Matthew LaPlante, a freelance journalist and assistance professor at Utah State University, couldn’t pull his heart and mind away from the rumor he’d heard about the “mingi,” or cursed, children. He and a photographer set out to tell the story, despite warnings from U.S. government and Ethiopian officials that the trip, a long and expensive undertaking, would be a waste of time.

In the end, LaPlante got the story. (Read it here, and here.) His efforts were rewarded when he won, along with photog Rick Egan, an Ancil Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism. 

Listen to LaPlante describe how he got this and other stories, and what he believes are a journalist’s most important tools.

First, second and third year journalism students put their own questions to Gan during the live Skype appearance.

UPIU investigative reporting students at Malaysia’s Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) held an exclusive live discussion via Skype with their country’s best-known investigative journalist Steven Gan in March.

The founder and now editor-in-chief of Malaysia’s ground-breaking news Web site Malaysiakini was guest speaker at a workshop on the use of confidential sources.

Gan took over an hour out of his hectic schedule at Malaysiakini’s headquarters in Kuala Lumpur to Skype with students at their campus in the capital’s twin sister city Petaling Jaya.

Gan shared his experiences in exposing major scandals with the help of confidential sources, and had sage advice for students nurturing ambitions to follow in his footsteps: investigate a confidential source and the information they’re offering before using it in a report.

People offering information confidentially to journalists may be motivated by personal agendas, he cautioned.

A journalist needs to explore the would-be source’s motivations and verify the authenticity of their information before deciding to use it. Use common sense, and weigh up the level of authenticity, Gan advised.

Relying partly on anonymous sources, Gan’s portfolio of investigative reporting includes the revelation of a deadly disease outbreak among illegal immigrants in detention in the 1990s, and an exposition of judicial corruption which eventually triggered a Royal Commission.

According to Gan, investigative reporting is challenging in Malaysia because there are no laws to protect confidential sources, and police can force journalists to go to court to reveal their identities.

Potential sources are therefore reluctant to speak to journalists for fear of their identities being revealed. That’s where commitment and persistence come in, Gan said — as does a sense of vocation.

“Journalism is a calling,” he stressed. “If you don’t have that, there is no point to doing journalism. It is something within you. You want to play a role in exposing the truth and hoping that somehow you can make a contribution to make your country a little bit better.”

Gan encouraged the UTAR participants in UPIU’s investigative reporting workshop to “ensure that the people in power are held accountable.”

Don’t worry, we’re not changing our tune. But as anyone who has been a journalist for more than five minutes knows, reporting and producing news content, whether hard news, features, or long-form, is all about exceptions. We preach the basic rules because it’s important to know and understand them before you break them. It’s also difficult to explain when and why those rules should be broken.

That’s why I was glad to read this recent story by Tom Hallman, Jr., a Pulitzer-winning feature writer at The Oregonian, a daily newspaper with a long history of great journalism. Hallman is a master at writing about issues that are relevant to everyone, but that don’t hold traditional news value.

In this story, Hallman tells a heartbreaking tale of a decades-old slight by a 12-year-old student against his his teacher.

When he was 12 years old, the boy did something he only later realized probably hurt his seventh-grade teacher. It was minor — he was, after all, a kid — but in time, when he was older and wiser, he wanted to find this teacher and apologize. 

But the teacher seemed to have vanished. Over the decades, the man occasionally turned to the Internet, typing the teacher’s name into the search box. He never found anything. He never quit looking. A few months ago — by now nearly 39 years after this happened — he got a hit.

Stunned, he started reading a story that two years earlier had appeared in The Oregonian. He studied an accompanying photograph and recognized his teacher. He cleared his screen and wrote an e-mail that ended up in the newspaper’s mailbox. A clerk forwarded it to me. I found it buried in my in-box where it was surrounded by notifications about crimes, road conditions and interoffice messages.

Only by chance was I curious enough about the subject line — “Customer Feedback” — to open the email from a man named Larry Israelson.

