Al Akhbar (Lebanon)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Type | Daily newspaper |
| Format | Berliner |
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| Owner | {{{owners}}} |
| Publisher | Hassan Khalil |
| Founded | 2006 |
| Price | LBP £1000 Monday-Saturday |
| Headquarters | Rue Verdun Beirut, Lebanon  Lebanon |
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| Website: al-akhbar.com | |
Al Akhbar (الأخبار) is daily Arabic newspaper published in Beirut, and funded by a group of Lebanese nationals based in London, the United States and Lebanon. It is not affiliated with any political party nor country.
It was launched by the late Joseph Samaha, along with Ibrahim al Amine, both renowned and widely acclaimed journalists. Joseph died shortly after the launching of the paper, on February 25th 2007. The newspaper license was leased from the Lebanese Communist Party.
The newspaper started printing its "zero" issues under difficult circumstances during the Israeli war on Lebanon (July 12 - August 14), and printed its first issue the day the UN-brokered cease-fire went into effect. It has become in less than 10 months a reference in the Lebanese newspaper industry, ranking between the first three national titles.
The political orientation of Al-Akhbar is considered to be liberal, democratic, and opposing the American political project in the Arab region. Another main aspect of the newspaper is its focus on the professional UN investigation in the assassination of late Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. In October 2006, Ziad Rahbani, one of the most famous Arab musicians and theatre directors and son of legendary Fairuz, joined the newspaper in which he writes a column. Al-Akhbar is considered as the leading leftist newspaper in Lebanon, as well as the main 'opposition' newspaper of the country. Al-Akhbar is so considered to be close to the 8th of March mouvement (the opposition) in the actual political crisis in Lebanon, following the same evolution thats leads the left-wing in Lebanon (a quite small minority) to get closer to the Hezbollah, in the last decade particularly. Liberal in its content, it is progressive in its format and design; it has a large young audience spread all over the country.
Al-Akhbar has gathered a large number of opinion writers who have all worked in leading national and panarab newspapers before joining its team. Ibrahim al Amine, who previously worked for As-Safir, is the co-founder of the newspaper. Ounsi el Hajj, who was the former editor-in-chief of An-Nahar for over 22 years, acts as a consultant to the board of editors. Others include Nicolas Nassif, a former editor in An-Nahar, and Jean Aziz, formerly a lead editor in Al-Balad, who both write widely read columns. They were joined by Pierre Abi Saab, who heads the culture and people section after having done so in Al Hayat, and Omar Nashabe, head of the Justice and Crime section, with a PhD in criminology.
The newspaper's website is the only newspaper site in Lebanon, and perhaps the Arab region, that fully adopts open-source technologies and has succeeded in occuping the lead position amongst all Lebanese newspapers' websites as per Alexa.com services, superseding long established titles such as An-Nahar and As-Safir.
