Morocco: First free daily launched
Last month, Morocco celebrated the launch of its first free daily, a full-color, French language tabloid called au fait.
Au fait has a daily circulation of 10,000; 14 peddlers in Casablanca and three in Rabat cover all the distributing, though it will soon be available in Marrakech. Devocean, a web service company created in Canada, started the paper.
The paper’s editorial team consists of two editors and one journalist. Thus, only 10 percent of content is original, the rest coming from Agence France Presse or Maghreb Arab Press. Like most free dailies, "au fait is meant to be read quickly. Its mission is not to provide in-depth analysis articles," said Réda Sedrati, publishing director.
Surprisingly, but perhaps in smart business practice, au fait employs seven full-time ad salespeople. Advertisers have been enthusiastic but non-committal thus far.
Au fait certainly comes in reaction to the success of free dailies in other countries, but also to the gap in the Moroccan daily market. Many Moroccan dailies are very old, partisan, or both, and don’t cater to the average citizen. “The right to free information is now commonplace thanks to the Internet and one should not have to pay to be informed,” said Sedrati. "We were surprised to see how quickly people were seduced, even if the concept of free newspapers was something completely unknown to them. People keep asking our peddlers: "Are you sure, I have nothing to pay?"
Source: Arab Press Network
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It's nice for the poor sections of Moroccoan society.Might conservative, top-heavy, security-minded Arab kingdoms provide a
feasible model of how politically stressed, violence-prone Arab countries
can institute the reforms needed to meet the challenges they face in all sectors? Perhaps - if they complete the job.One of the oddities of the modern Arab world is that kingdoms have tended to enjoy more legitimacy and stability than most other "republican" countries.
Jordan, Morocco, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and a few others have had their ups and downs, but they have also displayed a noteworthy combination of continuity of rule and a recent tendency to accept the need to reform. It remains unclear in most cases, though, whether such royally mandated reform initiatives are serious models that others can emulate, or are just cruel, tantalising mirages in the desert, offering a compelling vision of something appealing to strive for but never actually reached, because, in fact, it is not real. For more on the subject you shall visit me at: css design flash web Two Arab kingdoms that are worth examining more closely in this respect are Morocco and Jordan. On several recent trips to these countries, almost every discussion I have had about current affairs quickly reverts to the urgency of implementing deep political, economic and social reforms, if the citizens wish to ensure a secure, productive future. The monarchies in both lands are very similar: young kings who took over from legendary long-ruling fathers and are reform prone, but who also spark sharply contested political debate in their own societies.
King Abdullah II and King Mohammad VI of Morocco both inherited countries suffering political tensions and economic stress. These included legacies of pro-American foreign policies, security-dominated domestic governance systems, widening socio-economic disparities, homegrown Islamist opposition movements and, as they would both discover, local terrorist cells that do not hesitate to attack fellow citizens.