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Al Raya
Qatari daily newspaper From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Al Raya (Arabic: الراية, romanized: The Banner) is an Arabic-language daily newspaper published in Doha, Qatar. It is the semi-official newspaper of the country and is one of the five leading Qatari dailies.[1] As for Arabic dailies published in the country Al Raya is among the three major newspapers along with Al Sharq and Al Watan.[2]
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History and profile
Al Raya was launched by the Gulf Company for Printing and Publishing as a weekly newspaper on 10 May 1979.[3][4] The company, which was founded by Ali bin Jaber Al Thani, also owns Gulf Times, an English-language daily.[3][5] Based in Doha,[6] Al Raya is the second Arabic newspaper published in Qatar.[7] On 27 January 1980, Al Raya was relaunched as a daily newspaper.[4]
In 1996, a corpus was created which included 187 articles published in Al Raya.[8] On 27 April 2012, the paper launched the mapping mangroves project.[9]
Nasser Mohamed Al-Othman was the first editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper.[3] In the initial period, many leading Arab journalists wrote for the daily.[10][11][12] Abdulla Ghanim Al Binali Al Muhannadi was appointed editor-in-chief of Al-Raya in 2019.[13] In 2023, Abdulla Taleb Al Marri became the editor-in-chief of the newspaper.[14]
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Political stance and content
Although Al Raya is privately owned, it is the semi-official newspaper of Qatar.[15][16] Therefore, it has a pro-government stance.[17] The major rival of the daily is another Arabic Qatari newspaper, Al Sharq, which has the opposite political stance.[18]
Al Raya mostly provides news about the receptions and activities of the ruling family, Al Thani, as well as about official events.[15] In addition, the daily has large supplements on sports and business as well as a special supplement called He and She.[15] The paper offered a weekly page on environmental issues from 1999 to 2005.[19]
Following the 2013 coup in Egypt, Al Raya concentrated on the ongoing demonstrations of supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and ousted President Mohamed Morsi.[18] In August 2013, an editorial of the paper argued that possible US-led intervention against Syria would not be celebrated, but the Assad regime was "useless" and caused no other option than such intervention.[20]
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Circulation
In the early 1990s, Al Raya had a circulation of 10,000 copies and was distributed in Saudi Arabia and Egypt in addition to its native Qatar.[10] It had higher levels of circulation until 1995 when the other Arabic daily, Al Watan, was launched; Al-Raya then lost one-third of its circulation.[7] In 2000, Al Raya was the second best selling newspaper in Qatar with a circulation of 18,000 copies.[21] The estimated circulation of the paper in 2003 was 8,000 copies.[7] Al Raya's circulation increased to 18,000 copies again in 2008.[1] In 2010, the online version of the paper was the 47th most-visited website in the MENA region.[22]
References
External links
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