An interview with the editor of Qatar Journal

I first stumbled upon Qatar Journal when I was wading my way through Qatar Living's blog project. I got to Nigel's blog and followed the link to his new site, Qatar Journal. At the time it was still under construction, although it already looked good. The site is now up and running, and I now enjoy a daily update on Qatar news delivered to my email address. Last week Nigel kindly granted me an interview with him about the site, and why he set it up.

Why did you start a website?

I'd met the maintainer of Qatar Living a few times, socially. We have
common interests in IT, and our kids are the same age, so we always
have stuff to talk about. Anyway, I'd been talking about various
projects with him, all of which had problems, and he suggested I start
a site. Having worked as a programmer in several failed dot-coms, I
was pretty negative about websites, but he convinced me that there
were major differences between running websites eight years ago and
today.

First, the overheads for running websites have crashed. For example,
in 2000 each web server I leased cost $200/month; now it's $50/month.
And in every area I can think of (apart from office space), costs have
become a small fraction of what they were during the dot-com boom.

Second, the web has grown massively. There's now so many people online
that you can run a small site and still have a lot of readers. That
wasn't the case during the dot-com boom. Even though everyone in the
mass media talked about the information revolution, the reality was
that my mum didn't get an Internet connection until a couple of years
ago. Back in 2000, we had an audience of university students and
metropolitan office workers. It wasn't enough people to support the
number and variety of sites that had been launched.

Why an online newspaper for Qatar?

It was an easy target. If you consider the three English-language
newspapers in Doha, they haven't picked up many of the tricks that
have succeeded for online newspapers in Europe and North America. The
Tribune doesn't yet have a working website, despite having been
launched at the beginning of September 2006. The Gulf Times and
Peninsula websites are straight copies of their paper editions. No one
seems to have asked: why would someone visit one of these sites in
preference to the BBC, CNN, Jazeera or Reuters websites?

Readers of a online newspaper in Qatar obviously want Qatari news, not
international news which can be better produced by international
news-gathering organizations. Qatar Living and ExpatWoman have shown
that people want to have a conversation with their neighbours.
Newspapers shouldn't be immune from this discussion, and yet the only
discussion that exists is in the letters page of the paper editions,
where the content can be edited to avoid controversy.

So, an obvious gap existed, and it seemed from an IT standpoint that
I'd be able to get a site up and running fairly quickly. In the end,
it took a little over a month to launch the site.

Where do you get the stories from?

Four main sources: news feeds, press releases, marketing departments,
and individuals.

I have access to the major news feeds - these supply most of the
international stories; for example, Kuwait delinking its currency from
the dollar, or Opec pumping more oil. I take the same feeds as the
three Doha newspapers, but because I can publish at any time of day, I
usually break a story 12-24 hours before them. I also have the
advantage of being able to update stories during the day, which became
important when covering the changing path of Cyclone Gonu last week.

Before I launched the site, I'd already talked with the public
relations firms in the region, and during the first week, I was
constantly pestering them for stories about their clients. I'm happy
that I'm now on most of the firms' distribution lists for press
releases. Through this route, I get most of the stories about larger
companies; for example, Qtel paying an increased dividend to
shareholders, or new baggage allowances at Doha airport. It's also how
I get a lot of the stories about Government, through press releases
from various ministries.

I'm also individually contacting every member of the Qatar Chamber of
Commerce. Most firms don't pay for representation by public relations
firms, but often they have important stories to share. It's only by
contacting these firms (and some gentle prodding) that they start to
see Qatar Journal as a free way to publicise their events. At the
moment the local papers are better at collecting these kinds of
stories because they have relationships with marketing departments
that have been built over time.

Individuals can submit stories to the site, and I hope this is a
source of stories that will become more popular. For example, one of
my readers submitted details of a "Walk for a cause" along the
Corniche next Friday. I love publishing those kinds of stories,
because often they don't make it into the local papers.

Do you have an editorial policy?

Sort of, but it's a kind of 'non-policy'. I'll publish any story that
is news-worthy and has good source material. Any editing of an
individual story is purely to fit it into my format - I like all the
stories to be 100-150 words in length. You can see from the stories
printed in the local papers that we have a fairly free press in Doha,
so I'm happy that I'm not flying in the face of local sensibilities.

Is it hard going to provide stories every day?

Yes, but it's getting easier. At the weekend, I have to dig for
stories, but on Sundays and Mondays my inbox is full of press
releases. Occasionally, you'll see a story that only has a tangential
relevance to Qatar; that's me scrapping the barrel.

How are you going to fund the site?

At the moment it's self-supporting in that the overheads are low, but
as it grows that will change. Advertising can provide income but not
in huge amounts, and like most people I hate banner ads and pop-ups so
plan to keep that to a minimum. Where I see real opportunity and value
for the site is in sponsorship. For example, I covered the recent QSTP
TECHTalks conference on entrepreneurship - had we been more
established at that point it could have worked well to devote a
section of Qatar Journal to discussions and news on that topic with
QSTP sponsorship. That kind of approach has a more direct connection
to the readership and invites discussion - which is what the site is
all about.

You're involved in the IT community in Doha. Do you see the sector changing?

Maybe, but slowly. There seems now more opportunities for IT
professionals to talk. When I arrived in Doha, it was difficult to
meet other programmers. It still is, but there are now a local Linux
user group and a Perl Mongers group which form the core of the social
scene for programmers. The TechTalks held by QSTP are a good
opportunity for academics, businessmen and IT professionals to meet,
and QCERT has started bringing together IT security staff for regular
meetings. Over the next year, I've heard that some of the universities
will be inviting visiting IT lecturers for public meetings - that's
something to look forward to.

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