“You published an item involving retired teacher James Atteberry and the CASA program. Mr. Atteberry was a teacher of mine in the early ’70s, and I wish to apologize to him for a regrettable incident that occurred when I was his student. Can you provide any contact information for him, or would you be willing to serve as an intermediary and deliver a message on my behalf? Thank you for your time, and I await your reply. “

In the story, Hallman writes that he was intrigued. He searched his archives and tracked down Atteberry, and ultimately passed along a letter from Israelson to his former teacher.

While Hallman waited for the story to pan out, he struggled with the same question many reporters often face: It’s a good story, but is it news?

Here’s his conclusion:

As the days passed, I thought about this strange tale. There was no news. If no one ever heard a word about James Atteberry and Larry Israelson, it wouldn’t matter.

Or would it?

A good feature story is about something universal. When it comes to apologies, no one gets a pass in this life. Everyone deserves one, and everyone needs to give one. When I mentioned this letter to people, I found a story more universal than any that I’d written in years. Everyone told me they had someone they wished they could apologize to. And they told me that by the time they realized that truth, it was too late.

And in standard Hallman style, he shares a story from his own past – a story of a childish insult, and decades of vain remorse. Read it for yourself, and clock how quickly your memories return to a moment you wish you could take back. Hallman’s story works because it’s about a universal experience.

We’ll still harp on you for news hooks and nut graphs. But if you’ve got a great feature story that doesn’t necessarily have those elements, don’t despair. Convince your mentor of why the sort should be written or recorded. Tell us how it sheds light on the human experience, or finds a common thread between people, regardless of culture.

Challenge us. We dare you!

Hou Ye (Carol)

It’s always stiff competition, and the people who win are those who come up with sharp, timely news angles on a topic we choose.

This month, we’re covering the issue of tobacco and smoking. Our contest winners are busy reporting their stories – look for them at the end of this month! In the meantime, check them out!

Hou Ye (also known as Carol) is a postgraduate student at Peking University in China. She’s a pro at this cross-cultural linguistic stuff (she’s a translation major!) but also loves news writing. Carol has already participated in a UPIU workshop, and wrote a story about children who must cross a series of flooded streets to get to school. For this freelance contest, Carol’s writing about efforts at Peking University to make smoking unfashionable.

Dayo Ibitoye

Dayo Ibitoye lives in Nigeria, where he recently graduated from Ahmadu Bello University. Dayo studied chemical engineering, but he spends much of his time writing news stories and blogging. Dayo has some experience with success at UPI.com – his story about the rising rates of remedial university programs was published there late last year. Now, Dayo is working on a story about the Nigerian government’s efforts to curb tobacco addiction.

Ratnendra Pandey

Ratnendra Pandey is no stranger to UPIU – in fact, he won a freelance contest last year, when he wrote about a paper mill that uses its waste to power itself.  That wasn’t his first UPI.com byline. He wrote a story in 2010 about poor Indians who own cell phones but don’t have access to toilets. 

For this freelance contest, he’s writing about the lack of government oversight on tobacco farmers. Ratnendra is a graduate student in convergent journalism at Jamia Millia Islamia. He’s a top-notch writer, and he’s also pretty good at audio: Ratnendra produces shows for his college radio station.

Want to join their ranks? Keep an eye on this blog. We’ll announce our next freelance contest soon!

But that neighborhood is all the way across town, in an area known more for drug activity than friendly faces. It takes less than five minutes for you to talk yourself out of going: People who live there probably won’t answer their doors, and the detectives are going to send a press release, anyway. It’s okay to stay in the office and call your source down at the police department, right?

Wrong, says Paul Duggan, a longtime reporting veteran who now covers crime for The Washington Post.

Whether new reporters are too nervous to head out into unfamiliar neighborhoods, worried that no one will talk to them, or simply too lazy, more and more, they try to write the story through phone interviews of police officers and lawyers.

If that’s you, forget about winning any awards.

“There’s no substitute for getting out,” Duggan says. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and I try to spend as much time as I can out at things, talking to people in neighborhoods. You’re never going to get more off of a piece of paper than you will going out there.”

Duggan’s “office” is the grittier neighorhoods of Washington, D.C.

“I’m a 54-year-old white guy, and I spend most of my working day in inner-city black neighborhoods,” Duggan says. “You just realize, you can’t ever fit in, so don’t try. All you can do is the best that a 54-year-old white guy can do, and find people who like to talk.”

