MAG founding member Lalarukh dies

JournalismPakistan.com | Published: 22 March 2013

Lalarukh Hussain, a prominent journalist and founding member of MAG Weekly, has died in Los Angeles. She was known for her contributions to various publications and her activism in the journalism community.
Summary

ISLAMABAD: Senior journalist and founding member of the MAG Weekly, Lalarukh Hussain died of brain hemorrhage in Los Angeles, The News reported Thursday.

Fondly called Lali by her friends, she used to work for the left-wing National Students Federation in the late 1960s and the early 1970s.

She acquired a degree in journalism from the University of Karachi in 1972 and worked for several magazines and newspapers.

Lalarukh joined the Jang Group’s evening newspaper the Daily News in 1979 and started conducting interviews and writing feature stories for its weekly magazine. Veteran journalist S M Fazal was the editor.

“But the government objected as to why Daily News was publishing a weekly magazine and hence the MAG was launched as a separate entity and I was its editor and Lalarukh its founding staff member,” The News quoted Fazal as saying.

The paper said Lalarukh later joined the Medical Gazette published by the Pakistan Medical Association and then worked for the Associated Press of Pakistan. She was also associated with The Sun,Business Recorder, and Dawn newspapers and SHE magazine.

Lalarukh was jailed during the journalists’ movement in 1978. She had been living in Los Angeles since 1997.

She got married to Zahid Hussain. Her husband too emerged as a distinguished journalist, author and analyst. She leaves behind two children to mourn her death.

KEY POINTS:

Lalarukh Hussain died of brain hemorrhage in Los Angeles.
She was a founding member of MAG Weekly and a veteran journalist.
Lalarukh was involved in journalism since the late 1960s.
She worked for several major publications, including The Sun and Dawn.
Lalarukh was also a political activist and jailed during the 1978 journalists' movement.