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Mizanur Rahman


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Born in Bangladesh, raised in Detroit, Houston Chronicle immigration editor, Mizanur Rahman, makes his way through the South, having lived and worked in two Texas cities and in Virginia.

Born in Bangladesh, raised in Detroit, Mizanur Rahman is the immigration editor at The Houston Chronicle. He will be moderating the panel, "Immigration on Every Beat," during the chapter’s state meeting Saturday, April 26 at the University of Houston's School of Communications. He is also a poet.

Please tell us about yourself personally (Where were you born? Where did you grow up? Where did you go to school?).
I grew up in the inner city in Motown, graduated from Osborn High School. I got a full scholarship to attend the Journalism Institute for Minorities at Wayne State University in Detroit. (I guess I couldn't ever leave the city!) Getting accepted into JIM was the best thing that happened to me. JIM was an intensive journalism program. All the students had to work at 12 hours a week every semester in a journalism-related job or internship to maintain your scholarship, in addition to maintaining a high GPA. It instilled in me right away the importance of practicing your craft.

Please describe your professional background.
I started stringing my first week of my freshman semester for the Michigan Chronicle, a historically black newspaper in Detroit. I started writing about high school prep sports. When I was 19, I had a summer internship at a small daily newspaper in Royal Oak, a Detroit suburb. Being at a small newspaper was great. I got to do a lot of big stories, covering the cops beat, murder trials and even writing about Jack Kevorkian.
The following summer I had an internship at the Oakland Press, a larger suburban Detroit daily. I guess I did a decent enough job that they offered me a reporting job, even though I still had a year and a half of school left. I worked part time while I finished my degree, and got on full time as a reporter once I graduated.
I left the paper in 1999 for The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Virginia. I started as an assistant city editor there, and left in 2003 as a features editor. I loved working at The Pilot. It was a creative, high-energy newsroom that loved to be bold and experiment.
I came to The Dallas Morning News in July 2003 as an assistant bureau chief and eventually became an assistant Metro editor supervising a staff of about 12 reporters, editors and news clerks. I learned a lot at the DMN: about how to cover big stories, significant breaking news and encourage enterprise work and projects.
I left the DMN in May 2007 to become the immigration editor at the Houston Chronicle. Immigration is an issue I'm fascinated by, so the move allowed me to do work I'm interested in. The move also was for personal reasons. My fiancée was working as a columnist at the Chron.

How and why did you get into journalism?
I got into journalism accidentally. In my junior year at high school I asked a friend what was an easy elective to take senior year that required little work. He said, "Take journalism. All they do is walk around the halls and ask people questions." I was sold.
Now, why did I stay? Well, during my freshman year at Wayne, I was at a job fair and decided to be brave and interview with the NY Times. I knew I didn't have the goods quite yet for an internship. But I wanted to get to know the recruiter. She asked me right away why I got into journalism. And I answered quickly and directly: "To save the world." She looked skeptical. "How can you save the world as a journalist?" I said, "One story at a time."

If you could get paid to write poems all day, would you quit your job? Why or why not?
Hell yeah! Can you say 'hell' in this piece? I love poetry. When I lived in Norfolk, I hosted a poetry reading regularly and started a local poets' group there. It was probably the point in my life when I felt the most creative. My favorite poets are Billy Collins, Jennifer Knox, Sarah Manguso, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Bukowski, to name a few.

Please fill in the blanks: Dallas is... Houston is...
Dallas is dressing up in $200 jeans for Sunday brunch. Houston is chicken wings and waffles for breakfast.

What general advice do you give to young people considering the journalism field today?
If you want to be in a profession that you can be proud of, become a journalist. If you want to have fun and make a difference in people's lives, become a journalist. If you love to write and consider yourself a student of the world, become a journalist. If you want to make 100K by age 35, go to law school.

What general advice do you give to veteran journalists considering whether to leave the journalism field today?
Do what's best for you and your family. But there's a saying in basketball: Leave it all out on the floor. Meaning, make sure you've spilt as much blood and sweat into it as you can. And if you've reached that point, then consider leaving.

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