{"id":7137,"date":"2020-10-16T00:01:06","date_gmt":"2020-10-16T03:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/?p=7137"},"modified":"2020-10-16T00:16:38","modified_gmt":"2020-10-16T03:16:38","slug":"happy-birth-day-to-lorient-today-the-english-edition-of-the-lebanese-lorient-le-jour-also-known-as-olj","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/2020\/10\/16\/happy-birth-day-to-lorient-today-the-english-edition-of-the-lebanese-lorient-le-jour-also-known-as-olj\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy birth day to “l’Orient Today”, the English edition of the Lebanese “L’Orient Le Jour” (also known as OLJ)!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Below you can read a beautiful Editorial text co-signed by Ms. Nayla De Freige (Chairperson) and Mr. Michel Helou (Executive Director). <\/strong>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!:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/today.lorientlejour.com\/article\/1236596\/launching-lorient-today-independent-journalism-at-a-critical-juncture-for-lebanon.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Mabrouk”\/Congratulations <\/em>to L’OLJ!!! OK, this includes her own sister too, namely the talented journalist\/Editor, L’Orient des Campus<\/em>, Ms. Roula Douglas… and no, of course, Bambi is not biased at all :)! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

——<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJournalism matters for Lebanon, now more than ever. Driven by this burning conviction, we are proudly announcing the launch of L\u2019Orient Today, accessible now at www.lorient.today<\/a>.             <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After nearly a century of telling the news in French, we’ve decided to\nopen up and expand into English with this sister publication to L\u2019Orient-Le\nJour, while keeping at the forefront our historic values: defending freedom,\nopenness and tolerance; demanding transparency and accountability; promoting\nequality and human rights; caring for society\u2019s weakest; and strengthening the\nties between Lebanon, its diaspora and the world.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s 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 \u2014 and insufficient \u2014 minimum. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today we are lacking information, points of view and critical but\nconstructive thinking to help figure out how to tackle the challenges the\ncountry is facing. In this exceptional environment, L\u2019Orient Today will provide\nhard-hitting coverage of politics, society and the economy, but will also go\nbeyond that, aiming to tell readers what is driving the news. Our journalistic\ngoal will not be achieved solely by covering facts made public, but also by\nuncovering realities that matter for the public good. Holding power to account\nwill be one of our most vital tasks, buttressed by our staunch commitment to\nfact-checking and verification, and embodied in our slogan: \u201cSpeak truth to\npower.\u201d News will be the core of our work, yet opinion will be crucial too, and\nso we intend to offer expert insight and a variety of perspectives to our\nreaders.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

L\u2019Orient Today will abide by a fundamental rule that applies to the\nentire OLJ group: editorial independence and the full empowerment of the\nnewsroom. Although we feel the need to expand our offerings and spread our\nvalues through this new medium, launching an English language edition obviously\ndoes not affect our historical attachment to French, which we\u2019ve been writing\nin for the last 96 years and will keep doing for as long as L\u2019Orient-Le Jour\nexists.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The quest for a nation<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

More fundamentally, our project draws its inspiration from what has\nalways been a priority for our founding fathers: the quest to understand and\ndefine the essence of Lebanon, as a nation. Michel Chiha, considered the\nfounder of Le Jour and the father of the Lebanese constitution, dedicated an\nimportant part of his life to this quest. He viewed it as a relentless \u201ceffort\nto find out what we are, and to explain it in the light of what we were at one\ntime,\u201d an effort necessary to ensure \u201cthe relative stability of our country\nthroughout the vicissitudes of our history which has been extraordinarily\neventful.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a powerful editorial published in 1949, Georges Naccache, founder of L\u2019Orient,\nasserted: \u201cA State is not the sum of two incapacities \u2014 and two negations will\nnever make a nation.\u201d What was true 70 years ago remains the same today, and\nafter the widespread rejection of the current system should come the time to\nbuild anew. Hence our core project: to investigate the failure of the Lebanese\nsystem and reflect on how to create a better country for all its citizens. Chiha\nwould conclude best: \u201cPerhaps the time has come to bring oneself up to the\nlevel of one\u2019s dreams.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

An outstanding team, integrated in a wider newsroom<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In order to meet this challenge, we\u2019ve put together a unique team as \u2014\nsimply put \u2014 journalism is a people\u2019s business. Benjamin Redd, a former\nreporter and editor at Executive Magazine and The Daily Star, will serve as our\nmanaging editor. His professional achievements, deep knowledge of Lebanon and\nleadership skills have convinced us he was the right person with which to build\nthis venture. Around Ben, we are setting up a newsroom of 10 journalists that\nwill rapidly grow to answer the need and that will be fully integrated into our\nother newsrooms, in order to draw on the expertise of our 60+ journalists in total,\nno matter their language. L\u2019Orient Today becomes the latest addition to a media\ngroup with L\u2019Orient-Le Jour, the French-language daily, as flagship, led by\nEmilie Sueur and Elie Fayad, as well as Le Commerce du Levant, our economic\npublication, led by Sahar al Attar. They will all work hand in hand.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Safeguarding a century-old institution from financial trouble and\npolitical peril<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s also important to acknowledge the role played by our shareholders.\nFour families \u2014 Edd\u00e9, Choueiri, Pharaon and Rizk \u2014 own a large majority of <\/a>L\u2019Orient-Le Jour<\/a>\u2019s capital<\/a>, and have ensured the survival and development\nof the group by ongoing financial support in harsh times<\/a>. This has allowed\nus to reject any kind of political financing. Conceived as an NGO-like\nstructure, L\u2019Orient-Le Jour has not paid any dividend (since at least 1990) \u2014 a\npledge that our late chairman, Michel Edd\u00e9, would hammer at every board meeting\nthroughout the 29 years that he stood at the helm of the newspaper. Besides, L\u2019Orient-Le\nJour\u2019s shareholders have always kept the rule of editorial independence at\nheart. When asked by then-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri why his newspaper was\npersistently attacking the government to which he belonged, Edd\u00e9 would respond:\n\u201cI\u2019m sorry Abu Bahaa, they are journalists, not employees.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, no matter how benevolent our shareholders are, true independence\nwill only come from our readers. Hence our emphasis on building a unique\nrelationship with our audience, essential to developing a robust digital\nsubscription model, as we learned from L\u2019Orient-Le Jour\u2019s transformation\nexperience. Through that business model, we are aiming to make L\u2019Orient Today\nself-sufficient within five years. By relying mainly on subscribers, we are\ntying our financial performance to our editorial success. We expect the\ndiaspora to account for an important share of subscribers, and will openly seek\nto cement the bridges between those who have left and their homeland.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

L\u2019Orient-Le Jour\u2019s long-term goal is to write a new chapter in the Middle\nEastern media landscape. At a time where most of the news outlets are either\npolitically controlled or facing financial difficulties, our objective is to\nbuild a media group that is both independent and sustainable. As ambitious as this\nmight be, we feel this is something we owe to Beirut, given what our capital\nused to stand for in the Arab press.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no doubt that the image we will paint of Lebanon in the coming\nyears will be mostly grim. We pledge nonetheless to try to give you hope about\nLebanon\u2019s future. Read us \u2014 we\u2019ve lifted the paywall for a start \u2014\nshare your feedback and, if you enjoy our work, subscribe to\njoin our community<\/a>. Lebanon needs journalism, and journalism needs you.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nayla De Freige is the chairperson of L’Orient-Le Jour<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michel Helou is the executive director of L’Orient-Le Jour<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7137"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7137"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7150,"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7137\/revisions\/7150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}