TWO YEARS AGO he could scarcely find Abu Dhabi in an atlas. Now it’s his job
to put the Gulf state on the map.
Martin Newland, former editor of The Daily Telegraph, is trying to do what
nobody in the Middle East has done before: launch a quality, pan-Arab,
English language newspaper, creating the print equivalent of the Al Jazeera
television news channel.
“We want to be the first Middle East-based newspaper on a par with The New
York Times and The Washington Post. We want to give the newspaper scene
there a shot in the arm,” he said in his first interview about the new
venture last week.
The new, as yet unnamed, title is the first act in a £100 billion “coming out”
party for Abu Dhabi, hosted by the ruler, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Abu Dhabi is the richest city state in the world — it has 10% of the world’s
known oil reserves and a population of only 420,000. But for years it has
lived in the shadow of its razzle-dazzle United Arab Emirates’ neighbour
Dubai, which has used western brains and eastern brawn to become the
business and tourism capital of the Middle East.
Now the federal capital of the UAE and home of its executive wants a piece of
the gilt-edged Gulf action. But instead of dabbling downmarket in commerce
and travel, it wants to become an upmarket, cultural oasis in the desert.
Some £40 billion is being invested in media, the arts and architecture. The
state-owned Abu Dhabi Media Company has signed joint ventures with Warner
Bros and MGM which will lead to £500m of movies being made each year in Abu
Dhabi and released in America and Europe as well as Arab and Indian markets.
Theatres, film studios, media academies, universities, television and radio
stations and giant printing plants, designed by top architects, including
Britain’s Lord Foster, Baghdad-born Zaha Hadid and the US-based Frank Gehry,
are rising from the desert sands. New branches of the Louvre and the
Guggenheim museums are under construction.
The first salvo in the cultural blitz will be fired by Newland, 46, who leaves
England this week to move into his new home on Abu Dhabi’s elegant Corniche.
The newspaper executive, who helped to launch Canada’s National Post and held
together The Daily Telegraph during the recent bitter takeover battle
between Associated Newspapers and the present owners, the Barclay Brothers,
before resigning, has already attracted top talent.
Dozens of journalists from the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Wall Street
Journal and The New York Times are in the Gulf preparing for a launch in
March.
The paper will have bureaux in all the big capitals and 25 foreign
correspondents – a figure that compares favourably with many London-based
quality newspapers.
“It’s a huge, spanking job – the biggest ‘Made in UAE’ content operation the
country has ever seen. The budgets are generous and serious and we have the
quality staff and the resources to deliver,” said Newland.
The economic boom in the Gulf, fuelled by record oil prices, the
fast-expanding financial-services sector and tourism, has created the ideal
conditions for a newspaper launch, he said.
“This is possibly the last place in the world where you can still launch a
newspaper and hope for a very real capital return. The world economy is
shifting eastwards and a lot of it, as it travels east, is stopping in the
UAE.
“Expats are arriving in their thousands every week. The middle class is
rising. The Arab media market is massively underexploited. The economy is
growing so fast you cannot print pages quickly enough to meet the demand for
advertising space,” said Newland.
He said that even on a modest print run the paper will break even within five
years. “We will make money.”
The newspaper, which will be owned by the Abu Dhabi government, will be a
voice of the nation and for the nation, he said.
“We’re here to report the country but also to say to the outside world: this
is the scale and pattern of investment and diversification in the UAE; this
is the scale and pattern of cultural activity; these are the principles on
which the UAE rests.
“We will be the modern factual voice of a progressive nation that is growing
and changing and could be a – the – model for others in a
troubled region. We will get the UAE noticed in Washington and in London.”
So far, so positive. But launching a quality newspaper in the Middle East is
not like launching a broadsheet in Britain or America. Indeed, if history is
anything to go by, Newland’s desert dream could soon turn to dust.
Eighteen months ago the publisher Andrew Neil, a former editor of The Sunday
Times, unveiled a multi-million-pound plan to set up Arabian Business
Standard, which aimed to be “a cross between the Financial Times and the
[London] Evening Standard”. Former Observer business editor Frank Kane was
hired to edit the paper in Dubai and boasted that it would bring
western-style journalism to the Gulf.
Creating an oasis of culture in the desert: Martin Newland intends to form a
newspaper that will be on par with The New York Times But squabbles over
government publishing licences meant the project collapsed before a single
issue hit the news-stands. For Neil and Kane it was a bruising and
humiliating experience.
Westerners who have managed to set up or edit newspapers in the region admit
that pressure from the authorities to censor content has reduced their
titles to little more than PR vehicles for the state – scarcely the kind of
quality product that Newland promises.
Jason Leavy, who quit as editor of Emirates Today newspaper last year to
return to Britain, said: “State-run bodies in the UAE own and fund most
media companies and ministers and officials tend to view those firms as the
PR arm of government.
“Most of the news those papers publish is good news and there are certain
subjects – money-laundering, criticism of the ruling family and the way
prostitution is tacitly condoned – that are off-limits.”
Newland insists his newspaper will be different. “I don’t want to rubbish
those other launches but we’re bigger and better. This is real. We have a
huge talent base and a vast infrastructure.
“The timing is right, too. We’ve caught the mood. You can smell the
opportunity here when you get off the plane. This is the place to be right
now. It just oozes potential. We’ve got a hell of a good chance of pulling
off something great.”
In spite of government ownership, he dismisses suggestions that he will be
browbeaten into censoring coverage. He insists that ministers have
encouraged him to challenge state bodies.
“Nobody has told me what I can and cannot do. In fact, government figures are
on record as saying: ‘Test us. We’ve given you a dagger. Now use it.’ I
intend to.”
He claims that previously taboo subjects will make it on to the front page,
including stories about money-laundering that could damage investor
confidence. “I want to push forward some barriers and push some things out
there that are not being properly or robustly discussed,” he said.
“If I heard something interesting, we would go and have a look at it. And if I
found evidence of it and I thought it was in the public interest, we’d
publish it. This is what editors do.”
Newland said he expected to ruffle a few sensitive local feathers but his
recent experience at the Telegraph meant he could handle any pressure.
“I’ve had six proprietors in the past few years. One of them once called me up
and said: ‘I do not want you to report the worsening economic situation.’
Another said: ‘Remove this from your business section. It involves a friend
of mine. Absolute order.’ I dealt with that and I can tell you I’m not
expecting anything as stupid or gauche from my current masters.”
He does not miss the Telegraph. “It was an absolute frigging mess,” he said.
But he does miss sitting in the editor’s chair and cannot wait to get back
behind a desk at the heart of the paper’s modern newsroom. “Editing at that
level, you miss the buzz. It’s an addictive drug,” he said.
If it all goes well, Newland expects to quit Europe for the Middle East for
good. “I’ve always worked in England, then got fed up, and gone off
somewhere, like Canada, and then come back again.
“But this time, it feels different. If the UAE keeps on delivering, why come
back?”
