ALI VELSHI
Why I joined Al Jazeera America
From Al Jazeera America, June 2013
If I got a dollar for every time someone asked me why I joined Al Jazeera America, I wouldn’t need the job. But since nobody is offering to pay me for the answer, I’ll give it up for free.
It excites me. It’s awakened senses I haven’t felt for a while.
I’m a business reporter; that’s code for “frustrated business person.†I talk endlessly about business. I know what works and what doesn’t. I know why businesses fail. I can read financial statements and identify good CEOs and great workers and amazing opportunities. Business, to me, is not about money; it’s about passion and commitment and hard work.
So now I get to be part of a business. A start-up, for that matter. As a global media network, Al Jazeera doesn’t suffer from some of the common start-up problems. But it does face the single biggest challenge ALL businesses face: “If we build it, will they come?†And that excites me.
Then there’s the news. I have spent the better part of the last 12 years helping a busy audience interpret the financial and economic world around them. I have covered markets with a daily show from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange; covered Federal Reserve decisions from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange; covered hearings, trials and bank failures; and reported on Enron and WorldCom and Madoff and everything in between. I was in Dearborn, Michigan on a cold January morning in 2005 when Ford announced it would shed more than 40,000 jobs. I have covered global conferences from Toronto to Cannes to Dubai and Hong Kong. I’ve interviewed CEOs and finance ministers and prime ministers from around the world. I’ve covered governments working and governments shut down and, last year, a working government that acted like it was shut down. And I’ve covered elections. Lots of them.
I’m looking for a different story, now. And it’s out there. In America.
Working at Al Jazeera America means I’ll be able to do what I’ve wanted to do for quite some time and shift my focus away from decision makers, academics and politicians to shine a much brighter light on the average, everyday people who actually make the U.S. economy run. They work, buy things, make things and serve people and, when they do well with their money, they invest it and buy cars and homes, and create work for their neighbors. When they do really well, they employ others.
These people are all, in their own way, living the American Dream (though it may have felt like a nightmare for the last few years) and they are as entitled to opportunity as the rich. By joining Al Jazeera America I’ll have the resources, the commitment, and the real estate to tell more of these stories, and tell them in the time and space it takes to do so.
We’ll have the resources of 12 bureaus across the United States, including in places that don’t typically enjoy a national news presence. We’ll staff those bureaus with people from those regions, and you’ll see them daily on my show. I’ll host a daily prime-time money show; something you don’t see much of on mainstream TV.
Investments, real estate, education, interest rates, health care, jobs – these are the money issues that dominate household discussion on a regular basis. Al Jazeera America is going to give me an opportunity to explore those in greater depth on behalf of my audience. I’ll team up with the investigative unit, headed by award-winning, veteran investigative journalist Ed Pound, to get deep inside those stories my audience deserves to see. I’ll work with the documentary unit to take the time I need to prepare and air the stories my audience wants to see.
That’s why I’m excited, and I look forward to having you join me on this journey.
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Ali Velshi is the Former CNN Chief Business Correspondent & New Host at Al Jazeera America. Represented by K&M Productions (Toronto) for conference keynote speaking engagements. For more information on having Ali Velshi as your conference keynote speaker, click here.