Yasser Abdulhafez: The beginning of a rough road
“Journalism as I know it is a state of collective creativeness. You start a sentence and a colleague adds to it to create an open text that only ends when those involved lose their desire to continue.
Hence came the new issue of Akhbar Al-Adab. After our success in squeezing out the editor-in-chief, there is now no chief authority.
Yasser Abdulhafez: The beginning of a rough road
“Journalism as I know it is a state of collective creativeness. You start a sentence and a colleague adds to it to create an open text that only ends when those involved lose their desire to continue.
Hence came the new issue of Akhbar Al-Adab. After our success in squeezing out the editor-in-chief, there is now no chief authority.
The real issue here is that there is no term anymore that defines authority, its boundaries, function and relationship with its environment in Egypt and probably in the Arab World. The revolution did not erupt against a particular person; not only to oust the president or his ruling party, but also to fundamentally reestablish work relationships and eliminate favoritism, bribery and domination, and to bring down the structure of dictatorship and corruption, a structure whose foundation stone bears the phrase: “I know what is best for you.”
The ‘Salvation’ issue was a symbolic victory for me and a preliminary step to a new concept of how to run national newspapers, which are administratively and financially semi-dependent on the state. This fact dictates a situation incompatible with the services they are supposed to provide to readers.
A piece of information may be missing or superfluous and an analysis may deviate to satisfy the owner’s needs. Of course, there is no such a thing as a neutral press, but opinions express the standpoints of those who give them – but only on the condition that those people do not deliberately lie or give wrong information.
National newspapers have been accused by many people of being pro-regime and they have every right to think so, but they missed the point that the accusation should only be leveled at editors-in-chief. They think they are supreme beings who possess both knowledge and truth to guide readers to the correct path.
As for the group of reporters and journalists at those organizations, it is a blend of society’s different trends and streams and to represent its opinions in the administrative and editorial staff means that society is guaranteed the chance to present itself accurately.
This right to collective representation is not often given to journalists by anyone, because successive authorities have become addicted to granting small bonuses to silence the voices demanding participation and reform.
It is no secret that the bylaw governing the work of any national press organizations remained, until recently, a clerical secret whose disclosure was regarded as a type of blasphemy. In this light, Akhbar Al-Adab’s collective management experiment can be considered the first step in a long bumpy road.”
Hassan Abdulmawjoud: The workshop dream
“The workshop experiment is more suitable to Akhbar Al-Adab, and even in recent times when it was ruled by a hierarchy, journalists, who are now its lifeblood, used to break the chain of command by passing tasks and ideas from one journalist to another
Thus, a more creative colleague could step in to write the captions, another one to proofread the Arabic text and another one to choose the words most expressive of the ideas. Under Ghitani and Roweni things were done contrary to official directions even though the newspaper is affiliated to a national press organization.
The experiment of the two issues published after Afifi went on vacation was a dream that came true for journalists. We had long contemplated the ‘workshop’ scenario in which the newest member of a team could assume leadership at some point regardless of having an editor-in-chief around.
Discussing ideas, turning them into words and phrasing these words to create articles have been a collective process. Texts have been dictated by intellectuals collectively and creative work has also been selected collectively. The group may have differences in their visions. We are something like a ghetto, an accusation always ready to be leveled by some against Akhbar Al-Adab journalists. Working in a newspaper or a magazine always involves some kind of selection process, especially if the work involved is cultural or creative in nature.
The traditional system that requires an editor-in-chief cannot be abolished of course, but his/her role could be re-identified so as to become a member of the workshop team. S/he can speak in the publication’s name before the owner or the parent organization and can take the necessary administrative decisions.
However, on a journalistic level, the editor-in-chief can be a member of the team in the sense that he/she can be the person in charge and at the same time listen to the directions of the newest member of the team. This is what the concept ‘workshop journalism’ signifies.
In my opinion, this model can only be applicable to weekly tabloids, because standard daily publications, which depend on news and analysis, have other rhythms.
Na’el Toukhi: No editor-in-chief
“The first collective management experiment that I remember at Akhbar Al-Adab was conducted under Ghitani when he went for treatment in the US and the journalists were forced to take things in hand and run the newspaper’s affairs without any editorial department. That experiment was still very much alive in our memory when we went on an indefinite strike against Mustapha Abdullah (ED: the penultimate editor-in-chief).
When we began the strike, we did not have a replacement in mind, but then we began to think of replacements and some names were considered, including Ms. Roweni. Mohammed Shou’ayr from the newspaper and even the scenario of an editorial staff with no editor-in-chief were considered.
Eventually Roweni was appointed as the new editor-in-chief, but we did not rule out the idea of publishing an issue without her involvement because this idea was contemplated from the very beginning.
Once Afifi requested a leave of absence, we knew that we could fulfill the idea of officially publishing an issue bearing our names without the involvement of an editor-in-chief.
The decisive factor that made that experiment a success could be the similar cultural backgrounds and opinions we share and the many battles that we fought together.
We became eager to depose the editor-in-chief after we requested him to activate the role of editorial staff and making editorial decisions subject to a voting mechanism.
He sternly rejected this request because he knew that things would not end in his favor. Moreover, since we were very close, the chance of driving a wedge between us was very small, and this later helped us prepare an issue without serious disagreements on the topics. Besies, we agreed that in case of any disagreement, the matter would be immediately solved by a majority vote.”
Mohammed Shou’ayr: Mirror of the revolution
“Since its establishment, the Akhbar Al-Adab experiment has always been a stage where everyone improvises their role. It was an improvisational theatre identifying and correcting its mistakes immediately in a state of constant trials in art direction, page layout and design, arrangement of pages, choice of topics, selection of writers, etc.
It was not a routine experiment and Akhbar Al-Adab did not look down upon criticism leveled against it, whether from inside (editorial staff meetings) or from outside (intellectuals, writers, etc.) because everyone realized that no one could satisfy all people.
In this context, we agreed on specific principles: being against any form of censorship, being against cultural corruption, adopting new initiatives in art and literature and keeping a distance from the official cultural establishment in order to maintain room for criticism.
This set of principles was not imposed on anyone; rather, all journalists were intellectually harmonious, even though each one kept his/her basic beliefs, which may have played a part in adopting the ideas of the revolution.
No rift occurred over fundamental issues, which often allowed journalists to take similar stands and it was not hard for any journalist to refuse to comply with the newspaper’s official policy.
Akhbar Al-Adab was almost the only newspaper controlled by a state-run organization and owned by the Brotherhood-dominated Shura Council, whose journalists were in the frontlines in the demonstrations against religious fascism, distributing leaflets against the Brotherhood and its propaganda.
Journalists stopped working when they became unable to write what they wanted to write, so it was not a surprise, even long before June 30, that they attempted to revolt against the Brotherhood to free their newspaper.
There was no disagreement between journalists on the newspaper’s management method or editorial line, because the basic principles were all agreed upon. And no journalist may possibly support fascism or write in an attempt to charge people with infidelity or prevent them from expressing their views.
The journalists’ intellectual harmony and the fact that there were no ideological differences dividing them, were perhaps what protected the newspaper and turned it into not only a mirror of the Egyptian revolution but also into an idea – and ideas are bullet-proof.”
