d says Gad, whose parents came to the United States in 2000, fostering a family over the years following their arrival.<\/span><\/p>\n

When Gad looks back on her travels to Egypt, she vividly recalls visiting the country twice, with her most recent trip taking place at the age of 15, while she was still attending Staten Island Tech High School. Taking trips to malls and boardwalks gave her a \u201csense of community.\u201d However, the moment she turned on the television, she came across a beleaguered state of broadcast media controlled by a few high-ranking community members of Cairo.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cJournalism is completely wiped over there. It\u2019s not really a thing anymore. You can get in trouble basically if you are a journalist\u201d says Gad, who stands fearless despite knowing the risks that lie for her reporting fellows in other parts of the world. \u201cI felt like being able to practice it here in America is sort of a way of like reclaiming journalism.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Gad finally makes up her mind to chase this vision of “reclaiming” the fourth estate during the COVID-era when headlines on every news channel and outlet gripped on George Floyd’s last words that epitomed a climate of political unrest of the time. \u201cI just felt like I want to be there\u2026 like, I wanted to be there when things were happening,\u201dsays Gad, for whom witnessing social injustice around her has always triggered a curiosity to dig further into what cannot be seen through a naked eye. \u201cAnd I wanna be reporting on them and I want to\u2026like, investigating things.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Championing Climate Change<\/b><\/p>\n

In a long run, Gad aspires to be a climate reporter. If anything, a curious teenage mind \u2014 which led Gad to take a step further to pursue journalism in first place \u2014 also sowed in her an ambition to understand climate change and act on it as an agent of the fourth estate.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To run down a memory lane, Gad found global warming hovering above her since her high school days. She recalls how playing soccer with her friends in an open field during a summer break led her to take part in a sunscreen awareness study.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like sports is really the way I started to think about climate,\u201d says Gad, for whom, widening her understanding of climate change did not stop there.<\/span><\/p>\n

In college, Gad embarked on a track of being a pre-med student. However, the tide turned around as sophomore year approached. She acknowledges \u201cScience in New York City,\u201d \u2014a class offered by Macaulay Honors College where her professor focused extensively on ocean currents \u2013 as an experience that only deepened her preexisting eagerness to learn more\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was always interested in heat. Now I had this other layer of climate being able to explain this in terms of journalism and science,\u201d says Gad, who also perceives reporting as instrumental in making climate concepts \u2014 often loaded with sophisticated research terms \u2014 more accessible to broader sections of communities around her.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A Newswoman of Hunter<\/b><\/p>\n

Being a part of the Hunter community also factors into Gad\u2019s journey of revisioning journalism. After a shortlived service at New York Public Interest Research Group, Gad continues to be a reporter for The Athenian, where she generates stories that inform a commuter school of its daily happenings.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Gad considers Professor Anne Byrnes as her mentor. An adjunct teaching Reporting and Writing 2 every semester, she deems her former student as someone who always managed to put together thoughtful journalism in class.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLayla really wants to make an impact with the work that she’s doing, and it comes through and the work that she does in terms of the stories that she captures and the and the topics that she’s covering,\u201d says Professor Byrnes, with whom\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Like her soon-to-be mentors at Pultizer Center, Dominic Smith and Andrew Robinson, Gad desires to produce a multimedia journalistic piece on her journey to Singapore this summer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI like to report on things that aren\u2019t really talked about,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gad largely credits her current positioning to her parents, especially her mother who she believes cultivated a drive of curiosity and inquisitiveness from a young age. Although a Tolstoy admirer, Gad\u2019s younger self often spent most of the time skimming through pages of \u201cWho Was?\u201d, a children\u2019s book series that introduced her to some of the revolutionary scientists and their innovations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt made me think like I want to do that one day\u2026 like I want to be on this list too.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The stage was all set for the evening of April 18 at Roosevelt House before a student, seated in the front row beside designated guest speakers receives a special mention by the event organizer. As attendees clap to the announcement, Laila Gad,\u00a0 astonished, looks around her, throwing a smile at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":114,"featured_media":5013,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/114"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5201"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5219,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5201\/revisions\/5219"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}