For Doha Girl and other PR personnels

Ambrishja, I sent you an email from Bristol. When you reply can you also send a rate card, and any circualtion information you have about Al Watan?

I have a few story ideas, and possible contributers, also, what are you doing for a launch of the paper? I may have ideas there to. ;)

When i first arrived to Doha one year ago i used to the read the Gulf Times but then i realised it's nothing but an English translation to the arabic papers...even the ads and the classifieds.

So i simply quit reading the English version and shifted to the arabic one,much easier.

we want something that matches the quick and fast pace of life we are living, not the same old boring style of articles.

I don't know if anyone will ever have the guts to put his/her money in such a project.

But may be one day a "Qatar Living" news paper of magazine will be published ;) lol

no i do not believe that ... although i googled IHT prinitng and their Asia circulation center is in Bangladesh ... so maybe it is so?!

And the Gulf Times is usually a day behind the Peninsular

Believe it or not the International Herald Tribune is printed in Doha.

I hope I'm wrong but the Arabic daily Al-Raya publishes Gulf Times and Al-Sharq publishes Peninsula. The third and last daily Al-Watan doesn't have an English-language baby. Is that the logic behind it?

Anyway I hope the original writing is of a better standard.

yes i really hope it is of a readable quality. Both GT and Peninsula are terrible. 3 motivated 13 year olds (with spell check, a printng press and maybe a graphics designer could do a better job than both of them) and I truly believe that.

Will tribune have a different news agenda; i.e. in UAE, they have Khaleej and Gulf News as broadsheets and 7 Days and Emirates Today that are more like tabloids. N.B. A really like the Berliner format (of the Guardian; although i think the times is better in content and smaller in size is where the trend has gone in recent years and as Qatar has so little news it is not a bad idea rather that fubble about with that huge paper thing they call a newspaper here.

Indeed, Tribune sounds very stiff, conservative, broadsheet and Daily Telegraph in nature. Could they not come out with a more lively name; can I advise before it is too late change it maybe use something like The (Doha) Frontier; to me this gives the image of a depper examination of issues otherwise forgotten or ignored. (And this is pretty much what the Mission of Al Jazeera International supposed to be) I understand that it is hard as there cannot be a title like star / sun which examine issues that cant be discussed such as "how long X & Y were getting it on for at the beach" or have a name that could portray a political agenda, but surely you can do better.

I thought of mine just now and there are surely better names than that. I know it is difficult as a new employee to voice disapproval on such things, but is there a email to the new paper???

However, 3 broadsheets or indeed 3 English perpes can surely not survive in Qatar; maybe in 5 years though; the only good they are from is maybe having a read whilst stuck at a traffic jam or lights; if they didn't sell them on the street I would never take the initiative to go and buy it otherwise.

I am perplexed that no printing comany has bought the rights to some international newspapers e.g. The Times, Guardian, NY Times and produce them on location. Indeed this is what is done in SE European countries e.g. Cyprus, Greece, Turkey where they produce them locally.

The only country who would be able to do this is UAE and in particular Dubai; there are 200,000+ Brits live there and 1,000,000 visit every year, there must surely be a demand. The only problematic factor is the time difference, 3/4 hrs between UK and UAE and as the final edition is around 3am it would mean around 7:30/8:30 until they are readily available but that is surely not that bad.

By the way are the Arabic papers as bad or do they offer something original?

Wow this has turned up into a long post...

Erm...two newspapers? Hahaha...I would have never guessed! They always have the same articles and same pictures from the wire services - the only thing different is that the order is different (oh, and the gulf times has a better classifieds section).

But seriously, this new newspaper - will it be different? And who is the chief editor?

HI Ambrish,

I heard about this new openning, i have a friend of mine working at Al-Watan and he told me about it long ago, i hope you will make it different than the other local English papers in Qatar, i didn't like them and thought they were just a silly translation of the arabic editions.

I hope you have your own spirit and get in touch with the real world of expats in Qatar, especially that they are the ones who will be reading your work mainly.

Good luck to you and please add me to your contact list for any queries.

Uh oh I guess we'll have to clean up our act then...

Hey Ambrishjha,

Hope that you run an article on Qatar Living in your paper - you'd be scooping the other two English language papers who have no idea what the internet is yet ;)