Veteran journalist Zawwar Hasan, who worked as a sports reporter, editorial writer, travel magazine editor, and manager of public relations, died on Saturday following a brief illness. He would have turned 97 in four months.
Hasan, who was born in Pratpgarh, India, in January 1927, graduated from Allahabad University with an LLB before relocating to Pakistan.
In 1949, he began working for the government-run Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) in Karachi as a sports journalist. Later, he rose to the position of chief correspondent for the agency in Lahore and began to appear in publications like the Civil and Military Gazette.
Hasan began working as the lead reporter for the Daily Dawn in 1960. He later held the position of senior editorial writer at The Morning News in Karachi before temporarily working for The Sun.
His travels abroad included attending the Project for Foreign Newspapermen at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 1957 alongside journalists from Taiwan, Iran, and South Korea. The Denver Post in Denver, Colorado; The Lawrence Daily Journal-World in Lawrence, Kansas; and The Mexico Ledger in Mexico, Missouri were among the publications he worked at during his fellowship.
In 1966–1967, he was also awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University.
An avid sports fan, Hasan is maybe the only Pakistani journalist to have covered three Olympics: Sydney 2000 for Dawn on a special assignment, and Melbourne 1956 and Rome 1960 for APP.
Focus on Pakistan, a revolutionary travel publication, was founded by Hasan on behalf of the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation. Later, after resigning as general manager of advertising, he joined PIA’s public relations division.
He moved to California in the middle of the 1990s, where his kids had already made their home.
He is survived by his youngest sister Zakia Sarwar, brother Wing Commander (Retd) Ali Hasan, who is a co-founder of the Society of Pakistan English Language Teachers (SPELT), and a sizable extended family in Pakistan, India, and other countries.
