Trip to a Newspaper

We started the day with a visit to the Zaman newspaper.   Zaman means "Times".  It has the largest circulation in the country (about 1 million copies daily and also online viewing).  This is about twice as large as its next competitor.  We were shown a brief film on the history of the paper, founded in 1986, the first Turkish paper to go online in 1995, committed to giving high quality news not propaganda or tabloid news (which can be found in many other publications).

We were given a brief tour which included seeing a youth conference in progress.  They bring in several hundred university journalism majors every year for a special one week conference with the top people in journalism and work to instill a commitment to quality reporting in these journalists-to-be.  They focused on particular aspects including the basics like asking/answering: who, what, where, when, why and how? as well as working on visually appealing design layouts.  Apparently part of the Turkish culture is to expect beautiful newspapers.  The paper is in full color everyday on all pages (and does look pretty good!)  At the end of the conference the students present their own edition of the news.

Zaman publishes in several languages, including English (Todays Zaman.com).  It is not a translation of the Turkish version of the paper, it is a separate publication.  They hire journalists from many different countries because they particularly value different points of view and the one way you can get this is by  having different people contribute.  

One of their PR people came to speak with us and I asked him about the future of Zaman. Did it intend to expand globally like Al Jezeera?  He remarked that his wife was Arab and that they would compare the news stories in the Arab version of Al Jezeera with the English stories and that they were NOT the same spin at all.  Arabic versions were always pro-Arab.  English versions were more balanced.  (I can't say I'm particularly surprised by this).  He reiterated that the philosophy at Zaman is to represent all views (not necessarily to be neutral).  They want a forum for everyone with respect > share views > find solutions.

Perhaps a bit idealistic and definitely a PR job, but good sentiments and aspirations just the same.

[A footnote after our visit to the Writers Association:  the government does not need to restrict/censor newspapers, they do it themselves because the media outlets are part of larger corporate conglomerates that seek large government contracts and they cannot afford to have their media outlets be critical of the government.]

Fancy new building!

Beautiful interior

The presses

Workspace.

Youth conference attendees.  Really spiffy technology capabilities!

I took this picture because I thought it was funny that today we were served tea for the first time in PAPER cups instead of the lovely glass ones used everywhere else!