Clearing my throat

Hello, bienvenue, ahlan, gutentag,

I have been meaning to start a blog for months now but have been mulling over ideas, themes and subjects for far too long. I am quite unfamiliar with blogs at the moment but think they are a fascinating and exciting element of the new media development, something which I definitely want to be part of. I have considered writing about what I am up to, my opinions and my life in general but I think blogs offer the potential for a lot more. So I am using this blog as a research project which will help me understand, and hopefully in the future be part of the rapidly changing media environment in Britain.

I have been studying Arabic and French as an undergraduate and am now working towards my NCTJ-accredited MA in Print Journalism. This blog will draw on both my passion for languages, culture and travel along with my ambitions and belief in journalism. The theme of the blog came to me just today after a lecture at my university by Ed Roussel, Digital Media Editor of the Telegraph Media Group. I have discovered over the past few days whilst studying convergence how huge the consumption of British media abroad is. According to Roussel, websites run by the Telegraph, the Guardian, the Times and the Mail have between them 100 million unique users. Peter Cole, former Deputy Editor of the Guardian and course guru, similarly told me and my fellow students of the importance of global audiences. He showed us on Monday that around 60% of online audiences of every major UK newspaper are outside Britain.

Now, with the media and especially the printed press in this country in a state of flux at best and catastrophe at worst, the rise of internet publication seems to be vital. Roussel told us for example that just yesterday, the Telegraph had an 850k circulation and 750k online users. And the numbers of internet readers is growing rapidly. So the role of overseas audiences must be very weighty indeed. I want to find out how this affects the content of the newspapers and how they are changing to meet the shifts in demand. More generally, I want to know who is reading them, where they are and why they are doing so.

From another angle, I am Content Manager on the Art Review which bills itself as the ‘first English language arts magazine in Egypt’. As a strong advocate of language learning – it is not true that you can go anywhere in the world and need no other language but English, the fact that the magazine is published in English at first troubled my conscience. Shouldn’t Egyptians and artists from all over the Middle East be able to express themselves and sell their creativity in their own language? Does this show an idea of cultural hegemony of the English language, and the West? I hope not and do not think so. The founders of the Art Review are both Egyptian and international. They told me that English was the best way to reach a global audience and maximise exposure for its featured artists, musicians and cultural figures. This can’t all be bad. Anyway, I’m going to speak to the contributors and readers of the magazine, probably through its Facebook group, to find out why they read the magazine and what they think of its publication in English.

So the scope of this blog will be quite wide and I’m sure it will get wider as I go on. A lot will of course be influenced by my own views and experiences but I hope to sit down and have a cup with tea with the rest of the world and join the chatter of many voices creating, debating and publishing.