Amina El Farnawany

Interviewer: Amina El Farnawany

Interviewee: Dalia Hassouna
Amina: This is Amina El Farnawany. Im conducting this interview for Professor Kim Foxs
JRMC202 class. Im interviewing an AUC graduate of class 1987. Good morning.
Dalia: Good morning.
Amina: Could you please introduce yourself, age and residence?
Dalia: My name is Dalia Hassouna, Im 49 years old and I live in Zamalek, Cairo.
Amina: What was your major in University?
Dalia: I was mass comm, journalism.
Amina: Have you worked in the field of journalism after you graduated?
Dalia: Yes I worked as a journalist in Al Ahram daily newspaper for sometime and then I shifted
to Radio Cairo where I currently work as a Radio announcer.
Amina: Do you think AUC has prepared you for your work life?
Dalia: Yes, definitely it did.
Amina: In what ways or how did it prepare you?
Dalia: Well as an undergraduate I had many experiences in the filed of journalism. I worked in
the Caravan which is the students newspaper I worked as the Arabic section supervisor I was in
charge of the layout as well and I was in charge of the reports that all students of Mass Comm.
were supposed to write part of their assignments was to write articles for the Caravan and I was
in charge of selecting the most important news articles to publish as well as editorials.
Amina: Did you feel that your work in the Caravan helped you in your work life later?
Dalia: Yes, it did a lot because I came to know all the steps of issuing a newspaper and producing
the final product of a newspaper.
Amina: Did you work anywhere else other than the Caravan?
Dalia: While I was still an undergraduate?
Amina: Yes.

Dalia: Yes, I worked during summer when I was still a sophomore in Egypt Today magazine and
the following year I was Junior I worked in an internship program with Al Ahram newspaper
which I worked, which I joined later on as a journalist after my graduation.
Amina: How do you feel the media changed from when you were a student to todays media?
Dalia: Well, it changed a lot back then there was only a couple of television channels we had
three newsapers Al Ahram, Al Akhbar and Al Gomhoreya they were issued by the state they still
are issued by the state and they owned by the state and we also had a radio station that was stateowned and state-run. Nowadays we have a wide diversity of newspapers partisan newspapers we
have privately owned newspapers we have a radio station that is privately owned as well or may
be a couple of stations now we have television channels we have the satellite network we have
the internet we have we can access media everywhere around the globe we can watch BBC we
can watch the CNN we are not confined as before to our local media.
Amina: And how about social media? Do you think it had an impact on this change?
Dalia: It had a very strong impact on media because social network made people everybody
came to engage in news came to engage in opinion whether its political, social or otherwise
people became more interactive they can now access any news and they can verify the
information they receive from the different media channels through the internet so I think the real
revolution in the media world came through the internet when it entered Egypt.
Amina: And how about you? Do you keep up with social media?
Dalia: As a Radio announcer definitely I keep up with social media I have to because this is one
of the ways I can communicate with my listeners as a Radio announcer I have eh we have to
have a Facebook account we have to have a twitter account and these are the tools or some of the
tools other than the sms of course and the telephone calls these are some of the tools that we
communicate with our listeners and know what they want from us because its very important for
an announcer to get the feedback of the listeners to present them with the new things they want
to listen to and its very important to use the social media because it creates an audience and the
kind of listener who is interactive with the announcer.
Amina: Well, I already know youre very active on twitter in specific so could you tell me some
of the sources you follow and trust?
Dalia: Well, twitter ah is a different social media tool its different than Facebook because its kind
of, its like tickers we used in the past to get the news from different news agencies worldwide
and they used to come on a machine that we used to call in our news department at Radio Cairo
and in Al Ahram the tickers these are the latest news so twitter came to me as a replacement for
these old tickers because its the citizens media everybody on site especially during the past
years in our Egyptian history where a lot of events used to take place in the street so the citizen
became a correspondent. Twitter used to give me the info or the news the minute it happens
because there were people standing in the place or on the street or in the middle of the riot may
be or in the middle of the demonstration and they used to write as if Im Im accessing live data

and live coverage of the event through twitter so it helped me a lot and its amazing that its not
only the famous newspapers or famous websites that I used to follow I also followed certain
people who created credibility through their tweets on twitter because they were there always on
site and their news came to be correct and they were even quoted afterwards by the different
news agencies.
Amina: Thank you for your time.