“The Arab News is part of our family,” said Dr. Gias Uddin Khan in a response to our request for their reflections on the last 30 years. “I advise my children to read it.”
Obviously a punctilious man with a propensity for statistics, he told us that he had been reading the paper for “22 years, 7 months 20 days — including 6 leap years as of 14th April, 2005.” He enthused that it was worth every halala of the SR16,520 (or 264,288 Bangladeshi taka) he spent.
Dr. Khan told us that he has not missed buying a single copy of the paper since his first day in Saudi Arabia — even instructing his local baqala (phone number supplied) to save copies paid for in advance while he is away on holiday. He sounds like a man who you can trust to do a job conscientiously, doesn’t he?
For many of our long-term readers, that is exactly what Arab News has become, a family member or at least a long-term friend.
At the birth of his life-long companion, Arab News, Abdallah Bin Eifan was working for the British Bank of the Middle East in 1975 when “a lovely young newspaper rolled off the presses,” he told us. “We started fighting for it. Everybody wanted to be the first to read it.”
Thirty years on and a prodigious contributor to the letters section, Abdallah says he is “still a regular reader of your prestigious newspaper (or precisely, OUR newspaper.)” To substantiate his claim, he sent us a list of published letters, 76 published up to then and still going, from March 1999 through to the end of December 2004; wonderful stuff!
His sense of possessiveness of the paper is typical of many of the responses from our readers. Not only has he among many others made a significant and genuine contribution to the lively daily letters column which is the pulse of the paper, he communicates a genuine warmth of feeling for Arab News.
It is this sincerity that communicates itself to the writers and editors at Arab News and makes us feel that we really are getting through. It is tremendously rewarding to know that we are read and appreciated and because of this the readership gradually becomes much more than just readers; they become part of the family, the social organism that is Arab News.
There have been what we hope are improvements in the format, layout and technology in the paper over the last three decades. Many of our readers agree.
“More sophistication in printing, increased news material, broader approach to local reforms are some of the major factors that are making Arab News everyone’s darling,” enthused K.J. Haroon Basha from Alkhobar.
There have been occasions when we have not been quite everyone’s darling — the editorial policy of “pushing the envelope” has occasionally seen a formal slap on the wrist administered behind the scenes. But as a wizened radio producer once told me, “If you don’t offend at least one person with your broadcast, you haven’t done it right.”
One person from Flathead Montana was really offended: It would be impossible to quote more than three or four words of any sentence without “expletive deleted” being inserted. Suffice it to say he wrote a lengthy diatribe condemning all things Islamic and detailed in one of his more lucid paragraphs how he would use several nuclear devices and the contents of a midden to rearrange the topography of the Kingdom in general and Arab News in particular.
We were concerned to address the correspondent — a reader, and that is important to us — in a reasoned way and we replied, point by point to his critique over two weeks.
After a silence of some months, the editor in chief received an e-mail from the same correspondent. He said that because of our reasoned replies he had had re-examined his own views, sharing them with colleagues in his religious community. In a long e-mail detailing his thought processes, he apologized for his previous outburst. We replied thanking him for the courtesy of staying in touch and said that a point of view — his or ours — was always worth listening to even if we could not agree on the principle.
We heard nothing for months until the news that he had died shortly after having written to us reached our ears. It was a sober moment in the newsroom, realizing that even though we had never met someone who started with every appearance of being an implacable enemy, we might just have touched a real life in a meaningful way.
Wisely, Basha observes: “Achieving the highest position is easy, but maintaining it for decades is a really tough job.” However we do it, it has to be done with integrity.
With the freedom of a family member, Basha feels comfortable offering us some criticism. He points to the advent of the Internet and the new worldwide readership this has given the newspaper. Opening our doors to this huge audience has had some positive effects in balancing the skewed view it appears many Westerners have of the Kingdom. However, there are drawbacks. It has, says Basha, opened the door “to hundreds of thousands (who) click online from abroad.” “People from different nations start sending comments to the Letters to the Editor column. It seems to me that Arab News dumped or sidelined some of its old-time writers to give room for new faces.”
It is true that millions of readers get to read the Arab News each month on the Internet — and peaked at 2.3 million a day during the Iraq War — and equally true that they all have opinions. The extended readership is good for both the paper and the Kingdom in its attempt to communicate with a wider audience, 60 percent of which is in the US.
Our output generates feedback and we are often overwhelmed with a tide of responses, some of which range from the obscene to the enthusiastically encouraging. We have not forgotten our long-term friends and contributors; hence this article. They helped lay the foundations for what is now a small newspaper in international terms but one which punches very substantially above its weight on the international stage.
For those contributions, we heartily thank you.
“So many lives have been touched in unique ways by this newspaper,” said Tazeen Zahida from Alkhobar. “(It) embodies what society expects from a daily publication. A newspaper only makes sense when it breathes out what the society is breathing in unless it portrays the actual picture of the society it cannot thrive.”
Much to the disbelief of some, Arab News actually does that to greater extent than is often accepted — especially by our online readers. There are limits to what we can do; our readers though are generally able to read between the lines. Whilst we have suffered attacks and reprimands form a variety of quarters, Arab News has thrived and is still pushing at the edges of the envelope.
The very size of the paper gives it an accessibility that readers appreciate. No Fleet Street megalith, the ordinary looking offices are peopled by a staff that lives in the real world of Jeddah, Riyadh and Dammam and all its benefits and tribulations. The closeness with the community it serves manifests itself when private contributors find themselves in print — with a photograph or an article.
Enn Baybay sent in and had published sports articles and photographs. “I remember to my amazement ... some issues even reached my home in the Philippines. Thanks to Arab News for the compliments I received from friends.”
When we receive a letter like that — and there were many over the last month or so — it lets us know we are still in contact with street-level as well as addressing the bigger international and national pictures. It also serves as a reminder that real people read the paper and it is their interests we have to address.
Not all of their interests are solely information driven.
“Since 1987 I am buying and reading this newspaper,” wrote Mohammed Ashraf in Riyadh. “My day starts with this, getting it from the nearest shops on cash payment of SR2 on a daily basis.”
He continues: “I am proud to say that I improved my English-language skill both in writing and reading enormously since I started my indepth reading of Arab News. Also it gave a wide range of knowledge in the field of world affairs, Islamic prospects and the special articles about my country, India.”
The knowledge that we have a readership that is a rich mix of cultures and traditions is a double-edged sword. There richness produces opinions, feedback and information aplenty; if we get something wrong — and it happens — we are very quickly reminded, usually with great courtesy. The reverse of this is that we have to try not to offend anyone by criticizing beliefs or crossing cultural lines in a way that would cause deep offense.
The fact that we have been criticized by left and right-wing politicians, Jews, Muslims and born-again Christians, clerics, converts and apostates does not mean that we are offending everyone, but that sometimes reportage of events that some would like to put their own spin on is not quite to their taste.
“It has proved to be a balanced newspaper even in the complex Middle East situation,” said Saeed Khan. “I have found its articles informative and of a high standard.”
Dr. Asim Shaikh among many others echoed this view as did many European web-based readers.
We have our detractors, critics and supporters. We do not always get things perfectly right; in the world or reporting events, no one is 100 percent perfect or accurate either in their reporting of events or the veracity of their opinions.
But we try, and we are still here and that is an occasion for a little self-recognition and a sincere “thank you” to the hundreds of readers who took the trouble to telephone and e-mail us to offer congratulations and the occasional brickbat. We cannot possibly write to all those who responded. Be assured that we deeply appreciate your comments and are humbled by the sheer volume and quality of the replies.
