UAE | General

Ad company owner nurses fond memories of journalism launch pad

A former Gulf News reporter and Abu Dhabi bureau chief who joined the newspaper in 1985 recalls her fond memories of working as a journalist in the days of typewriters.

  • By Marten Youssef, Staff Reporter
  • Published: 00:29 March 14, 2008
  • Gulf News

  • Image Credit: Ravindranath/Gulf News
  • Sana Bagersh started as a reporter with Gulf News in 1985. After leaving in 1999, she started her own advertising company.

Abu Dhabi: A former Gulf News reporter and Abu Dhabi bureau chief who joined the newspaper in 1985 recalls her fond memories of working as a journalist in the days of typewriters.

The Arab-American-Yemeni-Ethiopian is dressed in a colourful headscarf and sits surrounded by eye-grabbing ads, which are a product of her advertising and marketing company. The smile hardly leaves her face as she looks back 23 years on her time with Gulf News.

After receiving a communications degree in Tennessee, Sana Bagersh came to Abu Dhabi in 1985 to join her family and hopefully work as a journalist. At the time when Gulf News was being re-launched, Bagersh was offered a post in the Abu Dhabi bureau. "At the time there were only two reporters and we all used typewriters," she laughed.

With the training of an ambitious reporter, Bagersh was constantly looking for stories that helped define journalism in the country. In 1990, shortly after being married, Bagersh moved to Washington State. "I left Gulf News a few weeks before Iraq invaded Kuwait and I remember regretting it so much. Kuwaitis were flooding into the UAE, and I had just missed a peak career moment."

What she didn't know is that her journey with Gulf News wasn't over. After starting a gourmet pizza business, Bagersh's love for the Arab world brought her and her family back in 1997 - this time as the Gulf News bureau chief in Abu Dhabi.

"Gulf News flew me to Algeria for the PLO conference and I loved it. It was so odd, all of the press conferences were held at 3am. I still don't know why. But we were all so scared of Yasser Arafat because he would always ridicule any reporter that asked him any question," she said. "I still have all my clippings, you know," she said proudly.

Of her fondest memories in reporting was covering the Gulf Cooperation Council Summit. "All of the sessions were closed-door meetings and I wanted to file a story, so we decided to be a bit creative and be inquisitive. I wondered how much food these guys were eating so I went and asked the head chef, who was glad to tell me these crazy numbers. We ran the story and it was a hit."

In 1999, Bagersh left Gulf News for Thuraya Satellite Telecommunications and within a few years climbed to a top marketing executive. After several attempts to resign, Bagersh eventually left Thuraya and started her own advertising and marketing company in 2004: BrandMoxie. She still loves to write and makes a point of reading Gulf News.

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