‘Unimaginative’ Digital Age: What Can Arab Cultural Journalism Learn?

 

The Information Revolution and the spread of the internet and social media have had severe repercussions for cultural services as we know them. The loss of numerous publications remains one symptom of the many changes sweeping across the Arab world, which recently witnessed the closure of another publication, the Qatari cultural magazine Doha. This development feeds a growing sense of urgency among experts, editors, and intellectuals to identify the source behind the stagnation and a path forward.

 

Doha joins an expansive list of cultural magazines that have recently ceased publication for various reasons, including Al-Adab, Dubai, and Viewpoints. With many countries in the Arab world facing economic crises, lackluster financial resources puts Arab cultural publications in a precarious position. According to Sayed Mahmoud in Independent Arabia, Samir Darwish, editor-in-chief of Merit magazine, attributes one reason to the increased cost of printing, editing, and distribution combined with weak returns. However, others hesitate to pin the blame on funding alone. Tunisian novelist Kamal Riahi asserts that lack of funding primarily concerns poor countries or magazines published by private institutions or associations with limited capabilities. With a thriving economy like Qatar’s, closing Doha’s doors due to funding seems unlikely. Instead, experts suggest the disappearance of cultural magazines goes beyond funding, pointing to both external and internal factors. If unaddressed, magazines will eventually drown in the storm of changing cultural values, fixated on appeasing the editors’ tastes rather than adapting to the contemporary reader, creating the “unimaginative” journalism we know today.

 

Understanding the contemporary reader, however, is incredibly challenging in Arab countries facing an ongoing reading crisis. Editor-in-chief of the Kuwaiti magazine Al-Arabi, Ibrahim al-Mulaifi, cites a lack of studies and statistics on readers’ needs and inclinations, adding that those who do not read paper content are not expected to enjoy electronic content and changing media will not affect reading rates. According to Egyptian novelist Nasser Iraq, despite the remarkable technological breakthroughs of the Digital Age, most of what is produced in cultural magazines still adheres to the conditions of the old traditional presentation and delivery of material, leading to readers’ withdrawal. The whole picture is that readers are not simply ‘abandoning’ magazines but that magazines are also not attempting to keep pace with changing times.

 

 

 

 

 

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