Duggan is an expert at finding people who like to talk. He’s also no schlump in the writing department: His crime stories vividly illustrate a world that many of the city’s wealthy prefer to ignore.

Late last year, Duggan crafted a compelling description of a crime that, sadly, was an almost perfect cliche of inner-city violence. What made the incident stand out was the number of victims, and the bumbling antics of the criminal.

“In a fledgling crime career cut short by ineptitude and arrest, Arvel Crawford left three dead on the ground in a pair of unrelated shootings before his 20th birthday, according to D.C. homicide detectives. Evidence suggests that he had a beef with only one of the deceased and that the others – including his father, also a felon – were simply victims of the young man’s poor marksmanship.

Crawford is serving an 18-year prison sentence for one of the killings, which occurred during a botched attempted to rob a suspected drug dealer in late 2009. Among his five partners in the failed stickup were his dad, Arvel Alston, and a uniformed, on-duty D.C. police officer who acted as a lookout in a marked cruiser.

Almost everything that could go wrong that night did, and Crawford, while trying to shoot the suspected dealer, accidentally put a bullet in his father. “Get up, Dad! Get up!” the son yelled, to no avail. Soon afterward, Crawford was in handcuffs.

It turns out that Alston wasn’t the only casualty of careless gunfire by his son, police said. They announced Thursday that Crawford has been charged in a 2008 double homicide in which he allegedly planned to kill one man. The other victim, a 61-year-old homeless crack user and petty thief, just happened to be loitering nearby when he was felled by a .45-caliber slug, apparently a stray.

His name was Nolan Cooper, and he was collateral damage – a stranger to Crawford and to the target of the shooting, 18-year-old JohnQuan Wright.”

I called Duggan to find out how he got this story. The details are vivid, and he pulls together and connects crimes stretching over several years. Initially, all he had to go on was a police report with Crawford’s name on it, announcing the man was behind a double murder. The date on the story: Dec. 30, smack in the middle of the U.S. holiday season, when newsrooms are sparsely populated and sources of all stripes are on vacation.

The short answer? Duggan had been reporting this story for years, by talking to police and reading crime reports. But more than anything else, this story is the result of many hours of walking the streets where these types of crimes usually occur.

“This was a lucky break,” Duggan says.

He’d written stories on the 2008 and 2009 incidents. He knew Crawford’s name from when he was charged with the 2009 shooting, and he’d written a profile of the homeless man who died in the 2008 shooting. Both stories are stuffed with details he gathered on the scene:

“As he walked north up a steep rise on Fourth Street….”

“…a cluster of austere redbrick blockhouses…”

“There’s an empty, boarded-up public housing high rise near the corner, an old brick eyesore called Temple Courts, due to be torn down.”

“…Automative Custom Touch is a squat brick garage in a low-end business strip…A neon sign above the door advertises ‘Bling Blings’ — chrome rims, window graphics, high-decibel stereo systems (‘Ask about our $99 tint!’)”

When Duggan wrote the 2008 piece, no one knew who had shot the homeless man. And when, in early 2010, he wrote about the time Crawford shot his own father, he didn’t know that Crawford was also behind the bullet that killed the homeless man in 2008.

For both stories, Duggan said he hit the streets, knocking on doors and ambling up to the types of people who loiter on sidewalks.

“Just don’t dress like a reporter,” Duggan says. “Don’t have a notebook in your  hand when the guy opens the door. Lean on the railing, with your shirt untucked, your jeans on.”

And that’s what you do, Duggan says, over and over, until you’ve got the story. In 2010, after the Post published a major two-part story by Duggan on an especially devastating wave of violence, Duggan told readers in a special Q&A chat that he knocked on the doors of 20 addresses he’d found in police records that were affiliated with the incident. It wasn’t always pretty.

“(One woman) came out yelling at me, ‘Get outta here, the cops already came and didn’t find (expletive).’ I didn’t expect anyone to welcome me in and invite me for tea,” Duggan said in the chat.

Those hours reporting on unfriendly areas are tough, but for Duggan, they pay off.

When the press release about Crawford killing the homeless man came across his desk late last year, Duggan recognized the names, he said, and he knew he had a good story.

