High hopes for an Abu Dhabi newspaper

Heather Timmons The New York Times Media Group
International Herald Tribune
04-29-2008
High hopes for an Abu Dhabi newspaper
Byline: Heather Timmons The New York Times Media Group
Edition: 4
Section: FINANCE/BUSINESS

One of the wealthiest ruling families in the Middle East has a new asset: The National, a newspaper that started this month that promises independence from its royal owners.

The National, an English language daily in Abu Dhabi, published its first issue April 17, with close scrutiny from the Middle East and abroad. The paper, which pledges to emulate Western newspaper standards and to "help society evolve," is an anomaly in the Middle East, where most media is tightly controlled by the government.
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 in Britain.

The move is another sign that while the newspaper industry slumps in the United States and Western Europe, it is booming in much of the rest of the world. New newspapers and magazines are springing up in India, the Middle East, Africa and other emerging markets as economies grow and change, and as, in some areas, literacy increases.

These areas are also attracting investment from Western media companies, though they may not be able to publish the same type of newspaper as they do at home. On Monday, The Financial Times said it would start an edition for the Middle East.

The National, which targets local professionals and expatriates in Abu Dhabi, has run a few stories that are sometimes critical of the region, like one about severely overcrowded private schools, which limit the ability of companies to attract new people to the region.

In recent days, the paper has also printed controversial opinion pieces - one asking Arabs to welcome Jewish investors to the region, another warning that Emirate culture is disappearing. It 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 also had its share of fluff - like a story on the wife of the British ambassador to Abu Dhabi, whose perfect day in the emirate includes Starbucks, then Pilates, a blow dry and a seafood dinner.

"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 Fattah, the deputy editor of the paper. Fattah 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," Fattah said. "There are no ministers sitting in my office" telling the paper what to write, he said.

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 investor, a tourist destination and financial center, and The National is seen as part of a movement to appeal to outsiders. Abu Dhabi has nearly 90 percent of the United Arab Emirate's land mass and 94 percent of its oil reserves, and controls the world's largest investment fund, with an estimated $700 billion in assets under management.

The paper has had no problem hitting a start-up goal for having advertisements on 30 percent of its pages, and has had to turn away potential advertisers who wanted space in its first few issues, Fattah said.

The National is owned by the Mubadala Development Company of Abu Dhabi, an investment and venture capital arm of the government that is chaired by the crown price Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan. The owners have given the paper's executives five years to break even.

Whether the Abu Dhabi paper, which is printing 80,000 copies, has 30,000 trial subscribers and is planning a subscription rate of about $110 a year, can succeed in being independent and not attract the ire of the ruling families is unclear. Until September, journalists who wrote critical stories in the United Arab Emirates could be jailed for defamation, and the country recently signed on to an Arab League charter that asks the media not to offend local leaders.

So far, The National is drawing guarded praise. Edward Wasserman, the Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University, called The National's first edition, which he viewed on the Internet, an "impressive debut" over all, but questioned the lack of staff stories for some regional news. Wasserman praised the balanced coverage of Carter's visit to Syria, but said local coverage seemed "a bit tentative," noting that a story on Abu Dhabi's revision of its inflation statistics might not attract a sophisticated business reader's attention.

"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 the graduate school of journalism at Columbia University. For example, the paper referred to Hamas fighters as "militants," Friedman said, a type of description that was rare in the Middle East.

While the stories about Abu Dhabi government announcements were not "hard-hitting," the paper carried others that could be considered critical, Friedman said.

Attracting talented reporters to Abu Dhabi has been one of the biggest problems, Fattah said. "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.

Martin Newland, the paper's editor in chief, has fielded numerous questions about the paper's independence, particularly after a memo he wrote to staff noting that "we are not here to fight for press freedom" was leaked to outside media.

"This is good news for journalism and good news for the region, so let's get the hell off censorship," he said. He added that he was tired of having the issue "distilled down to issues of censorship."

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 were high and human resources and infrastructure were negligible.

Traditionally, Abu Dhabi's giant investment fund, known as the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, has shunned high-profile deals and dumped cash into fund management companies instead. Last November, though, the fund paid $7.5 billion for a 4.9 percent stake in the beleaguered financial giant Citigroup, propelling it to center stage in the world financial arena.

Newspapers have thrived in the Arab-speaking world for decades; Al-Ahram, published in Egypt since 1876, has five million readers, for example. But freedom of the press has remained elusive in many countries.

"If it doesn't work, so what, and if it does work, it would be great," Friedman said, "because that area of the world needs a free press."

(Copyright 2008)