LAHORE: The Nazaria-i-Pakistan Trust in Lahore organised an event to pay tribute to recently deceased veteran journalist, Arif Nizami.
Nazaria-i-Pakistan Trust was established in July 1992 by the former chief minister of Punjab, the late Ghulam Haider Wyne. NPT is a non-parochial national academic-cum-research institution for promoting the ideology of Pakistan as declared by Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Allama Mohammad Iqbal.
To perform this role the trust aims at those objectives for which Pakistan was established, recalling sacrifices rendered to achieve it, and creating awareness among people, particularly youth, about its ideological basis and its glorious Islamic cultural heritage.
During the event, Arif’s son Yousaf Nizami, senior journalist Mujib-ur-Rehman Shami, Irshad Arif, Sajjad Mir, Salan Ghani, Imran Masood and Shahid Rasheed addressed the participants, recalled their memories with Arif Nizami and prayed for him.
Syed Athar Jameel Qazi, Ata-ur-Rehman, Mehnaz Rafique and Sikander Hameed Lodhi also participated in the event.
Renowned journalist and editor of Pakistan Today Arif Nizami passed away on Wednesday last at the age of 74.
Nizami started his career as a reporter in his father Hameed Nizami’s Urdu language daily, Nawa-i-Waqt. After his father’s death, Nizami continued to work at Nawa-i-Waqt as executive editor up until 1985 when he founded the English daily The Nation.
During his time as editor of The Nation, Nizami trained and supported some of the major names in Pakistan’s journalism today. As an editor, he has been remembered as a staunch defender of his reporters and staff who would stand in support of his team no matter who was on the other side.
In 2010, Nizami ended his 25-year run as editor of The Nation and founded a second English daily newspaper, Pakistan Today. Here he challenged widely held beliefs about how the newspaper business works in Pakistan, introducing a ‘Berliner’ size newspaper that was unlike anything seen by paper readers in the country before.
Nizami was also quick to adapt to changing times, and in the latter part of his career found great success and acclaim as a political analyst and talking head on television. His opinions were widely sought out and his analysis was closely watched by many.
