Below you can read a beautiful Editorial text co-signed by Ms. Nayla De Freige (Chairperson) and Mr. Michel Helou (Executive Director). This text is copied and pasted from the following link (for your convenience). What is interesting is that we can also read their text in French and Arabic. Bravo!:
https://today.lorientlejour.com/article/1236596/launching-lorient-today-independent-journalism-at-a-critical-juncture-for-lebanon.html
“Mabrouk”/Congratulations to L’OLJ!!! OK, this includes her own sister too, namely the talented journalist/Editor, L’Orient des Campus, Ms. Roula Douglas… and no, of course, Bambi is not biased at all :)!
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“Journalism matters for Lebanon, now more than ever. Driven by this burning conviction, we are proudly announcing the launch of L’Orient Today, accessible now at www.lorient.today.
After nearly a century of telling the news in French, we’ve decided to
open up and expand into English with this sister publication to L’Orient-Le
Jour, while keeping at the forefront our historic values: defending freedom,
openness and tolerance; demanding transparency and accountability; promoting
equality and human rights; caring for society’s weakest; and strengthening the
ties between Lebanon, its diaspora and the world.
Our country is going through historic changes that could jeopardize its mere existence. A year ago, Lebanon was rocked by major protests, the thawra, against a failed elite. The people unleashed their discontent as Lebanon’s dying economic system began its collapse. Shedding partisan identities, citizens took to the streets in a powerful rebuke against the sectarian order. This long-awaited reawakening created an immense need for credible journalism for Lebanese at home and abroad, who clung to their smartphone screens trying to follow and understand the situation. This ongoing economic downfall and the tragedy of the Aug. 4 Beirut port explosion has pushed thousands of citizens to emigrate and thrown an already fragile media ecosystem into turmoil, reducing the diversity of sources to the bare — and insufficient — minimum.
Today we are lacking information, points of view and critical but
constructive thinking to help figure out how to tackle the challenges the
country is facing. In this exceptional environment, L’Orient Today will provide
hard-hitting coverage of politics, society and the economy, but will also go
beyond that, aiming to tell readers what is driving the news. Our journalistic
goal will not be achieved solely by covering facts made public, but also by
uncovering realities that matter for the public good. Holding power to account
will be one of our most vital tasks, buttressed by our staunch commitment to
fact-checking and verification, and embodied in our slogan: “Speak truth to
power.” News will be the core of our work, yet opinion will be crucial too, and
so we intend to offer expert insight and a variety of perspectives to our
readers.
L’Orient Today will abide by a fundamental rule that applies to the
entire OLJ group: editorial independence and the full empowerment of the
newsroom. Although we feel the need to expand our offerings and spread our
values through this new medium, launching an English language edition obviously
does not affect our historical attachment to French, which we’ve been writing
in for the last 96 years and will keep doing for as long as L’Orient-Le Jour
exists.
The quest for a nation
More fundamentally, our project draws its inspiration from what has
always been a priority for our founding fathers: the quest to understand and
define the essence of Lebanon, as a nation. Michel Chiha, considered the
founder of Le Jour and the father of the Lebanese constitution, dedicated an
important part of his life to this quest. He viewed it as a relentless “effort
to find out what we are, and to explain it in the light of what we were at one
time,” an effort necessary to ensure “the relative stability of our country
throughout the vicissitudes of our history which has been extraordinarily
eventful.”
In a powerful editorial published in 1949, Georges Naccache, founder of L’Orient,
asserted: “A State is not the sum of two incapacities — and two negations will
never make a nation.” What was true 70 years ago remains the same today, and
after the widespread rejection of the current system should come the time to
build anew. Hence our core project: to investigate the failure of the Lebanese
system and reflect on how to create a better country for all its citizens. Chiha
would conclude best: “Perhaps the time has come to bring oneself up to the
level of one’s dreams.”
An outstanding team, integrated in a wider newsroom
In order to meet this challenge, we’ve put together a unique team as —
simply put — journalism is a people’s business. Benjamin Redd, a former
reporter and editor at Executive Magazine and The Daily Star, will serve as our
managing editor. His professional achievements, deep knowledge of Lebanon and
leadership skills have convinced us he was the right person with which to build
this venture. Around Ben, we are setting up a newsroom of 10 journalists that
will rapidly grow to answer the need and that will be fully integrated into our
other newsrooms, in order to draw on the expertise of our 60+ journalists in total,
no matter their language. L’Orient Today becomes the latest addition to a media
group with L’Orient-Le Jour, the French-language daily, as flagship, led by
Emilie Sueur and Elie Fayad, as well as Le Commerce du Levant, our economic
publication, led by Sahar al Attar. They will all work hand in hand.
Safeguarding a century-old institution from financial trouble and
political peril
It’s also important to acknowledge the role played by our shareholders.
Four families — Eddé, Choueiri, Pharaon and Rizk — own a large majority of L’Orient-Le Jour’s capital, and have ensured the survival and development
of the group by ongoing financial support in harsh times. This has allowed
us to reject any kind of political financing. Conceived as an NGO-like
structure, L’Orient-Le Jour has not paid any dividend (since at least 1990) — a
pledge that our late chairman, Michel Eddé, would hammer at every board meeting
throughout the 29 years that he stood at the helm of the newspaper. Besides, L’Orient-Le
Jour’s shareholders have always kept the rule of editorial independence at
heart. When asked by then-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri why his newspaper was
persistently attacking the government to which he belonged, Eddé would respond:
“I’m sorry Abu Bahaa, they are journalists, not employees.”
Yet, no matter how benevolent our shareholders are, true independence
will only come from our readers. Hence our emphasis on building a unique
relationship with our audience, essential to developing a robust digital
subscription model, as we learned from L’Orient-Le Jour’s transformation
experience. Through that business model, we are aiming to make L’Orient Today
self-sufficient within five years. By relying mainly on subscribers, we are
tying our financial performance to our editorial success. We expect the
diaspora to account for an important share of subscribers, and will openly seek
to cement the bridges between those who have left and their homeland.
L’Orient-Le Jour’s long-term goal is to write a new chapter in the Middle
Eastern media landscape. At a time where most of the news outlets are either
politically controlled or facing financial difficulties, our objective is to
build a media group that is both independent and sustainable. As ambitious as this
might be, we feel this is something we owe to Beirut, given what our capital
used to stand for in the Arab press.
There is no doubt that the image we will paint of Lebanon in the coming
years will be mostly grim. We pledge nonetheless to try to give you hope about
Lebanon’s future. Read us — we’ve lifted the paywall for a start —
share your feedback and, if you enjoy our work, subscribe to
join our community. Lebanon needs journalism, and journalism needs you.”
Nayla De Freige is the chairperson of L’Orient-Le Jour
Michel Helou is the executive director of L’Orient-Le Jour