A New Mideast Paper Vows to Be Different

ONE of the Middle East’s wealthiest ruling families has a new asset: The National, a newspaper that promises independence from its royal owners.The paper, an English-language daily based in Abu Dhabi, published its first issue on April 17, under close scrutiny in the Middle East and abroad. With its pledge to emulate Western newspaper standards and to “help society evolve,” The National is an anomaly in the Middle East, where most media are tightly controlled by the government. “We aim to produce an excellent newspaper out of the region” that will set a new standard for other publications to aspire to, said Hassan M. Fattah, the deputy editor, who was a correspondent for The New York Times in the Middle East before joining The National. “Being government-owned does not equal being government-run,” he said. “There are no ministers sitting in my office” telling the paper what to write. Already, the paper has attracted some serious competition: on Monday, The Financial Times of London said that it was introducing a new edition for the Middle East, with editorial offices based in Abu Dhabi. The first issue comes out on Tuesday. “We have identified a strong and growing demand for high-quality global independent news and analysis across the gulf region,” Lionel Barber, editor of The Financial Times, said in a news release. “This demand reflects how the gulf has quickly become a financial and business powerhouse.” • Whether the region becomes a bastion for free speech is another matter. Until last September, journalists who wrote critical stories in the United Arab Emirates could be jailed for defamation, and the United Arab Emirates recently signed on to an Arab League charter asking media not to offend local leaders. The English-language channel of Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based broadcaster, recently lost some high-profile Western journalists, in part because of disagreements about coverage. Nevertheless, The National has built its staff of 200 from newspapers around the world, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Telegraph of Britain. The paper has had no problem hitting a start-up goal of 30 percent advertising in its pages (and 70 percent editorial content), and has had to turn away potential advertisers who wanted space in its first few issues, Mr. Fattah said. The National is owned by Mubadala Development Company of Abu Dhabi, an investment and venture capital arm of the government which is led by the crown prince, Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan. The owners have given the paper’s executives five years to break even. Abu Dhabi, by far the largest of the seven royalty-ruled territories that make up the United Arab Emirates, has been raising its profile as an international center of investment, tourism and finance, and The National is seen as part of an overall movement of change to appeal to outsiders. The National, which aims at expatriate and local professionals in Abu Dhabi, has published a few articles with criticisms of the region, like one about severely overcrowded private schools, which limit companies’ abilities to attract new people. It has also printed controversial opinion pieces, one asking Arabs to welcome Jewish investors to the region and another warning that Emirate culture is disappearing. The National has delved into regional news, offering a detailed account of former President Jimmy Carter’s trip to Syria and a buildup of Syrian troops on the Lebanese border. It has also printed its share of fluff — the wife of the British ambassador to Abu Dhabi’s perfect day in the Emirate includes Starbucks, Pilates, a blow dry and a seafood dinner. The National is printing 80,000 copies, has 30,000 trial subscribers and has set a subscription rate of about $110 a year, but whether it can succeed in being independent and not attract the ire of the ruling families is unclear. Martin Newland, the editor in chief, has fielded numerous questions about the paper’s independence, particularly after a memo he wrote to the staff that noted “we are not here to fight for press freedom” was leaked to outside media. Reached by cellphone one evening as he was having dinner with his wife, he said, “This is good news for journalism and good news for the region, so let’s get the hell off censorship.” He added that he was tired of having “the whole issue of a multimillion-dollar launch of a newspaper constantly distilled down to issues of censorship.” Mr. Newland said the biggest difficulty in setting up the newspaper so far had been managing the logistics of getting 150 expatriate employees moved to an area where real estate prices are high and human resources and infrastructure are negligible. “If you come as an editor, you have to get loo paper for the bogs, sign off on taxi chits and listen to people 8,000 miles from home” who cannot find a place to live, he said. Then he returned to dinner. Attracting talented reporters to Abu Dhabi has been one of the biggest problems, said Mr. Fattah, the deputy editor. “It was very hard to convince Americans to come here,” he said, because they think of it as a scary place. “One reporter wanted to do combat training” before she came, he said, when in reality the biggest killer in Abu Dhabi is obesity. So far The National is drawing some guarded praise. “I looked very carefully to see if I could find any evidence that they were censoring themselves, and I didn’t see it,” said Josh Friedman, director of international programs at Columbia University’s graduate school of journalism. For example, the paper, which is available online at www.thenational.ae, referred to Hamas fighters as “militants,” Mr. Friedman said, a type of description that is rare in the Middle East. While the articles about Abu Dhabi government announcements were not “hard hitting,” Mr. Friedman said, the paper carried others that could be considered critical. Newspapers have thrived in the Arab-speaking world for decades; Al-Ahram in Egypt, published since 1876, has five million readers, for example. But freedom of the press has remained elusive. “If it doesn’t work, so what, and if it does work, it would be great,” Mr. Friedman said, “because that area of the world needs a free press.” More Articles in Business »