Almasry Alyoum

Almasry Alyoum (Arabic: المصري اليوم) (alternative spelling: Al-Misri al-Yawm) is an Egyptian daily, privately-owned newspaper which was first published in 2005. Almasry Alyoum is published in Arabic with a website that is mainly in Arabic but also has a selection of articles in English [ [http://www.almasry-alyoum.com/section.aspx?SectionID=343 Almasry Alyoum website] ]

Founding

Almasry Alyoum was founded by the Diab family, a family of Egyptian businessmen with the know-how of former Cairo Times editor Hisham Kassem. The paper initially circulated primarily amongst Cairo’s intellectual elite, providing objective news coverage in the belief that good news would beat sensationalist reporting found in other Egyptian print media. After 2 years, Al-Misri al-Yawm was challenging al-Ahram for the status of national paper of record. Though never cresting a circulation of more than 90,000 (al-Ahram has circulation figures quoted in the 300-400,000 range), time and again members of the Egyptian media pointed to Al-Misri al-Yawm as the comeuppance of the times, the embodiment of Egyptian print media’s newfound independence and the “best paper in Egypt.” While its range is limited almost entirely to Cairo, Al-Misri al-Yawm's influence is not to be discounted [David Grant, “From “Decorative Democracy” to Journalistic Potency: Egyptian Print Media Today and Tomorrow,” in: Arab-West Report, [http://arabwestreport.info 2008, week 19, art. 2] ] . Al-Masry al-Yom, was successful because it responded to the Egyptian media market as a whole and not a single political party, like typical Egyptian opposition papers, and was unafraid to take on hard-hitting topics, like governmental news outlets. Further, it harnessed the energy of young journalists, giving them incentives to produce good work [David Grant, “From “Decorative Democracy” to Journalistic Potency: Egyptian Print Media Today and Tomorrow,” in: Arab-West Report, [http://arabwestreport.info 2008, week 19, art. 2] ] . Hisham Kassem left the newspaper early in 2007 as editor-in-chief after disagreements with Diab for contacting reporters with economic or political concerns [David Grant, “From “Decorative Democracy” to Journalistic Potency: Egyptian Print Media Today and Tomorrow,” in: Arab-West Report, [http://arabwestreport.info 2008, week 19, art. 2] ] The current editor in chief is Magdy Al Galad [ [http://www.almasry-alyoum.com/section.aspx?SectionID=343 Almasry Alyoum website] ] .

References