Egypt: Al Dustur, from weekly to (also) daily

 
The daily Al-Dustur counts 16 pages with a circulation of 70,000 copies, while the weekly sells 130,000 28-page copies.

Faced with limited human and financial resources, the creation of a new paper entailed sacrifices from the staff. Not that the paper stayed with exactly the same logistics – it hired more journalists and allocated a budget for the new paper.

 “Of course, the number of journalists on our team and our budget has almost doubled. Moreover, all of our employees agreed to make several sacrifices in terms of their working hours and salaries to be part of this adventure and enable it to continue,” says Zelaky.

As far as content, Al-Dustur had to redefine its strategies to avoid too much overlap. The weekly mixes more analytical content along with “light reading that include the "youth" sections and cover topics like video games and supernatural phenomena.”

The daily is more of a general, hard, news publication. It broaches many themes that were never present in the weekly, dedicating two pages to sports, one page to international events, another to crime, and a few others to the weather or the stock market. “That said, we continue to provide news and investigative reports handled in the style that has distinguished Al Dustur since its very first issue,” says Zelaky.

Perhaps one of the main differences relates to the editorial process before the production of the paper.

“When we only produced the weekly, we were working between 4 and 5 days a week and spent a lot of time thinking, planning and publishing each issue, which sometimes involved changing several parts before sending it off to the printers,” says Zelaky.

“With the daily {…} our editorial team is forced to work non-stop 7 days a week for around 12 hours a day. This is in order to collect original content and present new information to readers, while putting the newspaper to bed before the competition since it has to go to press very early,” he adds.

Although the daily is still brand new, this may be one of the successful examples of a newspaper – and its newsroom – transitioning from weekly to daily. Although this adaptation may not ease the daily job, willing staffers, adapted content distribution and a little marketing can help a newspaper (or two) increase its reach and coverage.

“That said, we are all delighted with our lot and know that we are doing far more than just earning a living.”

For the full interview, please click below.

Source: Arab Press Network