Launched a news aggregator mail out yesterday: The Dubai Daily. A morning round up of the day’s headlines, it will comprise links, commentary and some sarcasm. Once we get to a certain number of sign ups, we will be expanding it into some interesting areas, so stay tuned.
Where would we be without the Khaleej Times? Probably in a much better place, but, having said that, the paper continues to batter the English language like it was a baby seal. Take the screen shot to the right. It shows just some of the ways English dies just a little, every day on the KT homepage. This is a world where pressure is piled, where governments duel, where debates stir, where PMs slam and where tongues are colourful.
The cliche is alive and well in Al Quoz.
God help us all.
A new publication emerged in Dubai this week – Read, a weekly newspaper distributed on the Dubai Metro. It is, to be blunt, incredibly bad. The content is banal (the pro’s and con’s of coffee, Hollywood’s most stylish fathers) and the production amateurish (out of focus, lo-res pictures, bizarre design choices, wrong grid etc). For visitors coming to Dubai, Read will only confirm their worst suspicions of a city without any decent local media.
The website is equally dire, looking as if it was designed by a toddler with access to a Mac. The most shocking thing about the whole product is that someone (or presumably) more than one person, signed this off. Someone thought this was good enough to release to the general public. It’s not. It’s an abomination. There was a chance for a smart, relevant local free sheet – God knows there are enough examples globally – but as usual in this market, the product was rushed out, and we are left with a useless shell of a paper. Grim.
The recent events in Cairo have illustrated the dividing line between ‘old’ media (print) and new media (online). Whereas before people would have got their news from the newspapers, now they are getting information from a combination of sources:
Social media – primarily Twitter and to a lesser extent Google Realtime
Online – web-only sites and more interestingly ‘old’ media that has utilised new media properly.
Two prime examples of this is the Guardian, which is showing a u-stream video on its homepage right now (10.15 on a Thursday evening) and Al Jazeera whose live feeds have become required watching.
So what does this mean? Well, for starters, any media organisation that thinks it can survive with only a print arm is in trouble. The only way around this would be to complement other outlets. So, if you cannot get the news to people as quickly or as efficiently as Twitter – then don’t bother, stick to what print media is still good at: analysis and opinion.
So while people will spend their evenings glues to Twitter and Al Jazeera’s feeds, they can pick up the daily paper the next day and find out what the previous nights events mean. A newspaper that tries to everything, will ultimately do nothing. Know your strengths, and play to these – anyone who tries to do it all will fail.
Gulf News long ago descended into farce, a rag-tag collection of pro-Government press releases, inane human interest stories and badly written opinion pieces. Yet it is still the number one selling newspaper in the UAE. This would suggest either:
1. The people who buy Gulf News have certain issues
2. The people who buy Gulf News do not read it (using it instead to stuff pillows, mattresses or cat litter trays)
It is worrying that the country has such a poor print media. Khaleej Times is beyond parody it’s so bad, the National has rapidly descended into the press wing of the Abu Dhabi goverment and Business 24/7 sets new lows in crass journalism on a daily basis.
The recent coverage of the dispute between Canada and the UAE over landing rights has exposed the paucity of the country’s journalistic talent. Take this piece, or this piece, or this piece. No, please, take them. They are perfect for litter trays. Is there any hope on the horizon? Yes – the death of print media.
One of the few (OK, only) bright spots on the dire UAE radio scene is Dubai Today, a morning talk show on 103.8 FM. Today they had a journalist on – Chris Wright of The National – who failed spectacularly in understanding the mobile applications business. He was on the show to talk about his article in The National: Health, Wealth and the Pursuit of Appiness.
It should have been an interesting show – apps, along with social media, are changing the way the internet works, and some are even claiming, will end the web’s dominance. Wright ignored all this and treated mobile applications as a fad, a sort of Chat Roulette for the mobile phone. He started his argument with a false assumption; namely that developing applications is the new way to ‘get-rich click”. His evidence of this argument: One unnamed blogger who said: “Anyone can EASILY create an iPhone web app and make money online.”
Wright then goes on to discredit an argument that never existed – no one has ever claimed that developing an application would make you rich – developing the right application might, but the same goes for the ‘right’ website, newspaper or copper mine.
