By Adam Wakefield

Ziady began her career at Risk SA magazine in 2011, a niche business title focused on the insurance industry, while doing her Masters in media theory and practise at the University of Cape Town.

 “I don’t think it was a conscious decision so much as I fell into it. I did Honours in politics and philosophy at Rhodes University, and I finished on exchange in the United States. I was actually quite keen to work after that but didn’t find any jobs, so I enrolled for a Masters in journalism at UCT,” Ziady explains.

Becoming a financial journalist

It was just after Ziady began her Masters that the opportunity of an internship appeared at Risk SA – now called Risk Africa. The internship offered Ziady the chance to get experience in the journalism industry, with the intention to move into political journalism at a later stage.

Six weeks after starting the internship, Ziady became a permanent staff member, and as the workplace was a small one, with staff coming and going, Ziady was given more responsibility, which she enjoyed.

“In March 2013, I moved up to Johannesburg for them to kind of be their Joburg office, which I continued till the end of the year. It was at that stage I joined Moneyweb, realising my interest in financial journalism,” Ziady says.

Moneyweb and Times Media

Ziady had to acclimatise herself to Moneyweb’s broad scope, compared to Risk SA’s focused niche, but she learnt on the job, especially as she was “thrown into the deep end”. The coursework Ziady had completed prior was of great value as she went about establishing herself at Moneyweb.

“I did a financial journalism course at Wits a few years ago when I was still at Risk SA and, last year, I did a course with Bloomberg and GIBS [Business School], which runs over six months, and that was excellent, very in depth, and very rigorous,” Ziady says.

“It’s nice to be able to sit in a lecture and finally grasp the big picture. I’ve been writing about this [finance] for six years, three of which were focused only on insurance, but only now am I becoming comfortable. I still consider myself relatively junior.”

Moneyweb also gave Ziady the opportunity to do broadcast work on the likes of Lotus FM and SAfm. On Lotus, Ziady would give a two-minute wrap up of the markets and big business stories to listeners in the early morning. Hosting the SAfm Market Update with Moneyweb meant she covered sectors outside of her financial services ‘beat’, such as mining and manufacturing.

After two and a half years, however, Ziady decided to move from Moneyweb to her current home in the Times Media Group, where she writes for the Business Day, Financial Mail, and Business Times.

Adapting to change and advice to budding financial journalists

According to Ziady, much of journalist’s work is personal, how much you want to challenge yourself and what type of stories you write. This puts Ziady’s move to Times Media in perspective.

“There is such a high standard here [at Times Media] and people really push you to be better and interrogate your work. ‘Why’d you write that? Why do we care about that?’. There’s people here who’ve been here forever,” Ziady explains.

“Journalists like Carol Paton and Rob Rose are just excellent and have been amazing to work with. It’s the biggest company in this field, and you can write across different titles here.”

For those wanting to become financial journalists themselves, Ziady explains a lot of people who become journalists do not necessarily study it, with her own academic background being one such case, dropping journalism after doing the course for a year.

“I didn’t enjoy Journalism 1, and I thought, ‘Well, I could carry on and it will probably get interesting later on’, but I love politics and philosophy, so I took second year philosophy, knowing that you can be a journalist without studying it,” she says.

“A lot of it is the personality you have. Do you enjoy writing? Are you inquisitive? Do you have an appetite to learn? In the beginning, I had to receive so much guidance. I felt very out of my depth covering finance, which was not something I studied.”

Even today, with years of experience behind her, Ziady is not afraid to ask a question if she encounters something she does not know. Ziady suggests a PPE degree - politics, philosophy, and economics - as a great option if you want to pursue financial journalism, or you can study journalism itself.  There are a couple of excellent journalism schools around the country, such as Rhodes.

“At the same time, it is about getting into it and it is a time game. There are journalists who have been in this for literally decades. It doesn’t happen overnight. I think a lot of us leave varsity thinking we are going to make it and we are going to smash it from day one. Journalism, more than other occupations, is a long term commitment.”

The future

Ziady enjoys her work, but looking forward, she would be interested in increasing her exposure to broadcast journalism; and that’s where she sees herself one day.

“I am keen to stay in journalism for the foreseeable future, and, hopefully, I will make that jump into broadcast one day.”

For more information, connect with Ziady on Twitter.