From the desert sands were rising civic amenities and state infrastructure, not very different from what took some highly developed nations several decades to build. To tell the world this remarkable story of national development, among other things, was Arab News — born on April 20, 1975 as Saudi Arabia’s first English daily.

Partnering Saudi Arabia in every aspect of its phenomenal growth, Arab News told the story as it was. Reaching out to the English-speaking Saudi elite and the growing number of expatriate workers, the paper soon became a preferred name at the workplace and at home.

Like a faithful town messenger, Arab News hit the stands every day at the break of dawn amidst the ever-increasing clamor of iron and steel, as scores of magnificent edifices sprouted along the Kingdom’s expanding cityscapes. Despite the constraints in communications in the early days, the paper unfailingly made it on the hour, filling the much-needed vacuum for an English national daily.

The founders of Arab News knew well they would need to reach out to an English readership which had never really been exposed to a Saudi perspective for local, regional and international events. It had to encroach upon a rigid reader mindset mainly molded by global names in the publishing industry. English news on radio and television was sparse, taking barely a few hours of airtime.

Maintaining high editorial standards was the key to facing the competition and creating an altogether new genre of readership. With the sound vision of the founders, the paper rose to the challenge, steadily easing out established names as the first choice. Looking back at the early days through the eyes of my veteran associates, the journey was indeed long-winding and sometimes full of pitfalls — but in the end, immensely fulfilling.

As history unfolded over the years, Arab News was there to tell the stories of exceptional engineering feats like in the cities of Jubail and Yanbu; the almost magical transformation of seawater into potable water through colossal desalination plants; Saudi Arabia’s foray into space; the Kingdom’s philanthropic activities worldwide; its ever-growing political influence in the international arena; and even sorry tales of regional conflicts.

With the electronic media holding sway in today’s digital world, Arab News joined the tech-driven media race to continue telling the story. With a freshly-designed website, it now reaches a readership well beyond the region, taking Saudi Arabia and its continuing story to a global audience.

With 35 years clocked in time, Arab News has virtually run in parallel with the Kingdom’s contemporary history, and with SRMG’s story of cohesive, subtle and prosperous growth in the publishing and publishing-related industry. Even as we look back at the glorious years of Arab News and its growth from an eight-pager to its present-day, full-color, 24-page national daily of international repute, we look forward to continue partnering the Kingdom in the days and years to come, and to robustly exerting every possible and professional effort to pave the way for another 35 years to come of incandescent journalistic integrity, commitment and dedication; promising our readership always with the best that is fit to print.

God willing, we will persist in our mission unfailingly.

— Prince Faisal bin Salman is the chairman of the Saudi Research and Marketing Group.