In Samnnoud city in Egypt’s Gharbeia Province, Wael Abu Taleb turned a small room in his apartment into a local TV channel that focused on his home city and its community. With humble resources, simple equipment, and with the help of friends, Wael broadcasted paid commercials and local weddings and even a TV series he had written himself. He also produced cartoons with the help of his friends. He refused to broadcast advertisements of candidates in any elections.

In Samnnoud city in Egypt’s Gharbeia Province, Wael Abu Taleb turned a small room in his apartment into a local TV channel that focused on his home city and its community. With humble resources, simple equipment, and with the help of friends, Wael broadcasted paid commercials and local weddings and even a TV series he had written himself. He also produced cartoons with the help of his friends. He refused to broadcast advertisements of candidates in any elections.

He called it Al-Hara Channel (Dream TV) and it grew more popular in Samnnoud than many other TV channels with significantly larger budget. Still, Wael managed to provide himself with an income. Al-Hara Channel grew so popular that the Ministry of Finance posted an official infomercial about taxes, since most of the locals watched no other channel. However, soon after Aljazeera aired a report about Wael and his TV channel, security services abruptly closed the channel (after it had been running from 2006 – 2010) and confiscated the equipment under a sound legal argument – opening a TV channel without a license.

The idea of local TV since then has spread throughout the Egyptian countyside with the permission of the security services, as long as these channels submit to censorship, avoid showing political material, do not comment on elections or irritate the authorities in any way.

Wael represents the numerous cases of individuals trying to launch local media in the provinces, where people are unofficially licensed to run a local journal, and they can work for years, but the conditions are to remain limited in effect and to not criticize the authorities.

The great big capital

In the eyes of all Egyptians living outside of it, Cairo is Egypt, and they even refer to the city as Masr, which means Egypt. Those outside of the capital think of themselves as second-class citizens. On the other hand, the media elite in the capital also treats its correspondents in the provinces as second-class.

The media elite in the capital does not pay enough attention to the provinces. Therefore, most of what is published about the provinces is carefully chosen to suit the taste of the Cairo readers. Mainstream newspapers and media outlets do not recognize the right of correspondents in the provinces to equal wages or equal employment status, nor do they provide them with resources to produce high quality journalism. As a result, most of these correspondents run through a vicious circle of low wages that do not allow them to devote their time to the profession, in addition to a lack of training. These factors prevent journalists from improving their skills, so they either leave their towns to go to Cairo or they end up being ignored by the big newspapers.

However, those who decide to stay and start a media outlet that address the issues of the local audience usually face many problems like launching the project, the trap of elitism, the taste of the audience and the lack of resources.

Founding a media outlet

Egypt has an arsenal of laws to deny media outlets working licenses. Starting a TV channel is almost an exclusive right of the state. However, in order to start a monthly newspaper, law number 96 of the 1996 mandates that the entity starting the newspaper must be a company with a starting budget of 100,000 Egyptian pound and 10 founders who are not from one family. After meeting these conditions, the company must wait to be confirmed by the Higher Council for Journalism, which could simply deny the request.

Political parties can start their own newspapers without meeting the previous conditions, except for the Higher Council conformation. Printing companies are not allowed to print or distribute a newspaper, unless it is officially licensed. However, reality says otherwise.

Hundreds of weekly and monthly newspapers circulate in Egypt. Many institutions, organizations and clubs issue journals, but they claim that these publications do not have a specific release time; therefore, they are not newspapers. The state allows these publications to circulate as long as it controls their content and maintains the right to apply the law and close them, as was the case with Wael’s Al Hara Channel.

Unlicensed newspapers face many problems – the lack of legal status makes it difficult for the people working in them to be recognized by professional institutions (syndicates, for example), apart from inadequate infrastructure, the lack of experience, mobility and the lack of income. Most of these local newspapers usually depend on the equipment of the fellow journalists and volunteer efforts. They spend most of their resources on printing, which usually takes place in non-specialized printing houses that overlook the license formalities and end up producing bad-quality material.

The illegal status of these newspapers has a tragic effect on the reputation of the journalists working for them. Many of the unlicensed newspapers, and sometimes the licensed ones, blackmail small business who buy advertisement space to avoid being defamed in these newspapers. In parliamentary and municipal election periods, sponsored by candidates, these newspapers post the worst material, and they exhaust their journalists for very low or no pay. Additionally, they usually engage in yellow journalism to increase their distribution numbers.

All of these factors formed a very negative picture of local newspapers, until they became synonymous with low quality content, blackmail, slander and non-professional election coverage.

Most of the journalists who decide to go through the adventure of the local newspaper face the issues of deciding on the language level, the target audience and the editorial policy, and most of them fail at that test because they try to imitate the Cairo media elite. In such newspapers, the language must reflect the local community and address its problems, and the content must address their local issues that are usually overlooked in newspapers issued from Cairo. Some fellow journalists overcome these editorial difficulties, but still they have to grapple with other administrative problems like attracting advertisers or setting distribution points which require distribution specialists.

Awlad Al-Balad (The Locals)

In Al-Muqattam area in Cairo, there was a local newspaper called Al-Muqattam, which exceeded the distribution numbers of mainstream newspapers in the area. The newspaper addressed the problems that directly affect the lives of locals, like broken sewage pipes, unpaved roads and the prices, and it depended on cheap ads for local shops and small businesses. However, in 2010, it was closed for not being licensed, although at that time, four other unlicensed newspapers were openly released.

The same happened with Matrouh Lana newspaper, which is issued by the Awlad Al-Balad organization in Matrouh province. Almost everyone in Matrouh knows the newspaper and that it is released on Thursdays. Matrouh Lana distributes in bigger numbers than Al-Ahram, which is considered a state newspaper and Al-Masri Alyaum, the biggest private newspaper in the country.

Matrouh Lana newspaper provides an extremely local journalistic service, that breaks with the typical image of the province and talks about successful models in the community and allows talented people to win weekly awards for inventions, poetry, painting and other activities. Moreover, it dedicates a page for complaints, and runs investigations about daily life problems. In other words, Matrouh Lana newspaper presented an accurate picture of every aspect of its community.
However, an example like Matrouh Lana would never have seen the light of day without the efforts of the Awlad Al-Balad institution that was founded in 2012, and so far, it has provided models of local journalism, of which some were successful and others not, likely due to lack of study of the community and its needs.  However, the most important service Awlad Al-Balad provides for journalists is its professional and administrative training courses. In addition, it provides resources for the journalistic activity and assistance to kick-starters until they can set foot in the market.