I had an exceptionally slothful week. So filled with indolence in fact that I forgot all about my weekly column. At the eleventh hour I decided to log onto the Arab News online edition in order to get some inspiration. What I got instead was an annoying reminder of how commerce takes precedence over convenience and the all too ubiquitous line of “This article available in print edition only”. So that’s what I decided to gripe about.
As is customary for people who neglect their duties, I went straight to the top and called up the editor in chief who was abroad, preoccupied with his own tight deadlines and seemed to be suffering from a healthy dose of jet-lag. This coupled with a telephone line filled with static procured me the consent I needed and all that was left was to clear things with one of the editors.
“I haven’t done my article yet,” I began, “but it will be a short one entitled ‘This article available in print edition only.’ Okay?”
“What do you mean?” he asked confused.
“Oh you know. I am just going to lambaste the decision made to asphyxiate the Internet edition,” I clarified.
There was a long studied pause followed by, “I don’t think the boss would like that!”
“Well,” I confessed, “I already told him.”
“And what was his reaction?” he asked amazed.
“He just sort of laughed a bit at my audacity and asked why. I gave him my reasons and he gave me his permission.”
I could tell the guy was flabbergasted by this and waited for his response.
“I am surprised,” he said sounding more shocked than surprised.
“Well I don’t see why,” I retorted. “After all the great thing about the Arab News is that people consider it to be the ‘Green Truth’ and if my opinion doesn’t coincide with that of senior management, according to our tradition of freedom of speech, it should still be allowed to warrant expression.”
“Yes,” he concurred, “that’s true. But you also have to understand things from our perspective. We are running a business and if our print edition from which we make money is in direct competition with our online version from which we don’t, surely we have to curtail this?”
“No. You just find ways to make money from your online edition. You know. Have online advertising and online subscription fees. Besides even when I had the print edition I liked to look the online up while I was doing other stuff. I just find what you have done so irritating. Even if theoretically I bought all your print editions, surely I wouldn’t be expected to keep them beyond that day.”
“Why not? I think that you should keep them. Especially you. You could make clippings of articles that you find interesting or that you might need information from in the future.”
“Oh come on!” I said in disbelief thinking of all the millions of other things that I could better spend my time doing. Like writing my articles on time.
“I don’t even have room to store all my other junk. Where do you expect me to put all those old newspapers? How do you expect me to gain access to information I need? How am I going to buy a print edition half a year later?”
“You can write a letter requesting that information and we will be happy to provide you with it.”
“That’s very kind of you. But it’s a trifle unreasonable and cumbersome to keep writing you letters for such basic requests. Besides, isn’t yesterday’s news no news at all? So why don’t you just unblock the sites from before?”
“Because people will just read the news a day late. Now that we have this new system in place, our print edition circulation has improved by leaps and bounds. At the end of the day, you have to understand that it is a question of money.”
“From my understanding,” I disagreed, “I thought that for a newspaper at least, the number of readers would be more important. I think that what you are doing will strangle the local readership. All the other newspapers have online editions. I don’t see the point of having a website at all because it is just so frustrating to log on and then be told to trot down to the local supermarket and buy the paper instead.”
“I do see what you are saying but you have to think about it from the ‘admin’ perspective and even from the angle of those readers who spend their SR2 faithfully everyday. It’s not fair that they should do that while other have a free ride. Outside of the Kingdom everyone can access all the material.”
“Even the silly caption after each ‘intro’ on the first page is so insulting. It says ‘click here for full story’ and when you do, all you get is exactly the same intro followed by a sermon on how you should subscribe to the print edition! The subscription process is another adventure in itself as you ask for people’s postal addresses with a P.O. Box number and then tell them that a member of your team will come round to that address to take the money. Who is he going to demand the money from? The P.O. box?”
“So you have more of an issue with the content of the website?” he asked hopefully.
“No. I just wanted to enunciate how all of this contributes to undermining the initiative,” I moaned facetiously.
“What we are hoping is that we can rely on the loyalty of our readers who have been with us for over 30 years. I am sure that they will understand the logic behind our decision.”
“Well I don’t agree with you and never will,” I concluded. “But at least you gave me my article for this week. I’ll write down my arguments and yours and may the best man win,” I smiled.
There was silence.
And as I was the one doing the writing I knew exactly which horse to back!
(Lubna Hussain is a Saudi writer. She is based in Riyadh.)