“It was written by me pulling two fat files out of my desk,” he says.

Everything was there: Names, dates, and, most importantly, colorful details:

“Wright was standing on a sidewalk in the abandoned, dilapidated Temple Courts public-housing complex, a short walk from the earlier shooting scenes.”

“Alston staggered out of the car, blood spreading across his torso.”

It all came from the hours he’d spent on the streets, checking out the scenes of the crimes and talking to people who knew what happened.

Even when a neighborhood feels dangerous and unfriendly, there’s bound to be someone who wants to rehash what’s gone on, Duggan says.

“No  matter how much money they make or the neighborhoods they live in, people like to talk,” he says. “So it’s not as hard as it seems.”

• Pitch your best story idea on the topic described below. Be sure to email the story pitch to kkapralos@upi.com by Wed., March 28. In the email’s subject line, write “UPIU Freelance Story Pitch.” Your pitch should be no more than a paragraph or two. Give us a clear, concise description of what the story is, and why readers should care. Also, tell us who you plan to interview. Give us an idea of how equipped you are to complete the story by the deadline.
• We’ll take a look at all the pitches and select the top two or three. You’ll hear back from us by Fri., March 30.
• If your story pitch is selected, you’ll work with your mentor to come up with a detailed story outline by Wed., April 4.
• Once your outline is approved by your mentor, you’ll have until Wed., April 11 to produce your first draft.
• Final stories will be due on Wed., April 18.

So, what’s this story supposed to be about?  

We’re so glad you asked! This time around, we’re interested in story pitches on a very specific topic: Smoking.

Many U.S. lawmakers have a take-no-prisoners approach to the fight against smoking. Tobacco, a crop that was, and in some cases continues to be, a staple for farmers in the U.S. for generations, now has such a bad rap that it’s illegal in more than two dozen states to smoke in restaurants, bars, offices and other places. Graphic warning labels could soon appear on cigarette packages sold in the U.S., replacing the current black-and-white text warning. Lawmakers in some areas are toying with the idea of banning smoking in cars in which children are riding.

Still, smoking is a cultural mainstay in much of the world. Tobacco in various forms is an integral part of social life in a host of countries, despite global efforts to stunt the popularity of the carcinogen.

If you live outside the U.S., has the government in your area taken steps to ban smoking? Is tobacco use growing? Must cigarettes sold in your country contain warning labels?  What about smoking in films? Is it allowed?

If you live in the U.S., is your area following the national trends when it comes to smoking? Is tobacco still as popular as it once was? Are there trendy new forms of smoking (hookah, anyone?) taking the place of the traditional cigarette?

Come up with a compelling news story idea and send us the pitch!

Is there anything else I should know? 

Yes! Throughout this process, you’ll need to follow some basic guidelines:

• You must have be a journalism student and have a UPIU account to be eligible for this contest. Professional journalists and people without UPIU accounts are not eligible.
• If we discover that you have a conflict of interest regarding your story, we’ll discontinue your intensive mentoring, even if you’ve already started working. A conflict of interest exists when a reporter has a personal investment in a story. For example, if you’re writing about a farmer who pays you to help out every weekend, that’s a conflict of interest. If you write about a company at which a close friend or relative is an employee, that could be a conflict of interest. If you’re not sure, ask us BEFORE you start reporting.
• If you miss a deadline, we won’t submit your story to UPI.com, and you won’t earn a byline or $200. If you think you’ll be too busy to meet the deadlines, don’t apply.
• We’ll ask the students whose story ideas are selected to give us their contact information, including cell phone numbers and email addresses. If you don’t provide working contact information, we won’t be able to provide you with mentoring.
• As always, plagiarism is unacceptable. If we discover plagiarized material in your story, you’ll no longer be eligible for UPIU mentoring. If you have questions about our plagiarism policy, please contact us.

By now, we know the story: The pair spent about a week in Idlib Province. Hicks likely snapped thousands of photographs, the choicest of which have been published in the Times.

Shadid probably filled several notebooks with details and quotes.

We’ll never read the stories he found. He died on his way out of the country, apparently from an allergic attack. The horses Shadid’s guides used to transport supplies triggered the episode. Hicks performed CPR, but couldn’t revive Shadid. The correspondent’s body was draped onto one of the horses and carried out of Syria, into Turkey.

