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Southern California Man Delivers Arab-American News with Biweekly Paper
Hany Habib began producing Nile News, a biweekly newspaper, from his Arcadia home two years ago, joining a small but growing symphony of Arab-American news media in Southern California.
Formerly a mechanical engineer, the Egyptian American and 22-year resident of the San Gabriel Valley said he was prompted to take up publishing during the 2009 Israeli siege of Gaza.
At the time, Arab-American media ran Al Jazeera’s articles and graphic photos from the front lines of the conflict – filling what many felt was a gap in U.S. mainstream media coverage.
But within the local Arab discourse, Habib lamented a lack of “Egyptian perspective” on the broader Middle East.
“It was an awkward position for Arab newspapers here in Southern California with no actual Egyptian paper to explain the Egyptian position,” he said.
Habib, a Coptic Christian, adds his “Nile News” to a cluster of local papers that tend to reflect major demographic divisions among Southern California’s Arab community: Muslim, Lebanese Christian and Palestinian.
Syrian-born Yaman Fejleh, 23, of La Verne, says she reads Nile News for a dose of language and culture – with the attendant “feeling of being home and picking up a newspaper” she doesn’t get from online content.
“I don’t find many books out here (in Arabic) unless they’re religious or political books; we don’t have the (variety) in Arabic. So it keeps me in touch with my language.”
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But Fejleh is an anomaly in a market divided along generational lines, in which younger Arab-Americans tend to read Arabic-language media far less frequently than their parents and grandparents.
Like many U.S.-educated Arab-Americans his age and younger for whom written Arabic has become a less-prominent skill, Sharif Fathy, 39, an Egyptian-American lawyer in Pasadena, doesn’t look to Arabic-language print media like Nile News for his information.
“I look at the bigger venues, also some of the Arabic language channels and Al Jazeera online. I’ll occasionally look at the local media, an article on a list serve – but most of it is online,” Fathy said.
Like other local Arabic-language publishers, Habib does not employ a cadre of professional journalists to report on what’s happening “back home,” instead sourcing content from major networks and news agencies – and, during times of crisis, from more informal sources like trusted acquaintances and even Facebook.
Ray Hanania, a Palestinian-American journalist and coordinator for the National American Arab Journalism Association based in Chicago, suggests this “cut-and-paste” approach to news gathering is a symptomatic of larger, institutional challenges facing Arab-American publishers.
“There’s no networking, no wire service. Al Jazeera becomes the de facto wire service … even though it’s not one,” he said.
“We don’t have the support mechanism in our community – Arabs come from societies (that are) very brutal and oppressive, and we’re not taught free speech is something you can aspire to as a career… Our view of newspapers is that they’re controlled.”
This, he says, helps account for a disconnect between Arab-American local newspapers and the communities they serve – in which most readers don’t actually subscribe, but pick up local papers up from ethnic groceries, churches or mosques.
He points to a lack of local coverage and difficulty finding advertisers, and highlights the fact that many Arab-Americans don’t feel represented by mainstream media.
Asked why local newspapers continue to crop up across the country, despite the numerous barriers to success, he said simply, “they’re filling a void.”
“Honestly I’m born in the U.S., I’ve been a journalist 32 years. I really do believe the mainstream American media is biased – because we’re a very small part of it. A lot of Arabs do not (feel) represented in media stories written about them. The only time anyone covers us is when it’s a negative story.”
Pet projects
The result, he says, is that many local papers are pet projects and passions of businessmen and activists – not journalists.
And while a few have been trying to bridge a generational divide by offering content in both Arabic and English, Hanania said most who publish only in Arabic have an easier time. “If they publish in English, they become a target,” he said, explaining that one of the biggest complaints he hears from news media owners is that stores will refuse to distribute, claiming the paper expresses critical views of religion or the U.S.
“And (some content) may seem harsh when translated, so there’s a bit of a backlash.”
As for the lack of actual local content, Hanania says he and his fellow NAAJA members are trying to push for local papers to document their own communities and events.
“But unfortunately, a lot of Arabs – and I don’t blame them – the majority are here in body but their spirit is in the home country. They live and die based on emotions (tied to) what happens in Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. And that’s the news that they want to read.”
Not surprisingly, Arab-American print media struggled in 2009, suffering substantial ad revenue losses, despite dramatic population growth over the last several decades, according to a recent report from the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism.
But after the first six months of losses, Habib said Nile News began to show profits. He claims he now circulates 15,000 copies of each issue.
When Egypt imploded a few weeks ago, he moved production up to crank out coverage on the crisis and watch the whole thing vanish in about four hours; in the latest issue, he devotes the front page and an entire inside page to the turmoil in Libya.
He also dedicated a page to autocratic leaders who have either fled their countries amid unrest, or still “hold a gun to their post” despite revolution or popular disapproval – original content he says he researched and wrote himself.
The idea for a dictator page?
“Honestly the situation in the Middle East – it’s not modern at all … And I know resources in Arab countries have a lot of potential to advance, both economically and politically,” Habib said.
“What’s holding them back – it’s the corruption, the policies of their leaders. They’re holding all of these movements and energetic young people who are just looking for better future for themselves and their families…”
Beige Luciano-Adams
Pasadena Star-News