muhammadhafeezmalik
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A close friend of Asif Ali Zardari, married into the Chaudharys of Gujrat, barely 40, and the owner of City42 and 24News, Mohsin Naqvi has just been announced as the caretaker CM of Punjab. But who is the maverick businessman that has been given this responsibility?
Lahori by birth, Naqvi was raised by his maternal uncle after losing his parents at a young age. Naqvi always had a knack for making friends in high places, famously forming a friendship with the CM during his student days at GC Lahore, before going to Miami for higher education.
It was in the US that he got his first taste of journalism, getting an internship at CNN. During the early 2000s, Naqvi was sent back to Pakistan as a CNN producer and began to rub shoulders with titans of politics, journalism, and business in Pakistan.
If a journalist from CNN wanted to come to Pakistan and interview the Chief Minister, Mohsin Naqvi would be the man that made all the arrangements. He worked the phones, made connections and did his job well — gaining him favour with powerful people.
In this time he grew close to a number of people, including Zardari, with whom he formed a famous relationship. But perhaps the true testament to his networking skills was that he married into the Chaudhrys of Gujrat, one of the country’s most prominent political families.
After years cutting his teeth in journalism and becoming a part of elite circles, Naqvi decided to open his own channel — City42. It was a pretty standard channel except it introduced a new concept to broadcast news television in Pakistan: local news.
With a host of reporters in the city, the channel was dedicated exclusively to news about Lahore, which quickly became one of the most powerful forces in the entire city. You see, most national level media houses are so focused on the bigger picture local news is left missing.
This made Naqvi a powerful man. C42’s reporters went about town investigating small-time crime, issues in hospitals, schools, and other public offices. This made for good viewing and also meant a bureaucrat in Lahore would be more scared of C42 than say Geo news.
Over time, Naqvi grew his business and the City Media Group now has a number of channels and newspapers under their umbrella. DailyC42, CityRohi, and City41 in Faisalabad were all launched in due time — and for a while all of them made money for Naqvi.
There were, of course, questions about how a CNN producer managed to get enough capital at the age of 30 to open C42 in the first place. There are those that would claim his marriage into the Chaudhrys of Gujrat or close association with Zardari might have been the source.
But in an interview with Profit a few years back, the newly appointed CM had claimed he generated the money himself. According to him, he received a handsome inheritance from his parents and made money at the CNN which he used to launch his business.
Back in 2019, Profit’s @BabarEnthusiast and @Bnizami sat down with Naqvi for an in-depth interview about his life and his experience in the news media business. Read the full story at:
profit.pakistantoday.com.pk
Lahori by birth, Naqvi was raised by his maternal uncle after losing his parents at a young age. Naqvi always had a knack for making friends in high places, famously forming a friendship with the CM during his student days at GC Lahore, before going to Miami for higher education.
It was in the US that he got his first taste of journalism, getting an internship at CNN. During the early 2000s, Naqvi was sent back to Pakistan as a CNN producer and began to rub shoulders with titans of politics, journalism, and business in Pakistan.
If a journalist from CNN wanted to come to Pakistan and interview the Chief Minister, Mohsin Naqvi would be the man that made all the arrangements. He worked the phones, made connections and did his job well — gaining him favour with powerful people.
In this time he grew close to a number of people, including Zardari, with whom he formed a famous relationship. But perhaps the true testament to his networking skills was that he married into the Chaudhrys of Gujrat, one of the country’s most prominent political families.
After years cutting his teeth in journalism and becoming a part of elite circles, Naqvi decided to open his own channel — City42. It was a pretty standard channel except it introduced a new concept to broadcast news television in Pakistan: local news.
With a host of reporters in the city, the channel was dedicated exclusively to news about Lahore, which quickly became one of the most powerful forces in the entire city. You see, most national level media houses are so focused on the bigger picture local news is left missing.
This made Naqvi a powerful man. C42’s reporters went about town investigating small-time crime, issues in hospitals, schools, and other public offices. This made for good viewing and also meant a bureaucrat in Lahore would be more scared of C42 than say Geo news.
Over time, Naqvi grew his business and the City Media Group now has a number of channels and newspapers under their umbrella. DailyC42, CityRohi, and City41 in Faisalabad were all launched in due time — and for a while all of them made money for Naqvi.
There were, of course, questions about how a CNN producer managed to get enough capital at the age of 30 to open C42 in the first place. There are those that would claim his marriage into the Chaudhrys of Gujrat or close association with Zardari might have been the source.
But in an interview with Profit a few years back, the newly appointed CM had claimed he generated the money himself. According to him, he received a handsome inheritance from his parents and made money at the CNN which he used to launch his business.
Back in 2019, Profit’s @BabarEnthusiast and @Bnizami sat down with Naqvi for an in-depth interview about his life and his experience in the news media business. Read the full story at:
Mohsin Naqvi picked as caretaker CM of Punjab
LAHORE: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Sunday unanimously decided to appoint Syed Mohsin Raza Naqvi, the owner of the City Media Group, as the caretaker chief minister of Punjab. Naqvi w
profit.pakistantoday.com.pk