Shadid’s writing taught us much, and while he was alive, we could look forward to regular installments of his work.

Hicks doesn’t have that same golden pen. He’s a good writer, but his talent is in visual arts. Even so, Hicks’ piece on Shadid’s last days sheds light on the reporting that was the foundation of his illuminating news stories. We can learn about writing from reading Shadid’s work. Now, we can learn about reporting from reading Hicks’ recollection of his week in Syria.

•  Shadid had connections.

Syria is one of the world’s most impenetrable countries right now due to the government’s restriction on journalists crossing its borders. Many journalists want to report on what’s going on there, but Shadid is one of the very few who has gotten in. Through his deep network of sources, Shadid arranged for smugglers to meet them just beyond the barbed wire fence that separates Turkey from Syria.

Do you have a network of sources on your beat? Think through your past few stories: Did you interview the same few people over and over? How often do you meet new people on your beat? Do you collect cell phone numbers? Do you meet people for coffee just to talk and find out what they might know?

•  Shadid knew that the best reporting can’t be done over the phone.

In this age of bloggers and panic-inducing immediate deadlines, many new j-school graduates get jobs that tie them to desks, their only interviews done on the phone, or even through Facebook or Twitter. There’s nothing wrong with ringing up a source, but, in most cases, that’s not how you get ground-breaking stories. Shadid knew the only way to tell the story of Syria was to go there, even if it  meant climbing through barbed wire and hiking for hours.

Hicks writes:

“Anthony was not a thrill seeker, but he understood that the truth had to be found at the source. This is a war and barracks interviews could not replace the firsthand accounts of battle.”

Elsewhere on nytimes.com, Hicks writes:

“Anthony was willing to accept hardship and risk his life to bear witness and to tell the truth in his writing.”

When was the last time you had to make a physical effort to get a story? When was the last time you stood in a river in leaky hip waders to interview fly fishermen? Have you ever walked with a farmer along his property line? Do you make a habit of schlepping across town to catch a businessman as he leaves his office?

•  Shadid spoke the language.

Yes, he had the benefit of familial roots in the region, and it’s not easy to learn a new language. But Shadid’s knowledge of Arabic enabled him to interview people directly. He didn’t have to bother with finding or paying an interpreter, and he could form stronger bonds with his sources by engaging them without anyone standing in the way.

Hicks writes:

“(Shadid’s) Arabic allowed him to speak directly to people without the buffer of an interpreter. As always, he conveyed a genuine interest that made people open up to him; everyone was equal, no story insignificant.”

Have you ever taken a Spanish 101 class? Don’t underestimate the power of being able to say “please” and “thank you” when you’re working a story about undocumented immigrants from Mexico. Do you cover a specific community or refugees or immigrants? Make the effort to learn a few pleasantries in their language. In 2012, there’s no excuse if you can’t offer someone a basic “As-Salaam Alaikum.”

•  Shadid appreciated the hospitality of those he interviewed.

Hicks writes:

“We were offered dark Arabic coffee, and we accepted immediately. Anthony not only loved his coffee, he also needed it.”

Sure, it helps if you love Arabic coffee. But things get a bit sticker when your host slides a glass of throat-searing moonshine across the table. And what happens when someone slaps a whole, grilled fish onto your plate, beady eyes still glistening, or hands you a dirty plastic mug filled with a fermented corn sludge – the regional specialty ? Think these are rare instances for reporters? Think again – I’ve experienced all three of the above examples, and lived to tell about it. If you’re using your network of sources, hiking out to the story and doing your best to speak in a language people understand, it won’t take long before you’re asked to consume something you find suspect.

Just do it. It makes a good story – literally!

•  Shadid knew he could rest when he got home.

Hicks writes:

“That evening I read a book while Anthony walked down the street to interview some fighters we had been with that day. A while later an activist returned to tell me that Anthony wanted me to follow him and to bring my cameras. I arrived back at the base where we had seen them prepare their weapons, and as is the custom I took off my shoes before entering. There I found a carpeted room full of the fighters, now familiar to us, singing and playing traditional music, some clapping as one sang.

