1) This thread is about me. I’m glad it was written, I had been wanting to address these issues. Some of the things said are true, some are false, some are inaccurate perceptions. https://twitter.com/fzehran/status/1273353976797413379

2) But I share with Zehra that things need to improve personally and institutionally. I’ll try to put them in context, explain and offer some possible solutions, hopefully without apologies for anyone.

3) It’s true what I told my sub (Zehra’s coworker) about Urdu desk but it’s false that it was for reputation etc. This was when I was still newer at Dawn; I had walked into an office where the vibe was already bad. There was anger and frustration at the management.

4) I found the Urdu team to be demotivated. I did not think it was a healthy work culture. Not surprising since as one of the Urdu staffers said, he worked on the desk alone for months and would be asked to prepare blogs in advance for 10 days in order to take a break.

5) This is not a personal critique of anyone at any desk but of an office culture created by institutional reasons which preceded me and are still there after me. Having said it, it’s important to ask why what I said was perceived as an English/Elite and Urdu divide.

6) Instead of personalizing it by defending myself against claims of classism or putting it on Zehra by suggesting she is falsifying things on purpose, I’d say the focus should be on structural reasons behind why the Urdu desk feels it’s not respected.

7) As for the asking the sub to stay for separate meetings (plural) after work hours - this is false. Having said that, one meeting after the usual work hour did happen.

8) What I should reveal is that after this meeting, the sub complained to the editor that I was being unfair to her in my work expectations and demands and that I needed to change how I went about it.

9) When the editor called me in office to bring this up, my first reaction was that we need to take seriously what she felt. One of the suggestions made to me was precisely that I should make sure I don’t hold her back beyond working hours.

10) This advice was followed, as well as a few others, and the editor and I decided to do a followup 4 weeks later. I was informed that the sub had told the editor that things had improved.

11) However as Zehra said the damage was done. Here a few things are important to address. My main issue was performance related but I want to put it in a structural context and not a personal one. It’s not about the sub being incompetent and me knowing everything.

12) As has been pointed out by so many, Dawn is chronically understaffed and under resourced. It does not have the capacity to train staff. The young and inexperienced staff walk into the job with the odds stacked against them.

13) With the workload I only had limited capacity to train staff especially when I was myself still learning the ropes. If there was pressure on the sub to produce, there was also pressure on me to show results everyday. I was under a hierarchy too and had to answer to people.

14) We were put at a disadvantage by the office we were working for. These are conditions ripe for things to boil over, which I admit they did at my desk in my early months. I regret that I was unable to do more.

15) This is also what creates elitism since it becomes attractive to hire someone with an foreign degree whom we perceive to be better and who could work for less money since they are from a privileged background. I worked at Dawn on little money because I had no bills to pay.

16) As for threatening to fire the sub - this is false. I did say the word ‘fire’ but not as a threat but to explain the situation the sub was in.

17) Her three month probation was coming to an end and I was supposed to write a recommendation to the management whether to make her permanent or let her go. The sub was initially hired on probation because of my recommendation, and a glowing one at that (I have the email).

16) I explained to the sub that if her performance does not improve, I will not be able to write a positive recommendation for her - and if that happens, she will get fired.

17) But it was received by her differently. I don’t have a problem with how she received it because I know that things were tough. When I gave my appraisal of her to the management, they wanted to fire her.

18) I argued it'd be unfair: it’s wrong to fire someone three months into their first job where there was no support. Her contract was made permanent; if anything, I kept her at the job. She was still there when I left last October and had been made employee of the month.

19) It is true she was transferred to news desk. But this was the only conflict resolution that was offered by the management. My input was that she needed to be at a desk with more staff so that she can have support and guidance since my desk was lacking in resources.

20) So yes, a woman was moved from my desk. It could have been worse: she could have been fired. What also happened was that another woman replaced her as my subeditor. The work that the desk did with her is there for all to see; let’s laud her too.

21) As for publishing my relatives (plural) frequently is also false. I published around 1k articles; go and see how many were written by a relative. There was only one and she wrote 8 articles, of which 2 were on Dawn’s top 5 reads. You can judge for yourself their quality.

22) I learnt from this episode, mainly that institutional support is not coming from Dawn. I decided to carry the burden of the work myself and I accepted that I cannot push my subeditor beyond a reasonable point, which I admit I did do at times previously when under pressure.

23) The work that my subeditor and I did at Prism and in the leadup to it is available for all of you to see. I’d like to think people were not that stupid to laud us for it. And in that period in case I failed in anything in the handling of anything, I apologize.

24) And yes, I came into work in the afternoon, but that’s just one aspect of work. Online work happens round the clock and I have all the receipts to show that I worked round the clock and on weekends. I also worked on my breaks.

25) I have nothing to prove to anyone when it comes to my hard work since the work we published and projects we accomplished speak for themselves and I’m confident about it.

26) As for staffers not being able to get time off, I believe it was due to contractual issues: those under probation can't get days off. Again, an institutional issue.

27) Lastly I regret that some info that should normally be confidential came out in this thread, but I don’t see what other choice I had. It’s dishonest to mention me and then in the same thread say that it’s not about pointing any one person out.

28) Anyhow, I hope that we all learn from this and become better people and create better institutions.

29) That I did not publish young writers is false beyond belief. Just look at the names of people we published. They are mostly unknown names, some of them ended up getting book deals. Prism came to be known as a place for new writers.