On the radio show, Wright was obsessed with labeling the growth of mobile applications as a fad -it’s not. His arguments were weak or non-existent, comparing the desire of ‘kids’ to have the latest app as a ‘fad’, akin to wanting to dye their hair green. If he had bothered to look at the figures, he would have seen that ‘kids’ do not make up the majority of application downloads. Next time maybe The National can commission someone who spends more time on research and less time coming up with lame phrases.
We are into the final few days of the 2010 Assilah Festival and URBN‘s first experience of doing what we do at a festival. Some valuable lessons learned and some great ideas for future projects emerging. Turnkey media solutions will become more relevant as ‘old’ or ‘big’ media is just too slow to react to this ever changing landscape.
This was apparent at Assilah. TV stations taking 30 minutes to set up shots and lighting, then hours to edit and send content back to Abu Dhabi. We filmed on our Flip camera, edited on its software and had it online in under 30 minutes. Content is still king – but adaptability needs to be married to that. Journalists will need to be able to write, edit, film, take photos, record podcasts, use social media, do external PR and get the story, all the while operating with no more than a laptop, smart-phone, Flip camera and digital camera.
Exciting times. And some interesting URBN announcements to come. In the meantime, a piece I wrote for the ‘old’ media, The National.
An image of Assilah in Morocco where I am covering the Assilah Festival 2010 for ADACH with my company URBN Travel. The town is beautifully located on the northwest tip of Africa which makes for some nice sunsets. It is also a nice break from the dirge on offer the in the UAE’s local media which continue to embarrass themselves on a daily basis.
Just to prove the UAE does not have a monopoly on bad sub-editors, here is a photo of a remarkable headline from my old paper, The Evening Herald.
The National has a piece today by its Political Editor, Emile Hokayem where he compares North Korea and Iran. Although more nuanced then most commentaries on Iran, he still misses the point.
Regarding North Korea and the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel, he says:
“Indeed, the South Korean riposte has been measured despite popular anger. Seoul refrained from making any accusations before the results of an investigation that involved international experts were released. Once North Korean responsibility was established beyond doubt, Seoul consulted its neighbours and allies to design a diplomatic strategy. It referred the matter to the UN Security Council a few days ago and stepped up its defence co-operation with its top ally, the US.”
South Korea has no option but to be measured and not just because the North has nuclear capabilities. There is a bewildering amount of support for North Korea in the south, with many feeling the border is an artificial one and reunification is a matter of when not if. These are two countries with the same culture, language and ethnicity. While the South Korean government does not want the collapse of the northern regime (which would allow China to push southwards), the majority of the population do – but crucially many see this as an internal Korean affair, whatever Seoul says.
Hokayem considers: “This measured response is the sign of a confident and responsible nation that must consider the human, economic and strategic costs of any military confrontation.”
Enter Iran. “But the potential for an escalation in the Gulf waters is real. In 1988, the US mistakenly shot down a civilian airliner flying from Bandar Abbas to Dubai. In 2007, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards seized British sailors. In 2008, a man used naval radio frequencies to make US ships think they were about to come under arttack, raising US-Iran naval tensions.”
First of all Hokayem is either being ignorant or misleading by characterizing the shooting down of the Iran Air flight as a “mistake”. No one sat on a button by accident. Two heat-seeking missiles were fired at a civilian airliner killing 290 people. The embarrassing American cover up only added to the insult. Commander Scott Lustig of the USS Vincennes (which fired the missiles) was awarded the navy’s Commendation Medal for ‘heroic achievement’ and ‘ability to maintain poise and confidence under fire’. Yet Hokayem compares this episode to the Iranian seizure of British military personnel and a man who broke into US naval frequencies.
“These crises were resolved peacefully, but it is easy to imagine how they could have gone wrong. Just as South Korea is doing, the Gulf states must figure out how to manage such scenarios in tandem with the US instead of letting Washington be always at the forefront.”
In Hokayem’s world view, America’s presence in the Gulf should not be questioned. Iran is a “threat” and an “enemy” of America. Such simplistic analysis is disappointing given he is the National’s politics editor. His work for the Stimson Center betrays a similar bias against Iran.
Portraying the Iranians as the biggest threat to regional security is simplistic and misguided. The National’s pretensions at being the leading daily in the region would be better served without such an openly biased Political Editor.
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