Directly across from me, amid cigarette smoke and sitting among them, was Anthony with a huge smile on his face. This was exactly the kind of connection that made him the most happy as a reporter; his great warmth and intelligence were part of what made him the most important journalist covering the Arab world.

He put his arms out and said gleefully, ‘Tyler, look at this!’ I found a seat next to him. Always wanting to share the experience, he told me that when they started singing he immediately sent for me…”

Reporting can be exhausting, especially if you’re in a foreign land and you’re stressed about danger. We don’t know whether Shadid was tired that evening, but we do know that he didn’t take an opportunity for rest. Instead, he found his sources and joined them. Often, the best reporting can be done long after the other journalists have closed their notebooks and headed home.

How often do you stay late when you’re out reporting? If you’re writing about the opening of a new daycare center, don’t leave after the ribbon-cutting. Stick around to see parents come to collect their children. Maybe you’ll find a fresh angle or an unexpected twist. Is the mayor presenting a new city budget? Hang around until she kicks off her shoes in her office. The pressure’s off – the unscripted moments usually result in the best quotes.

• Shadid didn’t take unnecessary risks.

Hicks writes:

“Anthony was eager to get back to Turkey. Our work was done, and there was no need to prolong the risk.”

Being a good reporter doesn’t mean placing yourself in harm’s way. Yes, you might have to for a period of time – but don’t do it just for the sake of excitement. Make sure you’re pursuing a clear story, carefully weigh the risk and create an action plan. When you have what you need, get out of there.

Are you reporting on drug-addicted homeless people? If you can, look for them during the day. If you need to go at night, don’t go alone. Are you cultivating sources in a violent gang? Talk to an expert to find out how to identify signs that you’re in danger. If you have a trusted source in the local police department, talk to him or her and share your plan.

• Shadid was deeply convicted of the importance of his work.

On nytimes.com, Hicks writes:

“The risks in Syria were very high, but we took them with great planning and caution, believing it was worth it to tell the story of this massacre. He was full of vigor and inspiration in our week of reporting, saying endlessly that he could not wait to start writing.

The end came suddenly, on our way out of Syria toward Turkey. He did not suffer. He died peacefully, doing what he believed in.”

There are as many reasons to leave journalism as there are news organizations. And not everyone should be a journalist. But if you choose this profession, make sure you’re passionate about it. That passion will carry you through and propel you toward exhilarating stories that, ultimately, will help make our world a better place.

That was a comment my friend Khalif Abdi made on a story I posted on Facebook about the death of Marie Colvin, an American reporter working for The Sunday Times of London, and Rémi Ochlik, a French photographer, who were killed in Syria last week.

Abdi’s commented might also have been directed at Anthony Shadid, a correspondent for The New York Times, who died a week earlier of “an apparent asthma attack” in Syria, as he stealthily reported on the country’s revolution. In late January, Hassan Osman Abdi, nicknamed ‘Hassan Fantastic’, who was the director of the independent broadcast, Shabelle Media Network, was brutally gunned down in Mogadishu, the second targeted killing of a Somali journalist in less than two months.

If not for anything else, it definitely looks like 2012 has turned out to be, at least for now, a dreadful year for journalists – not to mention the number of bloggers and journalists who’ve been detained and killed in Syria.

Amidst all this, it so happened that my latest piece for UPIU was about journalists who, like Colvin and Shadid, were caught up reporting from beside the canon’s mouth. It was about young Somali journalists who fled their home country precisely because they couldn’t continue reporting the daily intricacies of their own war-torn nation. Back home, they faced the wrath of their own government, the glaring swords of militant groups like Al-Shabaab, and the bullets of unforgiving militiamen and warlords who target them for “asking too many questions” and “reporting on critical issues.”

They have now run out of options, but to flee the country of their childhood. They are on the run. And there is no hiding place – even in the supposed safe heavens of Kenya’s cities.

For instance, to interview Mohamed Ahmed Mohamed, the only place he deemed safe to meet up was at the Somali Embassy in Nairobi. “I just don’t meet anyone I don’t know,” was his outright answer when I quizzed him over the reason.

