Abu Dhabi's The National is one of the Arab world's newest English language dailies, but it is rapidly making itself the leader of the pack. Here's a very informative piece about potential succession in Yemen, which dares to look at President Salih's family and tribal links. It is proving to be a good paper, independent and thought-provoking.
One good thing about The National's emergence is the fact that despite a growing population of English dailies and weeklies in the Arab world, the quality is generally not that great. Even the patriarch of them all, Beirut's Daily Star, which closed for a long period during the civil war, has never fully recovered, and faces major challenges, economically and editorially. It's a shadow of its former self, though it still has a few truly first-rate columnists, of whom Rami Khouri is by far the best and Michael Young, I think, a strong second.
The others are far behind. Arab News and Saudi Gazette are impeded by Saudi censorship and most of the other Gulf English papers (Gulf News, Emirates News, the Omani English papers, etc.) reflect their host government's views. Egypt's independent press is trying, and Al-Masry al-Youm's English website is showing promise, though I gather it's not yet available in print. Of the official Egyptian efforts, only Al-Ahram Weekly is worth reading.It's generally better than the Arabic daily, since the government is less concerned about what goes out in English.
Of course there are many online websites that do a good job. Here I'm talking about the print press, and to be honest, I've never even seen a paper copy of The National (though they do make the PDF available). It's a rather Anglocentric approach to review English language papers, when anyone with a serious interest ought to learn Arabic, but I am starting to sense that The National is starting to fill a niche that the Daily Star is slowly surrendering.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
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