Since its launch in 1975 by the Saudi Research and Publishing Company (SRPC), founded by brothers Hisham and Muhammad Ali Hafiz, not only has the newspaper been transformed from a classical broadsheet to its present design, but in the last few years since the accession of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, it has also been pushing the boundaries of Saudi journalism.
At the same time, the last decade or so has also seen design and print technology been revolutionized by the advent of information technology and the Internet. Arab News, like any other major newspaper, has been forced to either embrace these technological changes or suffer the consequences.
It was in the InterContinental Hotel in the Taksim area of European Istanbul in 1981 when I first came into contact with Arab News. I had met its then senior editor Farouk Luqman at an international conference hosted by the Turkish government.
Luqman came across as the quintessential journalist seemingly more interested in being a hack than a manager. It was he who initiated my relationship with Arab News and SPRC by persuading me to start contributing articles and ideas. It was little known to me at the time how this relationship would pan out.
Those were the days when journalists were armed with their portable Olivettis or Brothers (the poor man’s typewriter). Failing ownership of a typewriter, it was common practice to phone in a story for a copy typist to type in the text.
I remember making the repeated journey to Arab House in Holborn to file a freelance story, which would then be sent through telex. The fax machine was still a novelty and not widely in use, even in the 1980s. Photocopying was an expensive luxury.
The computer, laptop, mobile phone and the Internet were the stuff made of science fiction and utterly unimaginable except if you were a geek or nerd.
At the production stage, the IT revolution was perhaps even more dramatic. Which youngster of today working in media production would know what a stone sub did? They would probably scoff at the laborious and messy processes involved in the preparation of the individual pages of the broadsheets prior to the introduction of Quark Xpress, Pagemaker, InDesign and Photoshop.
Nevertheless, this relationship continued to thrive both intellectually and professionally under Khaled Almaeena, who took over as editor in chief in 1982, and currently the doyen of Saudi newspaper editors.
The trilingual Almaeena, who speaks Arabic, English and Urdu, has been at the helm of Arab News for most of the last two decades, during which the newspaper saw major changes in ownership, design and quality of journalism.
Saudization has also led to the nurturing of the next generation of local journalists – both men and women.
A scion of Saudi society, Almaeena for a short period left the newspaper to head the newly established public relations wing of the group, which saw him replaced as editor by Abdul Qader Tash who was more at home as a technocrat and academic, rather than a newspaper editor or journalist.
Fortunately for Arab News, Almaeena was reinstated as editor-in-chief in 1998.
Saudi journalism, like elsewhere in the Arab world, is a function of the socio-politics of the country and the region. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press to the ordinary people are concepts of aspiration rather than constitutional.
Nevertheless, in tandem with the social, political and economic reforms instituted by Kings Fahd and King Abdullah, the boundaries of Saudi journalism are continually being pushed.
Arab News is also being transformed from being a paper merely catering for the expatriate communities working in the Kingdom to a paper of record, whether it is writing on Saudi economics, society and politics, or on the progress of education, health care, art or women in the country.
It is also the local English language information gateway between Saudi Arabia and the rest of the world.
This is underlined by the fact that the newspaper’s website in this technological age is the most widely visited of any other newspaper in the Arab world and is widely quoted in the international media.
Almaeena has similarly become the voice of Saudi Arabia in the international media, whether being interviewed by the BBC or CNN or quoted in various major newspapers and magazines.
With a young demography and the Kingdom’s pre-eminence as the world’s largest producer and exporter of crude oil, the challenges for Arab News over the next 35 years will undoubtedly change further.
This change could happen perhaps even more dramatically, assuming that the IT revolution continues with new inventions and the reform process gains even more momentum. The future shape and success of Arab News will depend on the imagination of the leadership of the newspaper and the owners.
