Four months short of his 97th birthday, veteran journalist Zawwar Hasan, whose career spanned from sports reporter and editorial writer to travel magazine editor and public relations manager, passed away on Saturday after a brief illness.
Hasan, who was born in January 1927 in Pratpgarh, India, completed his LLB at Allahabad University before relocating to Pakistan.
In Karachi, he began working as a sports reporter for the government-run Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) in 1949. His bylines appeared in publications including the Civil and Military Gazette after he was appointed the agency’s main reporter in Lahore.
Sports enthusiast Hasan may be the first Pakistani journalist to have covered three Olympics, in Sydney in 2000, Rome in 1960, and Melbourne in 1956, all with the Associated Press.
Hasan began his career in 1960 as a lead reporter for the Daily Dawn. He later served as a senior editorial writer at The Morning News in Karachi before making a brief stop at The Sun.
Along with journalists from Taiwan, Iran, and South Korea, he attended the University of Missouri School of Journalism’s Project for Foreign Newspapermen in 1957. His fellowship includes work at The Mexico Ledger in Mexico, Missouri, The Lawrence Daily Journal-World in Lawrence, Kansas, and The Denver Post in Denver, Colorado.
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.