Of late, Mohamed said he doesn’t even pick up any phone call that comes through to his mobile phone, walks cautiously around town, keenly observes the person seated next to him in public buses, and makes sure that he gets home before nightfall.

In turn, Mohamed Mascud said that on Dec. 21 last year, a few days after the killing of journalist Abdisalam Sheikh Hassan in Mogadishu by a man wearing government military fatigues, he received a tweet threat in Somali. “Greetings my friend,” it read. “Is this what you have come to be? I used to wonder about what you write for Shabelle. My Saudi friend, you are not OK.”

The Saudi reference alluded to the fact that Mascud was born while his parents stayed in the gulf state of Saudi Arabia. When he replied with the question of “who are you?” on Twitter, an answer was not forthcoming.

Despite all this, exiled Somali journalists in Kenya often meet to talk, and Somalia sits at the center of their discussions. They reminisce of the long beautiful beaches, the evening walks, and in the case of Horriyo Abdulkadir, her visit to the presidential palace in Mogadishu.

“It was the most beautiful moment of my life. I had so much belief in my country,” she said.

As the little army of historians writing from besides the cannon’s mouth, they also reflect on the effects they will have had on their country long after the guns have fallen silent.

“There would be others who would deliver the message,” Alinoor Moulid, who worked in Somalia, said of those threatening and killing the journalists. “So stop killing the messenger.”

It’s startling stuff, but is it a news story? For Zahi Sahli, a Lebanese journalism student, and UPI.com, definitely! When Sahli noticed increasingly sexist lyrics in music played at Beirut’s most popular venues, he was intrigued by the juxtaposition of a westernized night club pulsing with dance beats, but lyrics that seem better suited to a conservative, restrictive society.

“We don’t want our daughters to work with the degrees they have earned,” one song declares.  (Hear the whole song, here.)

Editor at UPI.com liked Sahli’s balanced piece on why the songs are popular, and how experts feel they’re shaping Lebanese culture. They published it early this month.

Below, Sahli shares how he found the story, and why he’s studying journalism in Beirut.

Name: Zahi Sahli

University: Lebanese American University, with a focus on journalism and Arabic studies.

Hometown: Beirut, Lebanon

UPIU: You’re a Lebanese-Canadian journalism student. Tell us about your background.

Sahli: I was born and raised in Beirut. I lived parts of my childhood in Canada. I’ve been interested in writing since early age, writing short stories and poems. At sixteen, I published my first collection of poetry and have been preparing for a fiction title.

Why did you decide to study journalism?

My interest in both writing in and understanding media drove me towards studying journalism.

How did you come up with the idea to write about sexist lyrics among Lebanese pop stars?

I felt it was an important topic that was not given as much importance as it deserves in local media. It started with a song but soon after, it became a worrying trend. In a country with a bloody past and present, such a trend becomes a concern, especially that all generations are music listeners and these songs are popular and playing on all radios.

Did you encounter any unexpected challenges in writing and reporting this piece?

I tried various ways to contact the concerned artists, but they did not want to talk and felt offended by the the issue.

Given the popularity of these songs, how did you maintain balance when you wrote your story?

Because I couldn’t get (the artists to defend themselves,) I had to mention how popular the songs are. This is the public defense that I have heard from the artists in the media: They say that the songs’  popularity provides sufficient proof that the songs are acceptable and their lyrics originate from cultural traditions.

The Arab Spring has dominated headlines for the past year. What’s it like to be a journalist in a region that is such a hot spot?

I’m not really an on-field reporter and I can’t get the feel of the Arab Spring from Lebanon. But I’m excited and, as a Lebanese citizen, I feel frustrated with the negative Lebanese stability. Arab journalists have an added responsibility to be objective.

What challenges to journalists in Lebanon face? Are there safety concerns?

A host of Lebanon’s best journalists, like Kamel Mroue, Salim Al Lawzi, Samir Kassir and Gebran Tueni among others, have been murdered. Journalists are killed in times of peace and war because of their political affiliations.

In a partisan media, journalists are almost always labeled and associated with political parties. At many times, they have to compromise their objectivity to please their employers.

What are your career goals?

I see myself as a writer more than a reporter. I would like to work at a respectable media institution while also contributing to literature.