Iqbal Tamimi inspires me and her son surprises me

Iqbal Tamimi

I have never met Iqbal Tamimi, but she inspired me when I connected with her seven years ago.

We connected digitally then and I was amazed and delighted to get an update on her last week.

My first blog, from 2004 to 2008, was Training Tracks, published first on No Train, No Gain and later at the American Press Institute‘s website. It didn’t draw nearly the traffic or the comments that I get on this blog, but one comment stands out.

Iqbal commented on one of my posts (alas, the original post, with the comments, is not available online any more, but I wrote a subsequent post that recounted our exchange in the comments and subsequent emails). Here are some passages about Iqbal from the second blog post:

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Don’t let obstacles become excuses (republished from 2005)

Since I wrote yesterday about overcoming obstacles, I thought this would be a good time to republish this post from my Training Tracks blog at the American Press Institute. I think it’s the first time where I discussed this in writing, though I know I have repeated the point in writing and speaking many time. It’s one of the principles of journalism practice that I believe most strongly.

I edited lightly to update, adding a few links, but have not checked the links I published at the time to see if they are still active, though I think I should leave them in either way. This was published originally Aug. 16, 2005. Frankly, I’m a little disappointed with the writing; I tried to tie two points together and probably should have addressed them separately. But this is an archival post, not a rewrite.

The post refers to some other posts about computer-assisted reporting. I will republish those posts soon. The post refers to a comment by Iqbal Tamimi on one of those posts. Because the original post is no longer online, I can no longer find the full comment.

I figured I was done writing about journalists and computers for a while after three posts on the subject in a month’s time. But then I heard Sree Sreenivasan. And then Iqbal Tamimi wrote me. So I’m addressing the topic one more time.

I’ve read Sree’s “Web Tips” columns for a few years now. He wrote once about the “No Train, No Gain” web site that I help Dolf Els run along with some other newsroom trainers. After Sree interviewed me for that column, we’ve kept in occasional touch by e-mail and we finally met in June, when I spoke at a conference of the South Asian Journalists Association, of which Sree is a founder. I finally heard Sree train journalists last week at API’s seminar for news editors and copy desk chiefs.

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