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| A boy (Anzer Ayoob) holding a newspaper in his hands, April 2005. |
When I look at this photograph taken in 2005, I see a child holding a newspaper. At that moment, I was not imagining a career in journalism. To me then, it was only paper and ink. Yet today, that same picture feels like a premonition—a snapshot of a path that was waiting to unfold.
I was born in 1999 in Thathri, a small town in the Chenab Valley of Jammu and Kashmir. Growing up, I became aware of the silence around us. National headlines skipped over our daily struggles, our roads, our schools, our voices. What seemed “local” to others was our entire world, and no one seemed to listen.
By the time I entered higher secondary school in Jangalwar in 2013, that silence had become unbearable. My classmates and I often protested: the broken roads that left us stranded, the unreliable transport that made education an obstacle course, and the injustice that Thathri—despite being a sub-divisional headquarters—had no higher secondary school for boys. Girls had one, but boys could only study locally up to class 10. We demanded equality and dignity in education. Those protests marked my first real taste of activism.
The spirit never left me. A decade later, in 2023, I submitted a formal memorandum to the administration demanding the upgradation of Government Boys High School Thathri into a higher secondary. In 2024, after Mehraj Malik was elected MLA from the Doda 52 constituency, I met him personally and placed the demand again. To his credit, he forwarded it to the School Education Department. In 2025, I filed another grievance on the government portal, attaching all my earlier documents. Within three months, a positive response arrived: the feasibility report was cleared, and the CEO Doda was asked to submit the required proposal.
The moment I heard, I rushed to the school, shared the news with the staff, and saw joy in their faces. Finally, in August 2025, the school was officially upgraded. Classes will begin in the coming session. That moment wasn’t just a personal victory; it was proof that persistent advocacy—whether through protests, petitions, or journalism—can bend reality.
This achievement is only one chapter among many. I highlight it because it reflects the essence of what I call a Journoist—a fusion of journalist and activist. As I discuss in my 2023 booklet, The Power of Local Journalism, I never abandoned activism when I embraced journalism; instead, I realized that local journalism itself is activism. It gives people tools to demand fairness, justice, and dignity. It speaks for those ignored, forgotten, or silenced.
From the child gripping a newspaper in 2005 to the young man filing grievances in 2025, the thread is the same: belief in the power of words and action combined. That photograph has become more than a memory—it has become a reminder that telling the truth, amplifying the overlooked, and pushing for change are not separate tasks. They are the same journey.
Written by Anzer Ayoob.
