AN era in journalism has come to an end with the death on Sunday of M.A. Zuberi, a pioneer in the field of economic journalism in Pakistan and founder of the Business Recorder newspaper and electronic empire. His career spanned seven eventful decades — two decades in Dawn alone — and encompassed a bewildering variety of experiences, triumphs and tragedies that saw the emergence of Pakistan, the holocaust of partition, the epic struggle for the new country’s survival during its formative years and the secession of East Pakistan. He was also one of those few remaining journalists who had the honour of joining Dawn on Jinnah’s bidding in Delhi and later helping in the launching of the paper’s Karachi edition on independence day in 1947. As the right-hand man of the newspaper’s editor Altaf Husain, Mr Zuberi was the number two man in the Dawn hierarchy. He had a powerful pen and wrote some of the paper’s most talked-about editorials. As senior assistant editor, Mr Zuberi also launched the Dawn group’s sister publication, Evening Star, and made it an astonishing success.

Proud of being a journalist, he did not like being introduced as a newspaper proprietor, considering journalism his first calling. A founder-member of the Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors, Mr Zuberi worked jealously for guarding the freedom of the press and resisted any attempt by the government to restrict freedom of expression. On economy, he had some original ideas and forcefully criticised the Bhutto government’s nationalisation policies and the phoney Islamic theories of the Zia era. The late Ghulam Ishaq Khan had paid special tribute to Mr Zuberi for his original contribution to Pakistan’s economic debate. Mr Zuberi’s was a towering personality, both figuratively and literally, and he was a source of inspiration for his colleagues. May God bless his soul.